I couldn't get the taste NOS and orange Monster Energy out of my mouth the entire time I played this, and I haven't had an energy drink in 10 years!

Definitely a case of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. While the individual gameplay mechanics, systems, traversal, and combat all leave something to be desired and can feel unwieldy quite often, if you can buy into the specific charm and vibe it's going for, you'll love it.

I mean, a GameFAQs reference AND an appearance by King Motherfucking Buzzo? Sold.

Wow, it’s the best game of the 8th generation and a masterpiece. Insomniac’s finest work to date, almost indistinguishable from a true masterpiece. Can all aspects of game design and gameplay truly be perfect? Yes, it seems they can.

The game’s main theme is pure fun, and it brilliantly captures that essence from start to finish. In 2027, during a promotional event for the drink ‘Overcharge Delirium XT’ in Sunset City, things take a nightmarish turn. The beverage, released without proper testing by its manufacturer, Fizzco, promises immense energy but instead mutates people into hideous mutants. As a former Fizzco employee, our created character decides to stay in the city and unravel the mystery.

The game’s graphic design is exceptional and unique, with the open-world city tailored to the game’s mechanics. The art design is magnificent.

The gameplay mechanics are entirely geared toward speed and enjoyment. I’ve never experienced a game that feels this good to play. From movement mechanics to the thrill of combat, everything is designed to entertain the player. The characters, dialogues, and overall execution surpass even the 8th generation’s standards.

The game’s underrated status, coupled with the unnecessary and foolish Xbox One hatred (likely fueled by Microsoft’s involvement), is unfortunate. After playing ‘Sunset Overdrive,’ which has a similar Insomniac touch, it’s clear that the studio hasn’t quite matched its own quality in subsequent games. The transfer of the game’s rights to Sony is also a sad development.

I wish Rockstar would study the mission design that ties the story together. Insomniac’s approach to mission design in the ‘Spider-Man’ games leaves much to be desired.

For those who haven’t played it yet, give this game a chance. It’s practically free, especially with the included DLCs, and the entertainment value is phenomenal. The game’s soundtracks alone are a masterpiece.

I've unexpectedly returned to this game for a 2nd playthrough after a number of years. It's excellent and deserves more than it got. I hope it has a long shelf life in steam.

Zipping across the city with Ratchet and Clank guns is a joy, if a simple one. There's lots of things to jump on or press X to grind or swing off, but this could've really sang with some kind of trick system, or some other extra way to excel with skilled play. Even so, this is still the best kind of open world game, the ones where you actually wanna move through the world and not use the fast travel.

Maybe I just have bad taste, but after replaying this game last week I'm genuinely shocked that there's a lot of people who either think this game is mid or terrible.

I'll agree that the humor isn't for everyone, but looking past that, it's just so much fun simply moving around and doing parkour in this game. To me, I feel like an open world game has succeeded if you don't even want to use fast travel. Even if I was zig zagging between objectives, I still wanted to find new ways to reach the landmarks and potentially discover collectibles along the way. (There are quite a few of them)

The weapon variety is also nothing to sneeze at. The same kind of ridiculousness that you'd find in a ratchet and clank game can be found here- everything from explosive teddy bears to an RC that deploys mini helicopters of death. Most of the ones I encountered really were a blast to use.

I did find some of the missions in the Fargathian/LARPer arc to be kind of a slog, and I do think that the Amp system doesn't add nearly as much to the experience as the devs want you to think. Still, this is well worth playing and it's kind of upsetting that a remaster or sequel is super unlikely.

I still really love Sunset Overdrive. I haven't played it since it came out. But I remember Sunset being a blast to play. While I still think it's a blast to play, it's not quite as perfect as I remember.

If you've played any open world game since 2001, Sunset Overdrive is not going to break any new ground. It's check-list structure is in-line with most open world games. This doesn't have to be a bad thing necessarily, however in a post Breath Of The Wild, Elden Ring world, where we're starting to see open world games finally evolve beyond the check-list objectives structure, It can be a touch dated if still enjoyable.

What really sells Sunset for me is the movement systems and combat. Sunset Overdrive mechanically speaking, is not a complex game. All the movement tech is very easy to pull off, & combat has a very generous auto-aim . Combined however, is where Sunset starts to show off some challenge. If you try to just fight enemies by standing still, you're going to get mauled to pieces in record time. It's all about moving throughout the environment to avoid getting hit, & I find that pretty fun. The weapons are also pretty nifty by and large. Some are kinda clones of each other or have better versions later on, like the Propane Launcher is vastly supperior to the TnTeddy for example. But I feel for the most part Sunset has good weapons and I found myself using most of them throughout the game.

Sunset is also a very good looking game. While technology has come a long way since 2014, & some of the cutscene direction can be rather flat at times. Sunset has great animation, a pleasing to look at art-style, & somewhat impressively, almost all of the cutscenes are in-game. The animations during gameplay string together so seamlessly which does play a huge part into why this game is so fun to play for me.

Another part Sunset falls flat for me is its story & writing, or rather lack there-of. I'm gonna cut to the chase the writing in Sunset is the one thing that hasn't aged well for me by and large. This is because Sunset has what I like to label as "Video game meta humor". Where the game is aware its a game and uses that as an excuse to not have a story & couple it with some pretty lazy 4th wall-breaks. Admittedly there are some 4th wall breaks that got a chuckle out of me, like when you meet Buck National, tell him you have weapons and the game shows your weapon wheel, I thought that was pretty cool. Another moment I liked was when the player thanked a text-box for popping up and explaining how to float across water. But for the most part I find Sunset's humor extremely lazy at best, & outright annoying at worst.

Sunset is a decently meaty game rather you're going for 100% for better & worse. This one is always gonna be a matter of what you value out of a game's length. I think just doing the main story and some side-quests are great, however going for 100% and all achievements can be pretty damn tedious at times. Especially the achievement where you have to get 20 weapons to level 5, that shit just isn't fun no matter the player. I definitely did find myself wanting the game to end near the end of my 100% all achievement run I did for my revisit of this game.

Altogether, I'm happy I revisited Sunset Overdrive. I found the game largely to be as fun as I remembered & some surprises along the way. While I do find the story groan-worthy at points, Sunset is a gameplay game first & foremost, & in the regard Sunset absolutely hits where it counts. I also want to state that before I go you wanna consider playing this on Xbox One. The PC version of this game is pretty damn funky. I don't know if it was just a me issue or a PC port issue but this game ran like shit when I tried playing with a controller, I was pretty much forced into using Mouse & Keyboard if I wanted a stable frame-rate. Even that wasn't guaranteed though because in cases like the glider challenges the game would chug for no reason. My PC is more than capable of running this game and yet I ran into these issues. As far as I'm aware there are no mods for this game that could fix these issues. The options menu is also laughably lackluster for a game originally released in 2014 getting ported to the PC in 2018.

This game is one of the best xbox exclusives that still is stuck on that console. I had so much fun running around the map and the combat was so fun since it rewarded a constantly moving fast pace aggression to its combat so i was just having a blast running around that map shooting zombies. The gunplay was also so fun and you would make your inventory and have a weapon for each situation and it made it fun to switch weapons and since you was moving all the time you would be switching weapons while running around the map. This game is so fun and i remembered playing multiplayer with my friend.

Sunset Overdrive a solid 5/5, simply again they don't make it like this anymore. The amount of fun you can have in this game is insanely good and for a almost 10 hour campaign it's all worth to enjoy it because it is a former exclusive made by insomniac and it did not disappoint me at all on how good their games are like for ex a 4 year later spiderman remastered that also slapped good.

Gameplay
This game is all about the movement, if you enjoyed the movement in spiderman you will love this as well without the spider web, you have plenty of upgrades for guns and even character customization that is pretty neat and this third person game is full of action with saturation and many more for example the sword you get at the end of the game is very fun to play, other than that the missions are good tho they seem too simple you have variety with some tower defense at Floyd and some side missions from the survivors like buck national. I think words can't describe how good the gameplay is and for some it might get repetitive but the weapon upgrades from the amps change that formula fairly quick, simply a charmful game that some might call A GAME WITH SOUL that won't be reproduced again for being so underrated.

Story
You are a former employee from the fizzco who has to fight with the OD, humans mutants that turned from a soda also known as overcharge drinkers, your town sunset city is on a lockdown and you need to find survivors and a way to leave the city behind. You get the help from Walter and Floyd at first but later on you find a kid trapped in a train station that is flooded with ODs, you help him get out of there and he's being thankful for your service and now Sam is at your side, going to his hideout location you will find any kind of spoiled brats that can help you make a 3D printer that can help you get out of the city, first you will need to complete their quests like help a girl from there to rescue her dog going even to check on some rich parents who went on bahamas and after you helped them they made a 3D printer but they need a powerful processor so you had to talk with Floyd on where can you find some good specifications, sometime later you find a tower hold by Buck National and he needs you to film some action in order to give you the CPU. Going back to those kids you have the last piece for a complete flight to get out of the city in pieces, heading to Walter to jump in and get out you, in the meantime you are being chased by a blimp and you need to escape his radar being guided by Sam, after that you see a border at the end of the city and walter sacrifices himself so you can live another day. One sad memorial later you get the information that one guy called Master Bryllcream is the one who can make a boat scheme that can help you get out but while going there you meet Troop Master Norton that informs the sad news of Bryllcream being kidnapped by the scabs, but he can help you get intel on where he is, but he just lied to you and one of his troops help you gather the real intel, 4Kim joins the squad alongside Sam and together you find that Norton planned this kidnap with the scabs so you go to find him on a trash truck with his limbs off, after that heading back to the little tokyo you confront Norton but he has a OD drink that transforms him into a dragon so you need to rip his spine off with a execution pose. After you defeated him Bryllcream will award you with a boat scheme that needs to be turned by Ignatius, you go there and see a lot of larpers in a RPG theme, seems like Ignatius got a fever and you and his party members go and find food resources stole by the scabs, the only larper who isn't really a larper is one girl called Wendy who has a talent for music and she informs you about the real cause of Ignatius and after some roasted birds and some useless medicine that is not on the theme of medieval times you sacrifice your blood for the leeches to make a real cure. After healing Ignatius he requires you to get his crown back from the king scab, all of you decided to invade his land to recover the crown from Ignatius.
After one roller coaster of blowing up fireworks and stealing a crown Ignatius will do the boat scheme and you gather with wendy to escape the sunset city but one thing happens, the fizzco has gone insane and you are being called by Sam that informs you about that and you feelings play in that rule and you turn the boat back to the city by forcing wendy to do so, by doing so you find a hospital with some foreign ladies called the Las Catrinas who helps kids in the hospital, trying to make them join you is not that easy and your quests is to forge a sword so you can gain the trust of Esperanza and after you initially fail you find a kid that suffers from a terrible disease and in act of justice you promised him that you will find a rock band to make a concert for him so you can make him happy and so you gather 4kim to play the drums, king buzzo as the vocalist and wendy to setup this concert. Informing floyd that you will need to defend the concert and so you impressed Esperanza and her clan, they will be at your side and also the kid did not have that disease. After some rock n roll all of you gather to stop fizzco from his malefic attack to destory the city and you make a plan until Sam decodes a way to destory fizzco building and after helping the survivor you had to go up to reach a huge soda bottle that goes right in the building. By all the means you sacrificed your life and the game ends there, but no wait insomniac could not flop this ending to shit and so you rewind and on a time limit you have to shot the tower up with guns and BOOM sunset city is saved from all the junk that was there and everyone can live happily now.