Total Overdose Diaries Part One

After doing Diaries of a few different franchises, I figured it was time for a palate cleanser. Just one game that I’ve been wanting to get around to for a while now, since it was released on the PlayStation 2 (and Xbox) back in 2005.

Total Overdose - AKA Total Overdose: A Gunslinger's Tale in Mexico - was developed by Deadline Games, and published by Eidos Interactive. It’s currently only available at GOG, and the only mods available are to put it in widescreen. It’s an open world game where guns, explosions and crazy stunts are par for the course - more than that, I’ll get into in a moment.

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This is my ongoing exploration of Total Overdose, where I will chronicle my playthrough like a text-based Let’s Play.

The year is 1989, and Ernesto Cruz, a DEA agent, is escaping the jungle militia of Papa Muerte. After a mishap with a zipline, I take control and murder the three men posted to the warehouse I had just fallen through the roof of. Upon opening the doors, a plane lands on the airstrip outside, and comes under fire from the militia.

Man, Ernesto's disguise sucked...

Running outside, I blast away at the dozen or so enemies between myself and the plane, even dislodging one from behind a truck-mounted gun with an awesome dive. I reach the plane and we take off. Which is where Ernesto’s story ends, as his fellow DEA agents inside the plane have a message from Papa Muerte, and throw him from the plane…

Years later Tommy Cruz, now a high ranking DEA agent himself, gets a tip that his father’s death wasn’t a drug-fueled suicide as had been reported. He meets a man called Marco in Mexico, and takes on his first gangbanger job, to join the Morales Cartel. Which again, is where I take over.

Getting into the car next to me, I drive towards a fuel tanker, parked outside a service station controlled by the Virgillo gang. I leap out, and the truck explodes spectacularly. Unfortunately, nobody was even close to it, so I had to murder the several Virgillos that were in the area, before blowing up the rest of their vehicles. Of course, I then had a few more to wipe out, before I could celebrate a job well done. Which is when the grenade went off, badly injuring Tommy.

This was, Tommy revealed to his boss, where things got interesting. Not wanting to lose this lead, Tommy got his twin brother Ramiro out of prison, and sent him down to Los Toros to take over the undercover investigation. Of course, you can guess that is where I took control of Ramiro “Ram” Cruz.

You know things are going to get interesting when one of the twins is the "idiotic" one

Freshly arriving in town, I went to the shooting range before I met up with Mendes, of the Mexican secret police. He gave me a ride to the Red Light District to meet up with Marco the Rat. Before I could enter the building, he came racing out with a bunch of guys chasing after him. I helped dispatch them and we ran for it, not that the Virgillos made it easy. I dove, jumped, hopped, shot and beat people with a baseball bat as we headed for Marco’s van.

Leaving many bodies in our wake, we reached the van and I took the wheel, heading up the ramp to the top floor. I was overjoyed to see a ramp aiming off the top of the car park, and put my foot down, whereupon I launched into the air and we made our escape back to Marco’s junkyard.

VROOM!

After exploring the area a little, I headed back into town and met a guy who wanted some drug pushers dealt with. 13 bodies later, I was told that I could do the next story mission, so headed to the docks to check that out, managing to drive into the bay and have to climb a ladder to get out of the water…

Arriving at the warehouse, I met Cesar Morales, the head of the Morales Cartel. He wanted me to infiltrate one of the Virgillo’s farms to destroy their fertiliser silo and steal Joe Virgillo’s car. Morales’ chauffeur Angel took me to where Tommy had gotten blown up, and after clearing the place out again I stole a van and made my way to the farm. There were four smaller silos that I was told would have to destroy before tackling the main one.

Honestly no idea what the structure on the right of the silo is...

Resistance was there from the moment I arrived, and so I leapt out of it to deal with them. Once they were dead, I jumped back into my van and drove around to the first small silo and leapt out just before it crashed and blew it up. Sadly the explosion didn’t kill everyone in the area, so I had to do some violent tidying up before heading for the next silo in another vehicle. I skipped the closest one, and climbed up a water tower ladder, discovering a zipline heading down to a barn.

After a quick zip down, I grabbed some stuff from the barn, including dynamite. It took a couple of tries but the silo exploded, and more Virgillos died. Running for another silo, I found the way blocked by enemies who needed a murdering, and I was happy to give it to them.

Rather than head straight for the next silo, I climbed up another water tower to use a zipline. At the top, I was delighted to find a rocket launcher! It would definitely come in use against the remaining silos, so I fired at the furthest one. Unfortunately, the rocket hit an invisible wall. So, I turned to the closer one and fired from my vantage point - and the rocket flew harmlessly through the silo.

After a few curses, I hopped on the zipwire and slid down to take out the furthest silo manually, landing inside a barn on the top floor, which positioned me handily to kill half a dozen people before I dynamited the silo. Now with only one silo left, I went back the way I had come and jumped into a truck, driving for the target.

Spotting a ramp which would result in an awesome jump explosion, I aimed for it and leapt out. Disappointingly, my aim was off and it hit the dumpster next to the ramp and blew up. This resulted in the long, boring task of shooting the silo until it eventually exploded, sufficiently weakening the main silo. Since I was close, I ignored the enemies who came after me, only killing the ones in my way as I went up a gantry to give the silo a push - quite literally.

"This is fine."

I rode it down to the ground, and was left with one objective - steal a car. Alas, it was inside a locked garage, so I murdered my way inside the farmhouse, narrowly avoiding a lady with a machete, and made my way upstairs.

That’s where I found Joe Virgillo and a couple of men. It was an intense fight, but after much expended ammo, he fell and I took his keys. I went outside and jumped off of the balcony, running to the garage and heading inside. Obviously, the car was to remain as undamaged as possible, so I got in and put my foot down.

VROOM!!

Racing along the road, I used a ramp to jump over the first blockade that the Virgillos had set up, but there weren’t any ramps for the others. The car took quite a bit of damage, but I got out of there intact and headed for the docks. Once I pulled up to Morales, he congratulated me - before shooting the hell out of the car. It seemed like he wasn’t the car person I figured him for…