Sunset Overdrive

tony hawk pro skater with guns
10/10

This game is simply great. Insomniac knows how to make fluid games and this is one of them. Soundtrack, colors, city, characters, references and gameplay they are all put together very well. It is really sad that they ditched the co-op. It could have given this game more hours of play time. I really like the world and the gameplay even tho story is nothing too amazing and some missions are repetitve.
Great game buy it with full price.
You wont regret it.

"Day 21 of the Confinement. Toilet paper is, again, low. Coronavirus still freely roams the streets. There is no hope for humanity as we slowly wither and wait for the inevitable. But today, oh dear Diary, today is different. Today I found out Sunset Overdrive has a PC port."
So yeah this is pretty fucked up. I remember some time ago lingeringly watching videos of this game one night after diverting from a Suda51 wikipedia binge and watching the trailers and thinking "man, that's another game I'd buy an Xbox one for". I guess they either released it shortly afterwards without any fanfare at all or maybe me failing spectacularly at my google-fu, but yeah, it turns out this game is on PC, and it is *glorious*. This game is the college years game that wasn't released yet when I was in college, an ode to the early 00s in a free roaming action brawler, the game so many companies wish had released, it's Dead Rising and Crackdown and Infamous all passed through Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, and it was 10 bucks on the Microsoft sale today when I took a look. The first thing that came to my head when I saw it was "and I could have been playing THIS for two years at this point?"
Maybe I'm incredibly biased towards a fast game with a combo system, ludicrous weapons and arcade style missions while punk music blares over the action, but if you were an incredibly cynical board of directors and a heavily crafting based singleplayer survival procedurally generated FPS wasn't technically feasible, this would be the second thing you'd make if you wanted my money. I won't fault anybody who is not piqued by the demanding missions requiring retry after retry or the meta-jokes that will make your eyes roll so hard you'll have a hard time stopping them from spinning, but this game encapsulates fast arcade fun and carefree mayhem to such a point that's hard to describe how joyful and vibrant the final product is. And I know how fake and sellout sounds that a hip and cool and punk game was developed by a big studio backed by suits at Microsoft with incredibly cringeworthy teaser videos -which are included in the game as collectibles- prior to release, but as someone sporting a mohawk and listening to Rancid while skateboarding in 05 will tell you, being hip and cool and nonconformist has always meant scoffing at the "normies" while throwing the same if not more money at the brands that corralled your little subculture.
Right. Where was I? Oh yeah, how the game plays.
The gameplay is fluid and and fast, consisting of first traversing the vast city of Sunset while taking on challenges and mowing down enemies, while following a series of main and side quests complete with cutscenes that can sometimes be cringeworthy but are harmless fun most of the time. Most of the missions consist on fetching stuff, destroying stuff and destroying stuff then collecting what they drop. Nevertheless it stays consistently entertaining and mindlessly fun. Missions will usually reward clothing items of which there's a vast array of, and currency obtained in your outings will be used to upgrade your arsenal or moves, plus you'll gain badges for the abilities that you use the most (grind badges for grinding, melee badges for doing melee) which will allow you to buy perks and boost your personal gameplay. I think it's a perfectly serviceable system that only adds to making the game increasingly fun to play and leveling up your player in an organic and unobtrusive way. The only problem I would pose is game balance, since some powerups will turn the game trivially easy, and there is a damage triangle that maybe works a little too well, so the difficulty will sometimes feel lopsided and unbalanced, forcing the player to consciously choose between upgrades that make the game easy, but not *too* easy.
Graphics are good, they are pretty cartoonish and perhaps because of that they hold exceedingly well, textures are really good for an open world free roam game, characters are Free Radical levels of charmingly expressive, and with the exception of green flashing on cutscenes (turn off Depth of Field, that'll get rid of it) I have absolutely no complaints. The music sometimes will stop and start at weird times, which is a bit disconcerting, but other than that the OST is delicious punk rock goodness that feels at home with the fun and reckless gameplay.
Look, it's not a perfect game. It's repetitive, and getting Gold in most of the challenges will have you pull out your hair in frustration. I can't say this is a great game, even. But for what it is, it manages to hit what it aims for big time, and to me that's what makes it special. It is trash food. But it is trash food that I *love*. 8.5/10.

Sunset Overdrive is genuinely one of the most fun games I've played to date. No pretentious cinematic BS or gameplay-obtrusive design to be found here. It's a third person, open world action game where the popular soda company Fizzco has released their latest fizzy drink that turns out to be toxic turning the residents of Sunset City into mutated creatures that crave more of that bright orange addiction. And you, the Player, has to put an end to it with the help of the other friendly cast of the game.
Pros:
+ Good, vibrant comic inspired artstyle.
+ Hilarious writing and characters.
+ Limited but decent character customization options.
+ Gameplay is the star of the show and it's amazing: fast paced parkour is what you'll use to navigate around the large open city and evade hordes of monsters. Chaining between different movesets (eg. wallrun, glide, rail grind etc) is instantaneous and feels gratifying to pull off - in addition to the Style meter that grants damage bonuses the better you play and more you kill. One of the finest traversal systems yet.
+ A little over a dozen unique weapons to play around with, and most of them are fantastic to use - from the standard shotgun and revolver to weirder stuff like teddy bear grenade launcher and garden gnome acid sprinkler.
+ Pretty good punk rock inspired soundtrack
+ Cool enemy design with decent variety too.
+ Lots of side quests to engage in (they're honestly more reasons to swing around and kill more monsters - and I'm not complaining since the gameplay loop is so solid) and also collectibles to find around the map which can be turned in for upgrades.
Mixed:
+/- As good as the soundtrack is, it can get tedious hearing the same looping tracks over and over again.
+/- Not many graphics options to tinker around with.
+/- DLC content is included but it's not too different from the base game - just a couple new areas, enemy types and bosses. Not bad but not really memorable either I'd say.
Cons:
- Bugs, though occasional eg. Falling through the floor, and even a peculiar green flickering largely noticeable during cutscenes but that's apparently fixed by turning of depth of field in the options menu)
- Character's default running speed is so slow, that you'll be quicky overwhelmed by enemies if you stop grinding/parkour for even a moment.
- Not much interactivity with the world or NPCs and as such can get a bit stale during continuous play sessions.
- Bosses are a pushover.
Verdict: 8/10. Buy it, one of the most underrated games this gen.

An underrated slightly dirty gem. Sunset Overdrive is like if Saint's Row, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater and Ratchet and Clank all had a threesome. You play as your own character in a heavily stylized and colorful city designed entirely around the game's core mechanics, which is great. You climb, bounce, grind, wall-run and pole vault all over the map while pounding and shooting enemies with a variety of fun weapons.
This game immediately throws you into the action and teaches you real quick that playing on the ground is a death sentence. It does a pretty good job of teaching you how to navigate Sunset City during the tutorial. The story and characters do not take themselves very seriously as the game consistently busts the fourth wall. So if that's not your thing, this won't be your game at all.
There are a ton of collectibles throughout Sunset City that you need to obtain in order to unlock amps in this game, which are a variety of power-ups for your weapons or character, these are all optional and they're scattered heavily throughout the city. There are exactly enough collectibles for every amp in the game, in fact for whatever reason you're left over with 15 shoes when you've obtained everything.
Which brings me to my next point, the dirt on this gem. First off, Sunset Overdrive started as an xbox exclusive. This was its first mistake, so not as many people grabbed it. Second, too many other releases overshadowed this game, throwing it under the bus. Finally, when it DID finally come to PC, they did not include the multiplayer Chaos Squad mode, which is a huge bummer, because I think that's probably how they wanted you to farm overcharge cans in order to purchase all weapons and amp upgrades, rather than doing the same robot traversal challenge over and over for 6000 cans.
All in all, Sunset Overdrive is a really, really fun singleplayer experience. It delivers on everything it promised in its trailer. I recommend it to anyone who enjoys a tony hawk like game, with ratchet and clank like weaponry. Do not grab the PC version if you're looking for multiplayer.

Apart from the fact that I've been waiting 5 years to play this game and that its probably one of my favourite games of all time. Let me be impartial and tell you why this game is so good and why this is one of the most underrated games.
Technically: (as its a port from Xbox)
• The game is bug free
• Saw some people on YT complaining about mouse acceleration, well its not present anymore
• Keyboard+Mouse controls are perfect
• Frame-rate can be set to unlimited
• Does lack on graphical options to change in settings
About the game:
• The writing is f'ing hilarious (seriously.. so good)
• Graphically the art style still holds up
• Traversal around the map is S O satisfying and smooth (Pretty sure Insomniac does this best, the latest spiderman game for the PS4 also proves this)
• The story is so-and-so but you'll be having so much fun you won't even notice (I didn't xD )
• Non stop over the top action for 10 hrs
PS: Would LOVE a sequel to this game! One can only hope (:

The over-the-top open-world hijinks of Saints Row. The colourful worlds and creative weapons of Ratchet and Clank. The traversal and environmental mastery of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. The comic-book inspired garage-punk aesthetics of Edgar Wright's Scott Pilgrim vs The World. Sunset Overdrive takes these ingredients and combines them into a highly unstable fruit-salad of intoxicating open-world chaos.