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Sunset Overdrive

28 October 2014
Sunset Overdrive - cover art
Glitchwave rating
3.28 / 5.0
0.5
5.0
 
 
359 Ratings / 4 Reviews
#1,927 All-time
#58 for 2014
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Releases 7
Sunset Overdrive Day One Edition
Blu-ray
CA 8 85370 84885 4
Sunset Overdrive Day One Edition
Blu-ray
XNA 8 85370 84884 7
Show all 7 releases
Sunset Overdrive Day One Edition
Blu-ray
AU 8 85370 85300 1
Sunset Overdrive Day One Edition
Blu-ray
GB 8 85370 85386 5
Blu-ray
FR 8 85370 86515 8
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Title
Fun movement and action they rewards getting better at it. Bland open world with the normal collecting shit and doing collecting this side quests. Lots of fun characters, the cut scenes are all pretty fun. I like the character creator and getting new stuff.

The final stage was a bit too easy- it doesn’t really reward you for getting better at the movement. I don’t need it to be psychonauts level hard, but something challenging would have been nice.
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Panza 2023-12-24T07:29:43Z
2023-12-24T07:29:43Z
3.0
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jumping around
Sunset Overdrive is a very pleasant surprise to find so many years later, and while its perfectly understandable why it flopped in terms of game sales, its a genuinely fun experience that deserves to be given a shot. This isnt without a caveat though, as i found it has some clear flaws that you must be weary of.

Sunset Overdrive is essencially a superhero game with a very cartoony style. It tells a tale in which a soda company poisoned their customers and turned just about everyone into zombies. The few surviving humans end up all being crazy wacky personalities. The game has a very wall breaking sort of humor, which will definitly annoy a lot of people, but i find it refreshing in the sense that it never takes itself seriously. Story is very simple and set dressing for the actual missions, but it got some chuckles out of me in some cutscenes, which already elevates it way beyond the average videogame story.

The game is an open world title, with NPC and spots being interactable for story and opcional missions, as well as challenges. The open world also offers a lot of collectibles that could be traded for upgrades, but really its really offputting and thankfully ignorable. To be honest this game didnt need to be open world at all, and thats the worst part about it. Just stick to the missions.
The missions are mostly very straight forward, being kill this and that, go get this and that, perform this platforming sequence, etc... But they disguised it well enough to make the missions feel varied.
The game offers stellar transversal mechanics, and its by far the most polished and fun part of the game. Between running walls, jumping, air dashing, grinding rails, swinging lamps, there are a lot of ways you can use the world to your advantage and the game rewarding combining these in the combat sections. Weapons are also inventive and cool for the most part, even if some are clearly better than others. The enemies are not very diverse, but they are enjoyable to blast off, even if their auto targetting gets a bit annoying. Its a design decisions to keep you from staying still, but its none the less annoying.

Overal the game took me about 10 hours to beat, but the lack of raw gameplay meant it felt longer. Still need to tackle the DLC content, eventually. But despite its faults, the biggest of which is being an open world game, its a game that shouldnt be overlooked, particularly to those that enjoy this style of cartoonish humour.
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Threntall 2021-06-05T19:27:31Z
2021-06-05T19:27:31Z
3.5
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I didn't pay much attention to Sunset Overdrive when it initially released in 2014. Part of this is to prevent me from buying consoles just to play one game, and part of it was the fact that all the promo material managed to show off the tamest possible screenshots of a game about wacky shit.

Naturally, the game had completely left my brain by the time it was released on PC in 2018. I vaguely remember Kotaku's non-article about its PC release but managed to forget about that as well. By the time I decided to pick it up during the 2019 Steam Summer Sale, I was well aware of the fact that I had repeatedly been reminded about this game, only to forget moments later each time -- I think this is what led to the assumption that the game wouldn't actually be any good.

I was pleasantly surprised. The game feels fresh but familiar, like Saints Row developed a fascination with extreme sports and replaced all the dick jokes with characters yanking parts of the HUD off the screen. Obviously, doing the "wacky shooter" thing isn't new -- I just mentioned Saints Row -- but the introduction of Sunset Overdrive's totally-not-skateboarding mechanic keeps the game engaging through some patches where the script gets pretty rough.

That's not to say the game isn't funny. The game falls back a lot on breaking the fourth wall or pointing out its own plot contrivances, but does it just sparsely and cleverly enough that you'll find yourself chuckling at a few of them. That being said, there are also moments where the game's attempts to be funny fall way short of the mark. While I wouldn't really bat an eye at making fun of activities typically considered nerdy, the game starts to feel like it's routinely punching down when those "cosplaying nerds" are its best follow-up to "weeaboo boy scouts", "lol an amputee!" and "dorky Asian kid can't get laid".

When you're doing your best to ignore the story -- something the game itself is already doing -- that's when the game shines the brightest. The navigation is the clear highlight, with moves that admittedly felt a bit clunky at first ultimately feeling much more satisfying once you start to master them. And once you hit that level of mastery where you feel like you've got the movement down, it'll throw a new trick at you to further limit those already rare circumstances where you have to bring the faux-skating to a halt. It does this 3 or 4 times and every time it does a good job of keeping things interesting, but it's still kneecapped by the rest of the game begging for your attention.

I suppose it's also important to mention that Sunset Overdrive's goal is to get you shooting while you're skating. While this is pretty badass -- I appreciate the attempt at making this gameplay idea the core of a new IP -- it's arguably the worst part of the game. The game has a plethora of unique guns, none of which feel particularly satisfying to use. This is perhaps related to the fact that you're meant to be skating while doing all this -- this either requires you to be an aimgod and play with mouse and keyboard, or you play with game with auto-targeting enabled which puts the game on rails and has it play itself. There's no in-between, and perhaps the worst part is that even if you're willing to allow the aimbot to play the game for you, you still have to bring the skating to a near-halt if you want to know what's going on around you. The most effective gameplay solution seems to always be some variant of weakly grinding on some powerlines in a large circle, using your "strongest" guns on the handful of enemies that actually stand a chance of knocking you off your perch.

To its credit, the game does encourage you to avoid this strategy with the use of "amps," earned through a meter filled by performing tricks, jumps, grinds, etc. Unless I've completely missed an entire gameplay mechanic related to this, though, the amps feel beyond useless. They're intended to provide a little extra power to your character in combat accompanied by flashy effects (explosions when bouncing off objects, for example) but they end up being little novelty fireworks that -- like your guns -- also do no damage.

I know writing all this makes the game sound much worse than the score I've paired it with, and I wish the emotion I most associated with Sunset Overdrive wasn't frustration over wasted potential (despite it still being a good game!). The points I've given it are there largely due to the tremendous potential the game has -- the skating is the best part of the game and is still pretty engaging when the rest of the game gets out of its way. Even five years after its initial release it feels like a fresh game. With a few slight tweaks, this could be a real standout game -- higher damage on the guns so combat requires less time away from skating, fewer fetch quests (being self-aware doesn't make it less boring), and bringing that co-op to the PC version would each do wonders for this game's quality and popularity.

Sunset Overdrive certainly has a charm to it, combining satisfying navigation with shooter combat in a way that works for players of any skill level, but it has a way of tripping over its own feet. It's a shame that the game may never see a sequel. but it's still impressive that this new IP ended up being such a solid game -- much better than it has any right to be.
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jobosno 2019-08-19T12:38:16Z
2019-08-19T12:38:16Z
7.0 /10
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Has its charms, with a great sense of alacrity and flow weighed up against the pure chaos, but the actual mission design tends to leave a lot to be desired, without enough of the craft to compare to its closest counterpart, Saints Row 2. Worth a play as it's so cheap.
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Lowlander2 2017-08-13T12:49:09Z
2017-08-13T12:49:09Z
3.5
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Catalog

ZachZion Sunset Overdrive 2024-03-25T11:46:13Z
2024-03-25T11:46:13Z
4.0
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
10h 18h 34H
FetteredPassKare Sunset Overdrive 2024-03-19T02:30:28Z
2024-03-19T02:30:28Z
4.5
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
vc15 Sunset Overdrive 2024-03-17T23:12:34Z
2024-03-17T23:12:34Z
4.0
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
eliottstaten Sunset Overdrive 2024-03-14T07:19:58Z
2024-03-14T07:19:58Z
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
Finnegan1441 Sunset Overdrive 2024-03-13T08:56:00Z
2024-03-13T08:56:00Z
2.5
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
Noahhuds1 Sunset Overdrive 2024-03-04T19:01:09Z
2024-03-04T19:01:09Z
3.5
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
Stotzy42 Sunset Overdrive 2024-02-28T00:44:39Z
2024-02-28T00:44:39Z
4.0
1
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
TotalTrash1997 Sunset Overdrive 2024-02-26T13:10:54Z
2024-02-26T13:10:54Z
2.5
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
AppleKosyak Sunset Overdrive 2024-02-25T18:16:59Z
2024-02-25T18:16:59Z
3.5
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
Monni_Nicola Sunset Overdrive 2024-02-19T15:52:02Z
2024-02-19T15:52:02Z
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
Jaggeraz9599 Sunset Overdrive 2024-02-13T00:50:26Z
2024-02-13T00:50:26Z
2.5
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
CaptainPlasma Sunset Overdrive 2024-02-09T16:17:42Z
Windows
2024-02-09T16:17:42Z
In collection Want to buy Used to own  
Content rating
ESRB: M
Player modes
1-8 players
Media
1x Blu-ray
Multiplayer modes
Cooperative
Multiplayer options
Online

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  • wayfaring 2020-11-08 20:46:06.135273+00
    never played it but I gotta admit "sunset overdrive" is one of the coolest game titles ever
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  • DaymanNightman 2021-06-28 23:54:52.200524+00
    Anyone else think this is a pretty overrated game? Not bad whatsoever but I think too much praise is thrown on a game so generic with its open world design. It's aesthetic is top notch but in terms of the world and what you do in it what separates this from the usual open world-collectathon formula? I've also seen praise thrown at how fast the movement is but it felt sluggish to me
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    • EyeSocketCrunch 2021-06-29 23:42:50.021606+00
      I feel like the movement is sorta hit or miss, I think this game is really great when it's frantic, but I can see how you would feel it is sluggish. I did expect to see this at like a 2.5 when I got on here because it is a fun game but it's not really GREAT.
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  • ... 2021-07-02 14:22:47.052792+00
    I quit when I was nearing the end (I'm pretty sure, anyway). The fast movement and combat is fun but got tiring near half way through the campaign. I basically settled on a few weapons that would decimate any enemies I had issues with and other weapons that unlocked just seemed gimmicky and less effective, which just made everything feel even more redundant.

    It's decent but really wish it was less same-y
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  • Snappington1 2021-08-16 15:18:48.90687+00
    im surprised at how high this rating is, i figured glitchwave would have this at like 2.7 or something
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  • Whoa 2022-01-03 08:35:30.438898+00
    I constantly misremember this as a 360 title.
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  • ... 2022-06-25 14:27:30.18033+00
    you know it's a X1/PS4 generation release because the entire selling point is that there's a shit ton of enemies
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  • Drawdler 2023-10-26 11:46:37.935656+00
    The art style is kinda trashy yet i still vibe somehow
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  • custom_concerns 2023-12-06 03:56:42.775596+00
    great vibe, great gameplay, far too lengthy and wide
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