Sunset Overdrive

Best approached as you would any caffeinated energy drink. In small gulps, it offers an exhilarating sugar rush, but too much will leave you with a headache. As such, it's best consumed in moderation. [Christmas 2014, p.104]

Its best elements are subdued by a repetitious structure. [Issue#118, p.52]

A colourful urban action game that will torment you at first but eventually reward you with its loopy freestyle riding. The game has a bit dull and drab content, and our fellow country gamers will probably get annoyed experiencing humour of the American teenagers. However, as a smaller crazy alternative to GTA it works great.

It doesn’t lack for content, then, but those looking for something filling and nutritious may feel short-changed by the game’s adolescence and humdrum tasks. But sometimes you simply need a sugary, cathartic snack. Taken under these circumstances, at least, Sunset Overdrive’s giddy blasting often hits the spot.

Sunset Overdrive is a colorful adventure that offers great and fun combat against a crazy amount of enemies. Unfortunately many of the missions feel like a chore, and both the city and especially the survivors are uninteresting. Despite the flaws Sunset Overdrive is still a good game that entertains while it lasts, but it isn’t a very memorable experience.

Sunset Overdrive is solid if underwhelming romp in parts which admirably sets out to poke fun at itself, along with the genre, and inject some joy into proceedings.

Sunset Overdrive is a cool and very fun game for all arcade and open-world fans, but it's not really the must-have Xbox Owners were waiting for.

Shallow, simplistic, and never quite as funny as it thinks it is, but there’s still more energy and imagination at work here than most other new next gen franchises.

There’s a lot of greatness within Sunset Overdrive, but it’s obfuscated by a lack of difficulty and an aggravating tone. Ultimately, it’s worth dealing with the game’s worst moments to enjoy the many things it does get right. When you’re darting around the world like a ninja in a denim jacket, there’s nothing quite like it. If there is a next time for Sunset City, and hopefully there is, maybe things will come together more smoothly than they have here.

Sunset Overdrive is a fun shooter with a couple of interesting mechanics and a strong style, but the lack of variety is a major issue for the latest game from Insomniac.

What Sunset Overdrive was shooting for was punk. Where it landed was mallternative.

Fast, playful and colorful game that does have style and dynamic action, but also a pretty dull story that soon becomes boring. [Issue#248]

It seems like it was made for an audience of gamers over a decade ago, brimming with try-hard references and cringe-worthy jokes. Penetrate the skin, and you’ve got a serviceable game at the core. But a ten-hour journey to the centre of what makes Sunset Overdrive good feels more like a voyage to the centre of the earth.

Despite these creative flourishes, Sunset Overdrive never quite surpasses the chaotic physics of Just Cause, the coherent style of Blood Dragon or the assured sense of place of GTAV – nor does it manage to draw its story and systems toward a coherent, impactful point. In the end its hero escapes the purgatory of a boring job and successfully wreaks revenge on the judgmental consumers he once served. But the game itself does little to undermine the increasingly over-familiar, open-world establishment, instead quietly celebrating the status quo.

This is not a revolution as far as open-world games go, it's more of a compendium of recognizable elements that have been twisted just enough to make them seem new and different for the uninitiated.