Nostalgia is one hell of a drug.
It's a bit strange to say that you can be "nostalgic" over a video game that released in the PS4/XB1 generation, but here we are. I remember years ago when I initially bought this game. After being burned with Watch_Dogs on the launch, dealing with the absurd technical issues with that game, I was hopeful that the only other game I pre-ordered that year would live up to my expectations. Sunset Overdrive was obviously that game, one I was incredibly excited for with its flashy trailers and gameplay mechanics that looked to be a huge breath of fresh air when compared to the typical brown/grey cover-based shooter games that were overflowing the video game market at the time. Anyway, upon playing through the game, I absolutely fell in love with Sunset Overdrive; praised it for its fun mechanics, great humor, and wonderful sense of color in an era populated with dime-a-dozen Gears of War ripoffs.
Upon looking at Sunset Overdrive all these years later, I do not feel as warmly as I initially did. While I still enjoyed my time with Sunset Overdrive, I helm quite a few issues with it I once didn't. I would still highly recommend this game (especially considering it's on Game Pass and has additional availability on PC outside of the general Xbox ecosystem), but that recommendation comes with a few caveats.
The largest issue with Sunset Overdrive is its dated humor. It's crazy to think about how far we've advanced in terms of comedy writing over the span of seven years, but even for the time, Sunset Overdrive had quite a few issues with its humor. The typically dated meme references - as well as an overreliance on reference "humor" over crafting its own original jokes - was a serious issue (see Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon for more information). The real shame is that around 90% of the jokes in this game stem from this formula, which largely does not work. The humor additionally stretches into territories I like to call "The Deadpool Paradox" (patent pending copyright 2021 do not steal).
The Deadpool Paradox is an issue I helm with media that consistently contradicts itself, always within a self-referential manner. Deadpool is the prime example of this, due to the film Deadpool 2, as well as the 2015 video game. In both pieces of Deadpool media, constant remarks are given about "lazy writing," "bad level design," and so forth, consistently nagging at negative points of the experience, yet writing it off because "well, we acknowledged it, therefore it isn't an issue!" Sadly, even if you're going to poke at a cliche or something in your game and think you're incredibly smark by doing so, the issue still persists within your experience. Sunset Overdrive does this several times within its story, attempting to poke fun at conventional gaming cliches and mission structures, yet still helms those exact same issues. There is nothing wrong with commentary in a video game; pointing out issues within a given artform within your own art can be quite fantastic (why I love critique so much, honestly), but you can't do that while also giving into the issues you're attempting to criticize; it delegitimizes your art.
The last major mention of humor I'll get over before we move on to other more interesting topics surrounding this game is the brief - yet still, eyebrow-raising - body shaming/ableist humor found within a few missions. One particular character is brought into the story around half-way in, rescued by the player after a grueling set of chore missions. Once the player finds this person, he doesn't have any limbs. There's nothing wrong with having a person with disabilities in your game, in fact, it should be championed, yet the player character treats this person in such a negative manner, grossed out by their appearance, and is even forced into an extraordinarily uncomfortable escort mission where the player has to carry this person over their shoulder (with their head facing the sun, by the way), back to their base camp. Jokes surrounding this character continue throughout the rest of the experience whenever he's present, yet they're nowhere nearly as outwardly problematic as they are upon his initial introduction.
Sunset Overdrive's humor ties greatly into its story, which has a decent set of issues. Outside of standard open-world mission designs these kinds of games helm, Sunset Overdrive additionally tells an extraordinarily lackluster story that's far too reliant on its spotty humor than actual character development and straight-forward narrative devices. I could see these ideas working on paper, but they just don't translate into the game very well, making the movement mechanics and the combat the only real interesting things to get invested in. On top of the narrative, there are also a few issues concerning vocal performances. For the most part, the voice acting is rather good, yet there are several points where certain characters (especially the male player character) can get far too grating than what should be accepted.
I guess I'll throw this in here since I'm already on a roll complaining about the story, but there's a certain point of the game towards the end that goes a little too far with its punk rock worship (funny considering this game was published and funded by Microsoft, one of the largest and most evil corporations to exist but I digress) with a cameo that is all about fetishizing this person. It's a tad annoying when games break the fourth wall like this (especially one that's breaking the fourth wall all the damn time otherwise), yet the appearance of this character is thankfully brief and we just move on from that rather fast.
Well, now that I've complained about the humor and narrative of Sunset Overdrive for an ungodly amount of time, I should remark that the actual game, itself is great. I take serious issue with the monotonous structure of its missions (point A to point B escort/fetch quests and so forth), yet the game redeems itself from that formula by introducing unique and immensely fun traversal mechanics. I feel that a lot of the work done within Sunset Overdrive really helped inspire Insomniac Games for their eventual work on the near-masterpiece of a Spider-Man game on the PlayStation 4. For a game that introduces a lot of these mechanics, Sunset Overdrive does the best it can, and has honestly aged quite well despite the initial steep learning curve to master its mechanics.
The attention to detail when it comes to traversal mechanics sadly doesn't translate into its open world. While Sunset Overdrive presents a rather fun sandbox for the player to skate, bounce, and glide through, it doesn't present one that has any actual life to it. I know that it was impossible to implement unique NPC characters into the world due to narrative reasons (and possible power-related issues with the Xbox One but that's just speculation on my part), yet it all blends into a world that feels really empty. Without buildings that you can't go inside and a large cast of interesting characters besides the singular faction leader and a minor bad guy every once in a blue moon, the game feels like it's largely devoid of a personality.
Personality is felt, though within the weapon roster of Sunset Overdrive, which really hones in on Insomniac's past of wacky shooter experiences like Ratchet and Clank. The weapon roster is certainly fun, but nothing too special, with some duplicate guns in terms of feel and ability, as well as their steep price points with the in-game currency. For the most part, the weapons the player is given towards the start of the game are about all you need to finish it, with some occasional purchases on something here and there solely for the sake of keeping things interesting. It should be noted, though, that through the teddybear dynamite launchers, acid sprinklers, and vinyl record launchers, most of the wacky guns in Sunset Overdrive pale in comparison when it comes to sheer usefulness as the traditional revolver and the AK you'll get later in the game, either by purchasing one or getting a slightly worse one through a story mission. It's a bit of a shame that the wacky weapons don't feel nearly as useful as more traditional ones, which can inadvertently pull back on the campy tone the whole experience is going for.
There are some additional notes I could leave about Sunset Overdrive; things like the largely forgettable music and extraordinarily boring collectibles, but I feel like I've stated my piece by now.
If you're looking for a pretty good time-killer for the weekend, especially if you own Xbox Game Pass, Sunset Overdrive is a title you might have some fun with. If this doesn't look like it would be your cup of tea, then yeah, I'd steer very clear of this one.
It's a bit strange to say that you can be "nostalgic" over a video game that released in the PS4/XB1 generation, but here we are. I remember years ago when I initially bought this game. After being burned with Watch_Dogs on the launch, dealing with the absurd technical issues with that game, I was hopeful that the only other game I pre-ordered that year would live up to my expectations. Sunset Overdrive was obviously that game, one I was incredibly excited for with its flashy trailers and gameplay mechanics that looked to be a huge breath of fresh air when compared to the typical brown/grey cover-based shooter games that were overflowing the video game market at the time. Anyway, upon playing through the game, I absolutely fell in love with Sunset Overdrive; praised it for its fun mechanics, great humor, and wonderful sense of color in an era populated with dime-a-dozen Gears of War ripoffs.
Upon looking at Sunset Overdrive all these years later, I do not feel as warmly as I initially did. While I still enjoyed my time with Sunset Overdrive, I helm quite a few issues with it I once didn't. I would still highly recommend this game (especially considering it's on Game Pass and has additional availability on PC outside of the general Xbox ecosystem), but that recommendation comes with a few caveats.
The largest issue with Sunset Overdrive is its dated humor. It's crazy to think about how far we've advanced in terms of comedy writing over the span of seven years, but even for the time, Sunset Overdrive had quite a few issues with its humor. The typically dated meme references - as well as an overreliance on reference "humor" over crafting its own original jokes - was a serious issue (see Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon for more information). The real shame is that around 90% of the jokes in this game stem from this formula, which largely does not work. The humor additionally stretches into territories I like to call "The Deadpool Paradox" (patent pending copyright 2021 do not steal).
The Deadpool Paradox is an issue I helm with media that consistently contradicts itself, always within a self-referential manner. Deadpool is the prime example of this, due to the film Deadpool 2, as well as the 2015 video game. In both pieces of Deadpool media, constant remarks are given about "lazy writing," "bad level design," and so forth, consistently nagging at negative points of the experience, yet writing it off because "well, we acknowledged it, therefore it isn't an issue!" Sadly, even if you're going to poke at a cliche or something in your game and think you're incredibly smark by doing so, the issue still persists within your experience. Sunset Overdrive does this several times within its story, attempting to poke fun at conventional gaming cliches and mission structures, yet still helms those exact same issues. There is nothing wrong with commentary in a video game; pointing out issues within a given artform within your own art can be quite fantastic (why I love critique so much, honestly), but you can't do that while also giving into the issues you're attempting to criticize; it delegitimizes your art.
The last major mention of humor I'll get over before we move on to other more interesting topics surrounding this game is the brief - yet still, eyebrow-raising - body shaming/ableist humor found within a few missions. One particular character is brought into the story around half-way in, rescued by the player after a grueling set of chore missions. Once the player finds this person, he doesn't have any limbs. There's nothing wrong with having a person with disabilities in your game, in fact, it should be championed, yet the player character treats this person in such a negative manner, grossed out by their appearance, and is even forced into an extraordinarily uncomfortable escort mission where the player has to carry this person over their shoulder (with their head facing the sun, by the way), back to their base camp. Jokes surrounding this character continue throughout the rest of the experience whenever he's present, yet they're nowhere nearly as outwardly problematic as they are upon his initial introduction.
Sunset Overdrive's humor ties greatly into its story, which has a decent set of issues. Outside of standard open-world mission designs these kinds of games helm, Sunset Overdrive additionally tells an extraordinarily lackluster story that's far too reliant on its spotty humor than actual character development and straight-forward narrative devices. I could see these ideas working on paper, but they just don't translate into the game very well, making the movement mechanics and the combat the only real interesting things to get invested in. On top of the narrative, there are also a few issues concerning vocal performances. For the most part, the voice acting is rather good, yet there are several points where certain characters (especially the male player character) can get far too grating than what should be accepted.
I guess I'll throw this in here since I'm already on a roll complaining about the story, but there's a certain point of the game towards the end that goes a little too far with its punk rock worship (funny considering this game was published and funded by Microsoft, one of the largest and most evil corporations to exist but I digress) with a cameo that is all about fetishizing this person. It's a tad annoying when games break the fourth wall like this (especially one that's breaking the fourth wall all the damn time otherwise), yet the appearance of this character is thankfully brief and we just move on from that rather fast.
Well, now that I've complained about the humor and narrative of Sunset Overdrive for an ungodly amount of time, I should remark that the actual game, itself is great. I take serious issue with the monotonous structure of its missions (point A to point B escort/fetch quests and so forth), yet the game redeems itself from that formula by introducing unique and immensely fun traversal mechanics. I feel that a lot of the work done within Sunset Overdrive really helped inspire Insomniac Games for their eventual work on the near-masterpiece of a Spider-Man game on the PlayStation 4. For a game that introduces a lot of these mechanics, Sunset Overdrive does the best it can, and has honestly aged quite well despite the initial steep learning curve to master its mechanics.
The attention to detail when it comes to traversal mechanics sadly doesn't translate into its open world. While Sunset Overdrive presents a rather fun sandbox for the player to skate, bounce, and glide through, it doesn't present one that has any actual life to it. I know that it was impossible to implement unique NPC characters into the world due to narrative reasons (and possible power-related issues with the Xbox One but that's just speculation on my part), yet it all blends into a world that feels really empty. Without buildings that you can't go inside and a large cast of interesting characters besides the singular faction leader and a minor bad guy every once in a blue moon, the game feels like it's largely devoid of a personality.
Personality is felt, though within the weapon roster of Sunset Overdrive, which really hones in on Insomniac's past of wacky shooter experiences like Ratchet and Clank. The weapon roster is certainly fun, but nothing too special, with some duplicate guns in terms of feel and ability, as well as their steep price points with the in-game currency. For the most part, the weapons the player is given towards the start of the game are about all you need to finish it, with some occasional purchases on something here and there solely for the sake of keeping things interesting. It should be noted, though, that through the teddybear dynamite launchers, acid sprinklers, and vinyl record launchers, most of the wacky guns in Sunset Overdrive pale in comparison when it comes to sheer usefulness as the traditional revolver and the AK you'll get later in the game, either by purchasing one or getting a slightly worse one through a story mission. It's a bit of a shame that the wacky weapons don't feel nearly as useful as more traditional ones, which can inadvertently pull back on the campy tone the whole experience is going for.
There are some additional notes I could leave about Sunset Overdrive; things like the largely forgettable music and extraordinarily boring collectibles, but I feel like I've stated my piece by now.
If you're looking for a pretty good time-killer for the weekend, especially if you own Xbox Game Pass, Sunset Overdrive is a title you might have some fun with. If this doesn't look like it would be your cup of tea, then yeah, I'd steer very clear of this one.