Game Over: Sunset Overdrive

 Sunset Overdrive meant quite a bit to me when I was younger, so I decided to give it a quick crack after leaving it alone for several years. I’ve already beaten the game but I decided to dive back since I wanted to level up a few of the weapons I had left over and earn an achievement. Funnily enough, the last achievement I got was back on the 1st of November 2020, legitimately about 52 days before I started writing for GameGrin. That’s kinda awesome.

Enjoy your Awesomepocalypse.

I was actually really excited for the game’s release when it was announced in 2014. I’ve always loved Insomniac Games and this looked right up my alley. However, I distinctly remember hating the marketing. It was trying way too hard to say “Hey, we’re not Call of Duty! We have colours other than brown! What’s cover? Screw you, The Man!” When I was watching those trailers, even good ol’ teenage me would wince at how hard they were pushing that message. Still, I never got Sunset Overdrive at release due to having not owned an Xbox since the Xbox 360 and I didn’t fully take advantage of my Steam account until 2020 when… Well, there was nothing much better to do other than build a PC.

So, what do you do in this game? Well, it’s the Awesomepocalypse! Where the latest energy drink has turned its drinkers into mutants called OD (Overdosed) and now the entirety of Sunset City is closed off, all thanks to FizzCo. However, despite all the murderous bandits and monsters roaming the streets, things can’t be better for the absurdly mobile protagonist as this is the opportunity to leave their crappy dead-end job and be free to cause some mayhem. All this while dealing with various factions and FizzCo itself to get out of the city, using an arsenal of insane weapons to get them through whatever stands in their way.

God, I love the music in this game.

Its main system is its traversal, where you can practically grind and bounce off anything (including cars, umbrellas, balloons, and glass ceilings). Staying on the ground is a death sentence, as you’re only barely faster than an escort NPC just running around and OD are relentless. It was called “Velocity” at one point, but I guess they dropped it. Anyways, by killing enemies with your guns – ranging from a standard AK and a revolver to launching bowling balls and firing vinyl records – and using your traversal abilities to their fullest, you’ll fill up your Style meter, which will trigger Amps that cause even crazier effects: making grind rails spew flames, cause bounce pads to explode, and even set off a mini-nuke with the Twist of Fate. The more explosive the Amp, the better it is. All of these systems make for some pretty fun gameplay that never felt boring, at least to me.

And because it’s the Awesomepocalypse, you get to dress and look how you want. God, the customisation was great and could definitely fit in with the modern games of today. You have hundreds of options where none is locked off or based on gender and you can freely modify your character at any time (curse you, Character Edit Vouchers…). The only thing that showed the game’s age was the fact that your voice was tied to your body type. You want Yuri Lowenthal? You had to choose Type 3 and 4. It was actually very refreshing to see how many cosmetics were just in the base game all earned just by buying it with in-game money. No microtransactions, no premium currency, no battle pass; just kill stuff and do missions and you’ll earn that fancy top hat in no time. Man, when I’m reminiscing about not needing to shell out real money for an in-game t-shirt really makes you think how exploitative the industry has become over the years.

Be who you wanna be.

That being said, I didn’t play the fullest version of Sunset Overdrive. The Steam version completely ripped out all the multiplayer content, disabling leaderboards and reducing its wave-based defence missions meant to improve and unlock Amps into just a minor gameplay change. It’s not like it was all that hard though as weapons like the Hair Spray Bomb tended to make these sections a breeze. And since there’s no multiplayer, it drastically reduced its playtime. The last time I checked, I had played for eight hours and that was enough time to beat the game, beat all the DLC, and even get gold in most of the optional challenges (except for some nanite ball one where it is next-to-impossible). It was a fun time, I recalled, but damn it felt like it was missing so much.

"It's a f*cking videogame."

I really wish Sunset Overdrive got a sequel but given the fact that apparently it only made $500 in profit and that nowadays Insomniac Games is focusing on licensed Marvel games like Marvel's Spider-Man and Marvel's Wolverine. I doubt we’ll see another unique IP from the studio for a long time. It’s sad to think about when you can see how much fun this game was both to develop and play, but at least I can go back to it and wipe out some OD anytime I want.