• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Sunset Overdrive Review Thread

E

eshwaaz

Member
Wow, nice! Not the reviews I was expecting, but definitely the reviews I was hoping for. Cannot wait to play this tomorrow!
 
Mugatu

Mugatu

Member
Well I was going to wait for this but I'm going to pre-order it from BBY today. I still have doubts but I do like Insomniac and the positive reviews pushed me over the edge.

Good thing I don't have to move continents anytime soon so I can play games instead of complaining about them on here.
 
B

Beeblebrox

Member
Wait, wait, we're still linking Bio Gamer Girl reviews? :D

Also, is there really GAF shout-out in the game? I hope someone films that and posts link as soon as they get their hands on the game.
 
Revolutionary

Revolutionary

Member
Good for Insomniac. glad they're finally getting out of that rut they've been in for a few years.

I was always in for a rent so I'll see for myself how good this game really is. Something tells me my impressions are going to fall in line with the "tries too hard" reviews, though.
 
S

Solaire of Astora

Death by black JPN
Yeah. I think I'm going to bow out after this one. Don't want to piss in peoples cornflakes.

mocoworm said:
I don't get it. You don't have a NNID, GamerTag or Steam acc in your profile ?
Click to expand...

I will soon. And you're missing the point. I'm glad he's so happy with his purchase. There are clearly a lot of games that he's looking forward to, and if that makes him happy, so be it. But it read like an advertisement and I would expect shit if I made a similar post. Which I wouldn't. But the thing is, as appealing as some Xbox games are, other games appeal to me more, I hope he understands that now.

Oh, and apparently, the rules are different when it comes to exclusive threads...

mocoworm said:
Just sign up to a games rental service like I do. £8 a month and I get unlimited PS3, 360, XONE, PS4 and VITA games sent to me one at a time as soon as I have played them and sent them back.

(I could get Wii, Wii-U etc as well but I don't own those consoles.)
Click to expand...

Yeah... I live in Japan, and as far as I'm aware, there isn't such a service here. Besides, it would still involve going out and buying hardware. How many £'s a month is that?

REMEMBER CITADEL said:
Xbox Fitness, Shape Up, Dance Central, and Fantasia: Music Evolved are waiting for you. /astroturf
Click to expand...

Yeah... None of those things are my kinda thing. When I said fitness, I meant going to the gym and lifting weights and using the variety of machines they offer. Not to mention the 30 minute jog there and back.

And dancing games are a no-no for many reasons, which I won't go into here.

Zyae said:
But you have time enough to come in here and tell people they are shills for being happy about their console purchase and to repeatedly tell people why you dont own a Xbox One in a review thread about a Xbox One exclusive.
Click to expand...

A person. Not people.

And as for the bold part, people keep asking.
 
O

OrangeOak

Member
I hope that it is really similar to Crackdown.Crackdown was one of my favorite games from x360.
They are both colorful,there is big focus on movement and they even have same metacritic score lol so I am hoping for the best :)
 
P

p3tran

Banned
Banjo-Kazooie said:
I've been playing it since Friday and I think it's one of my most enjoyed current gen experiences yet. The traversal is insane, the weapons, amps and overdrive provide some amazing variety and fun combinations, and the world is just full of color and personality.
Click to expand...

WTF WITH ALL THESE ASTROTURFERS IN HERE?
WHERE IS YOUR PSN? HUH?!!

;) gonna be gut!
 
P

-PXG-

Member
My only concern is that dialogue will become obnoxious and that overall the game will try too hard to be funny. I ain't got time for that shit. Game play has always looked great though.
 
R

RexNovis

Banned
It's odd how so many of these reviews have very negative things to say about the humor in the game (mostly echoing my own concerns from all the gameplay we've been shown thus far) and yet still go on to rate the game so highly. I mean the Kotaku Review is downright scathing

Kotaku said:
Get it? Sunset Overdrive implores. Eh? Do you get it yet? Ok, you got that one...but do you get it now? How about now? Eh? EH? See, this time, it's the Player herself who's making the joke. Y'know...health, green boxes, trash, fetch quests? It's funny, right? Because, you know, the character is saying that it's a video game and everything? Look: she's even whining about what you're doing as you're making her do it! See, it's totally breaking the fourth wall!

Only problem is: it was already broken a long, long time ago. Sunset Overdrive first delivered this weak punchline back in June with its E3 trailer that proclaimed at one point, "It's a fucking video game!" If only they'd laid this bizarrely over-eager humor to rest right then and there:

Instead, there I was on the trash barge: more than ten hours into Sunset Overdrive, and actually having a great deal of fun. Until the game felt the need to once again prod me with a reminder that hey, it's a video game, so I should totally be having fun.

That's Sunset Overdrive in a nutshell. At every conceivable turn, it tries to give the player a wink and a nudge—a friendly yet forceful acknowledgement that yes, this is a game, it's not meant to be taken seriously, and we should all appreciate that so we can ease into its zany bombast. But it delivers this same joke so often, and so zealously, that it becomes less of a knowing wink than a hyperactive, twitchy stare.

As this humor becomes ever more grating, it quickly reveals a lie at the heart of the game. Because no matter how Sunset Overdrive tries to dress itself up and chuckle about how lame it is that video games (hey! that's what this is!) demand their players indulge in mundane and often meaningless assignments to go to point B, pick up a box, then return to point A, it can't change the fact that the game is telling you to do just that. All these self-aware zingers are just a thin mask intended to conceal an essential failure of the imagination.
Click to expand...

Kotaku said:
Stylistically, It's A Disaster

I'm tempted to hold up Sunset Overdrive as the latest in a pantheon of aesthetically and tonally braindead games that succeed because their gameplay is so solid and their off-color humor is charming enough that it doesn't totally gross you out: the Saints Rows, the DmC: Devil May Crys, even the South Park: The Stick of Truths of the world. But even that feels generous: Sunset Overdrive is far more tonally inconsistent, and its gameplay is far less intuitive, than any of those other games.

If Sunset Overdrive has taught me one though, however, if that's tonal inconsistency isn't always a bad thing. The game is a mess of contradictions, mostly because it's so tactless in its presentation that it begins hurling shit at you the moment you start playing. It's the kind of game that has the brazen stupidity to present you, in that very first moment, with a shotgun that has two hefty metals balls dangling from the bottom of its barrel. It's called the "flaming compensator," and it ejects goopy ropes of bright orange liquid from the other end.

Get it?
Click to expand...

Kotaku said:
Sunset Overdrive's irritating aesthetic is particularly disappointing because its made by Insomniac Games, a studio that's won heaps of well-deserved praise for creating one of the most wonderfully overwrought comic shooter-platformer hybrids out there with Ratchet & Clank. That series might seem tame in comparison to Insomniac's new game since it always wore its "family-friendly" badge proudly, but what the studio seems like it has failed to appreciate about its earlier work is that not blurting out "fuck" after every other word and making guns that look like truck nutz can actually be a useful exercise in tact and creative restraint. What Ratchet & Clank lacked in profanity or edginess, it more than compensated for with its amazing and always-growing arsenal of weapons that made shooting at bad guys a far more interesting experience than just pointing in the direction of an enemy and pulling the trigger. Now, instead, the compensation we get is the flaming kind.

Sunset Overdrive has plenty of comically oversized killing contraptions you can acquire and modify with upgrades and additions. But these aren't weapons in the grand Ratchet & Clank tradition. Many of the guns that feel truly outlandish, such as one called "The Dude" that shoots giant bowling balls (get it?) or a freeze-ray-type cannon, don't manage to transcend their status as intentionally zany gimmicks. As the game carried on towards its conclusion, I found that I gravitated more and more towards its traditional fare—a revolver, an AK-47, a grenade launcher that shoots explosive teddy bears instead of plain old grenade. The "weirdest" of my regular lineup were a gun that dropped acid-spewing turrets and another that popped out gun-wielding balloons—both to help pick away at enemies. Like the teddy bear grenade launcher, these are little more than joke versions of any shooter's bread-and-butter arsenal. And as the flaming compensator shows, these jokes aren't always very good.

Sunset Overdrive's weapons are a lot of fun to use, don't get me wrong. But viewed in the context of Insomniac's past work they just feel depressingly...normal by comparison. Which, again, feels very odd given how hard this new game tries to convince you that it's out there and edgy. I think this points to the core difference between Insomniac's past work and its new game, however, and the one that leaves the latter coming up very short. Ratchet and Clank was a lighthearted, joyful romp through outer space as a furry little creature and his equally adorable robot companion. It didn't need to try to be weird. It already was weird....

The deep, grating cynicism at the heart Sunset Overdrive makes any similarly protective measure impossible. Ironically, then, the end result is an inventory of weapons whose sheeradequacy once again reveals a lie at the heart of this game: it wants you to think its not afraid to really go there, "there" being a shotgun that looks like a penis. Once you get over the revulsion of playing with a penis-shaped shotgun, though, you realize it's still just a shotgun. A remarkably proficient one, sure. But after playing Sunset Overdrive for more than 20 hours, I'm left with the uneasy realization that its inventory is surprisingly tame, even conservative, in a way Insomniac might not even realize.
Click to expand...

Kotaku said:
After finishing that particular episode, I remember getting up from my couch and going to sit somewhere else in my apartment just because I felt I needed a breather. I'd only booted up my Xbox One maybe 45 minutes beforehand. That's a sign of how exhilarating this game can be, on one level. But I also realized I needed a break because I was hoping that I was done with another of its irritatingly self-aware subplots—this one worse than most because it was about a group of LARP-ers, which provided even more opportunities than usual for the game's cringe-inducing "Hey, it's a video game!" jokes.

After hearing so many in short succession, I often found myself want to shout at the screen: "Ok, ok, I get it: you're a video game and you know it. Now go and actually just be a fucking video game!"

When Sunset Overdrive does this by easing off its zingers and just letting you relax and enjoy yourself, it can actually be a really good game. A great one, even. But it makes you climb over a giant heaping pile of bullshit just to get to that point.
Click to expand...

Source

I mean holy shit! Talk about "narrative dissonance!" Is it just me or is this one of the most legitimately scathing reviews you have ever read?

Yet it still gets a yes because apparently traversal is fun. But damn if it doesn't seem like the most begrudgingly given recommendation I've read in a LONG time. What the hell?
 
A

antitrop

Member
YouTubers made it look boring to play. Glad to see that clearly isn't the case.

Congrats to Insomniac for one of the best reviewed games of the new generation, so far.
 
T

twobear

sputum-flecked apoplexy
Great news for Insomniac, managing to pick themselves up and dust themselves down after Fuse. And I'm yodelling a bit at the GAF shoutout.
 
T

timlot

Banned
Game looks awesome so the high scores are well deserved. MS exclusive are hitting hard this fall season. Forza H2 @ 86 Sunset @ 83 and Halo MCC will be 90+.
 
P

Piston Hyundai

Member
Man, I wish I had the cash for this game. Glad to see it's reviewing well, despite my fears of the game being really unfunny being essentially confirmed.
 
Q

QuikNez

Member
jelly said:
Hold my hands it, didn't think it would review that well. Nice one. Hope it gets good sales.
Click to expand...

I'm with you, I was totally wrong - thought it looked like a solid 6/10 - maybe I should keep my mouth shut and not paid so much attention to the lazygamer.

I'm glad that the game turned out excellent in the end.
 
D

dancrane212

Member
Those are some impressive scores; I'm still not sold on the humor but the game looks like such a blast to play.

Just one more day, come on Amazon!
 
M

Miles Quaritch

Member
RexNovis said:
It's odd how so many of these reviews have very negative things to say about the humor in the game (mostly echoing my own concerns from all the gameplay we've been shown thus far) and yet still go on to rate the game so highly. I mean the Kotaku Review is downright scathing


Source

I mean holy shit! Talk about "narrative dissonance!" Is it just me or is this one of the most legitimately scathing reviews you have ever read?

Yet it still gets a yes because apparently traversal is fun. But damn if it doesn't seem like the most begrudgingly given recommendation I've read in a LONG time. What the hell?
Click to expand...

It seems they had issues, but found the overall game to be very good. Doesn't seem out of the ordinary.
 
M

mrklaw

MrArseFace
mocoworm said:
Just sign up to a games rental service like I do. £8 a month and I get unlimited PS3, 360, XONE, PS4 and VITA games sent to me one at a time as soon as I have played them and sent them back.

(I could get Wii, Wii-U etc as well but I don't own those consoles.)
Click to expand...

what service do you use? I thought game rental was dead in the UK.



Is there an option to turn off the swearing? Sounds way OTT and would basically make it impossible for my kids to play or for me to play while they are in the room.
 
T

tuna_love

Banned
mrklaw said:
what service do you use? I thought game rental was dead in the UK.



Is there an option to turn off the swearing? Sounds way OTT and would basically make it impossible for my kids to play or for me to play while they are in the room.
Click to expand...
I'm pretty sure there is a filter
 
L

Lemondish

Member
derFeef said:
Thanks, I will.
And sorry, but ...

violin.jpg


:)
Click to expand...

So much salt here.

How dare someone not immediately go out and buy three Xbone SO bundles?! THE NERVE.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

LTTP or RTTP - Sunset Overdrive
18
1K
BigLee74 replied
Fixing Sony's GaaS Strategy
2
63
2K
MALpractice311 replied
Sony could do with some more non-realistic, gameplay focused games like pre-2013
2 3
119
7K
Roxkis_ii replied
Could Insomniac port Sunset Overdrive to PS?
2 3
107
6K
01011001 replied
If possible, what port would you want from a platform you don't have?
2 3
135
4K
Trilobit replied
Top Bottom