The apocalypse as party and fantasy. No philosophy or worries. in the city, of course, because modern shooting festivals have to be in south east asian countries or the american city in total shit, or unscrupulous mercenaries or zombies reimagined, very sad.


Imsomniac Games seems to be made up of 12-year-olds or 45-year-olds, or something like that, with no middle ground because the overall aesthetic oscillates between unrestrained noise and extravagant weapons that 12-year-olds would imagine as "cool" (perhaps) and the shameful idea of "party" and "hip" that 40-year-olds have in mind (for sure)
And it is curious the strange dichotomy generated by that gloomy vision is reflected in its displacement mechanics; tremendous verticality and smoothness with a lot of support points. I jump to several levels in the architecture, and suddenly the rails rule, and the architecture flattens.

This is one of those games that block my thoughts because of the grime they generate in me, no matter how hostile it sounds

Sunset Overdrive pode resumir muito bem o que eu chamo de jogo carismático, ele não me fez refletir, sofrer e muito menos apegar, mas me prendeu o suficiente para as horas passarem sem minha percepção e para alguém que tem controle de sessões, isso é algo incrível.

Com a nova tendência de jogos sentimentais muitas vezes a diversão que antigamente era extremamente presente se tornou um ponto de interrogação e normalmente, tudo o que conseguimos pensar é em qual novo triste e desolado enredo dedicaremos as próximas 10-20 horas da nossa vida. Seria hipocrisia de minha parte reclamar ou chamar tal tendência de ruim, afinal meus jogos favoritos são sentimentais, porém as vezes é necessário ter noção que a diversão ainda faz parte essencial desses núcleos e não existe nada melhor do que explorar tal coisa uma vez ou outra.

Inicialmente, a ideia de um jogo me obrigar a ficar em movimento não pareceu tão favorável, para quem passou anos jogando fps as combinações de movimentação simples sempre se destacavam, então quando Sunset jogou no meu rosto que TUDO seria aberto para correr, andar e girar a minha mente teve um pequeno bug. Inclusive, isso me fez desistir do jogo duas vezes, porém como 2023 está sendo uma surpresa atrás de outra decidi novamente brincar com jogos que pensei ter abandonado indefinidamente e o resultado está sendo surpreendente.

Preciso destacar que o enredo inicial é bem chato, as piadas não parecem crescer e o humor é bem parado no tempo o que na teoria faria toda a campanha ser estilo alguns lançamentos atuais (que eu detestei), mas para minha surpresa ocorreu totalmente o oposto e a cada novo ato o jogo se tornou um resumo do que gostaria de ter observado nos exemplos recentes. Infelizmente, nem toda diversão é universal e por isso, entendo totalmente quem odeia as piadas sobre ser um jogador dentro de um jogo e não tiro as palavras de problemática em certos comentários.

Outros fatores positivos e que me conquistaram logo de cara foram a dublagem carregada de nomes populares e importantes da indústria brasileira e a soundtrack que se relacionou totalmente com a temática do jogo deixando aquele gostinho de apocalipse diferente e engraçado.

Os pontos negativos podem se resumir a dois essenciais para a gameplay e enredo:

- A quantidade de coletáveis no mapa sendo divididos em 4-5 elementos com 150 unidades, não sendo necessário coletar todas, mas suas localizações são os únicos investimentos fora a compra de roupas e armas, tornando toda a ideia de sair matando inimigos um pouco estranha já que não existe necessidade para quem não quer fazer 100%.

- A falta de um controle de enredo também é péssima para a questão exploração, impossibilitando muitas vezes a identificação do que é missão secundária e o que é principal, sem falar que apesar de único, a parte de gerenciamento de personagem e armas é bem confusa.

Mesmo com esses problemas Sunset Overdrive é uma recomendação obrigatória pra quem quer se divertir sem precisar ficar carregado psicologicamente ou enjoado de fazer as mesmas coisas por várias horas seguidas.

This game is like one of those "gaming addiction" t-shirts. You know the one. You wore it growing up because you thought it was cool, then you grew out of it mentally and physically, but several years down the line, you kinda miss when you liked stuff like that. This is precisely how I feel about Sunset Overdrive.

Everything about this game feels like the last hurrah of the raunchy, edgy side of Insomniac, the one that internally named "A Crack in Time" as "Clockblocked". A game from an interim after the PS3 caused R&C to lose its edge, and before they were doomed to work on Marvel slop with safe writing for the rest of their days. The writing in this game is not going to appeal to everyone; Hell, if I played this a few years back, I'd probably blow it off. The reason it broke through to me is because it never backs down, and it knows to never take itself seriously.

The actual plot is completely aimless though. As it turns out, you gotta do more than make a varied series of missions with really funny scenarios to actually make a memorable story. At its core, Sunset Overdrive just wants you to have fun. In a unique subversion, the orange-flavored Fanta zombie apocalypse isn't portrayed as the endtimes; It's a chance to start your life for real, no one around to tell you what to do, be your own boss. You're trapped in a surveillance state controlled by a soda brand, but you're not gonna let them stop you from enjoying yourself.

Everyone puts on an excellent performance, but Yuri Lowenthal definitely steals the show as the voice of the male protagonist, an everyman who's taking all this chaos in whatever stride he can. There's basically no fourth wall as far as the writing is concerned, so if you're still sick of those writing trends, a decent chunk of the dialogue will probably make you wince. I thought it was done pretty tastefully though. It's mostly just unafraid to remember it's a videogame, if it thinks it can make you laugh.

This game's soundtrack is like your high school band festival. One guy going ham on his electric guitar, another going apeshit on the drums, and a vocalist shouting lyrics so loudly that even the people in the very back of the venue can hear them. I don't think I'd personally listen to any of this music outside the game, but it works phenomenally for this game's tone. While a lot of the songs sound similar by nature, their individuality always keeps me guessing when a new one kicks in. I'm more likely to remember certain events from the game if you play the songs associated with them, music's kinda nuts like that.

I see a lot of reviews saying "ohhhhh, this is where Spiderman PS4 got its movement mechanics!", and I subsequently have no idea what these people are on about. The movement mechanics in Sunset Overdrive aren't heavily automated and cinematic. Instead, you control the buttons you push, bouncing, grinding, swinging, and wall-running across a veritable playground for these moves. You can grind on pretty much anything that looks like a straight edge, and there's a healthy amount of objects to jump off in order to keep your momentum going. There's a lot of random junk sprinkled around the map to collect, and I always go for it because the movement makes it so seamless. Fast travel is a nice gesture, but it feels wholly unnecessary when shmoovin' and groovin' is this engaging. Jogging around on foot will see you quickly swarmed by enemies, so grinding and bounding around them while firing away is the ideal way to play, made more enjoyable by a fairly generous auto-aim. Chaining different moves together raises your style meter, and at certain thresholds, equippable buffs known as "amps" activate, incentivizing you to keep moving. It ALL feeds back into the movement mechanics, and it never gets old.

So yeah, Spiderman PS4's origins? Get outta here, this is more like a long-lost Ratchet & Clank title, if anything. R&C1 weapons always felt homemade, like they were sloppily welded together in your garage or something. All the weapons you get in Sunset Overdrive feel like they're made of random junk that you'd find in the aftermath of a fraternity party. Shit like hair spray, stuffed animals, fireworks, vinyl records, and we can't forget the liquid nitrogen, a staple of college life. Weapons gain experience, level up, and can be equipped with amps to give them extra effects. Sounds like the Omega Mod system in Ratchet: Deadlocked to me. Hell, your crowbar is basically Ratchet's wrench, straight down to the aerial slam and using it to bust crates for money/ammo.

Imagine an alternate universe where this game released on PS4 instead. I bet it would've been considered a cult classic in some circles. No shade towards the talented people working at Insomniac, but I would've gladly taken a sequel to Sunset Overdrive instead of more capeshit. Fate dealt them a cruel hand, and now they're stuck working in the Marvel Mines forever, probably. Ah well, I'm just happy this game exists at all. Feels like an anomaly when you put it between R&C: Into the Nexus and R&C (2016).

It's bright, it's colorful, it's loud, but most of all, it's a blast. It's Sunset Overdrive, baby.

This is pretty much everything I look for in a game, and then some. It's bright and colorful. It's got a giant pile of incredibly wacky guns, like an acid sprinkler and bowling ball launcher. It's unique, with its own voice. Its core mechanics are polished to a shine. It's bombastic and surprising. It's funny. Like, really really funny.

Unfortunately it's the kind of comedy that occasionally veers into being completely annoying, but generally you only have to tolerate these detours for a moment before the genuine guffaws start again. Parts of it are very much "of a time," but that doesn't bother me. I've done a bit of comedy writing, enough to recognize that this sheer volume of jokes only happens with lots of work and iteration. Video games are the hardest medium to be funny in; every element both technical and artistic has to be tuned just right. My hat is off to the whole team, here; the animations, sound design and snappy load times all bolster the writing in what I found to be a truly jaw-dropping display of artistic prowess.

The biggest flaw is one that a lot of games fall prey to: absurdly aggressive hinting. There was one quest where I had to get into a factory. "The front door is blocked; see if you can find another way in." Literally 3 seconds later: "Try looking around the yard for something that you could use to get in the factory!" Literally 2 seconds later: "Use the crane to smash the wall of the factory!" Literally 4 seconds later: "What's taking so long? Use the crane to smash the wall!" Like at this point I'm still getting my bearings trying to figure out what building they're talking about. It's an incredibly common problem and for a game of its era it's not surprising to see, but it is one that I've always been baffled by.

The repetitive voice lines during missions only got super bad during a couple moments. The final boss fight in particular I had to disable dialog for because it was purposely written to be grating, and the fight was challenging enough that I had to retry it a few times and hear those same grating lines over and over. Again, forgivable, but annoying nonetheless.

The voice acting is top notch; I played with the female protagonist and voice actor Stephanie Lemelin brought an incredible energy and bravado to the character. She simultaneously sounded like she was born of this weird world while also being the most relatable part of it, a tricky needle to thread that had me cheering for even her most eye-rolling quips and one-liners. Her voice felt like mine.

The traversal is fantastic. I think this is the only open world game I've ever played where I basically never used fast travel because just getting from point A to B is so much goddamn fun. Bouncing, wall-running and grinding my way across this city never got old. The stunt scoring system that enhances your damage output ties it all together in a multiplicative way.

In a lot of games it feels like they give you the fun parts to get through the challenging parts. In Sunset Overdrive, they give you fun parts to have more fun with the other fun parts. There's still plenty of challenge, especially in the boss fights and base defense segments, but even when I'm dying it's usually because I'm so overwhelmed with weird guns to shoot, barrels to explode, and cars to bounce off of. If Assassins Creed is like a gumball machine, giving you one piece of candy at a time at a steady consistent pace, and Dark Souls is like crawling through a bombed-out munitions factory looking for the last grimy jawbreaker, Sunset Overdrive is like diving head-first, mouth open into the candy vault, Scrooge McDuck style.

I think that games are at their best when the main thing you're doing in them is the most fun. And that's why a lot of open world games miss the mark for me. The primary gameplay in most of these kinds of games is traversing the environment. And boy does Sunset Overdrive absolutely nail this.

Bouncing, dashing and grinding in Sunset Overdrive is just an absolute blast. It always felt exhilarating to zip through the city full of orange goblins. The grind rails spread around the city remind me a lot of Bioshock Infinite's Skyhook system except actually good and well realized.

Somehow I went through all these years without anyone telling me that Sunset Overdrive is a stealth Ratchet and Clank reboot. It really feels like the design culmination of all the crass humor and weapon systems from the prior R&C games. Most of the guns feel like they're straight ripped out of R&C (and this is a VERY good thing). I can't help but compare Sunset Overdrive to other games it seems. As another game it made me think of is Saints Row 4. It feels like the natural step up from that. I'd argue that Sunset Overdrive does most of what Saints Row 4 does much better though. The silly humor and 4th wall stuff is very hit and miss but it hits enough times to make the game endearing.

I was let down slightly by Sunset Overdrive's repetitive mission structure. It feels like the game is maybe 1/4 too long. The core gameplay is fun enough that even doing monotonous tasks feels good but there are just so many "grab x amount of items across 5 areas of the map" missions.

All in all, Sunset Overdrive is a fluid score chasing thrill ride that builds on Insomniac's strengths as a studio (while also expanding into an open world which massively helped them build Spider-Man). A very unique and rad game.

Completed an 18 hour playthrough with all Side Missions done and Gold Rank on all Challenges.

Idk man I really enjoyed this one lol.

The movement is so good, you can vault and wall run across pretty much every surface, grind on wires endlessly, jump on pretty much anything from bushes to cars, swing on poles, airdash, skim across water, chaining these actions together to keep your speed up and avoid touching the ground is amazingly satisfying and has a great sense of flow and momentum. If a movement system in an open world sandbox area is so good that you don’t want to use fast travel then I’d say that it did a great job. The game also rewards you for keeping the flow going with a “style” system, which can power up your attacks and give you additional perks in combat.

Unfortunately I don’t think other elements of the game really pick up the slack. Combat works and can be fun but is a bit of a chaotic mess, and mostly just revolves around grinding infinitely on a closed loop and spamming ammunition into the enemies below. You can’t fight them on the ground like you normally would in other shooting games, your health will get eviscerated extremely quickly. The game constantly encourages being on the move 24/7 so their attacks will miss more often. Again it works, but it’s not inherently satisfying. The writing is also hit or miss, not exactly a good thing to say for a comedy focused game. There are some genuinely good lines don’t get me wrong but like 90% of the humor in this game is just 4th wall breaks and pop culture references (there’s one point in the game where a side character unironically says “Huh? Oh sorry, I was checking Reddit.”)

I honestly could recommend you this game on the movement system alone it’s so good. In any case this game is super unique and pretty fun so I would recommend trying it out anyway, preferably on PC. It’s a shame an enhanced next gen version hasn’t been made for consoles yet.

Somehow the exact perfect midpoint between Insomniac's two other prime offerings, Ratchet & Clank and Marvel's Spider-Man, and it definitely feels like a necessary stepping stone for the latter's development in particular.

Has a great aesthetic and soundtrack, but somehow the game just kinda feels undercooked all throughout. Like, this is probably the least polished Insomniac game I've ever played. The moments where the game leans into how stupid and manic and frenetic it all is are where the game truly shines, but in between those moments (usually Insomniac's trademark Mega Set Pieces and Absurd Corporate Satire), the game is strangely... I wanna say "rizzless"? Despite being ostensibly My Shit, it never fully clicked with me.

Yuri Lowenthal was basically carrying this game on his shoulders too: without his charismatic performance, I would find it hard to care at all about anything narrative-wise. Don't think I'll be able to name a single memorable character from this in about a week. I will certainly remember the bizarre surprise celebrity cameo that occurs near the end of the game for seemingly no reason, though.

Anyway, don't mythologize this one like I did due to its elusive platform exclusivity: it's entirely skippable.

Prós:
-Ótima movimentação, chegando a ser satisfatória em vários momentos.
-Humor engraçado (A dublagem é MUITO bem feita).
-Armas diversificadas e criativas.
-Delicia de trilha sonora (Combina com o estilo frenético do jogo).
Contras:
-Sistema de progressão da história linear.
-Pós-história fraco.

Mix Jet Set Radio’s grinding and movement, Crackdown’s jumping and verticality, a grungy apocalyptic Saints Row with self-aware story elements, and you get Sunset Overdrive. I originally played this game on my Xbox One in 2015, but stopped playing it due to a number of reasons. Now, I have finished the PC Game Pass version.

I can’t comment much on Sunset Overdrive’s story. It begins with a cutscene showing your created character working as a janitor at a pre-release concert party for Fizzco’s new energy drink “Overcharge.” Things get out of hand when everyone who consumes this new drink gets turned into mutants, causing mayhem and a near apocalypse in the city. Plot doesn’t seem consistent and feels disjointed throughout the game, though the dialogue is slightly enjoyable with self-aware humor that knows it is a video game.

Structure is quite different. Although it has the formula of an open world, third-person shooter, some gameplay elements are different. No driveable vehicles, pedestrians, cops or wanted levels exist. You’ll spend your time zip-lining, air-dashing, grinding, wall-running, bouncing atop buildings, vehicles and structures to traverse through Sunset City. No cover system means heavy emphasis is placed on always moving. Collectibles are scattered throughout the map, which feel fun to collect and never a chore due to the fluid, fun traversal system. Money earned in game can be used to purchase character customization items from shops, while overcharge energy drinks are used to purchase collectible maps (revealing collectibles in certain regions), amps that are perks slotted into weapons, overdrives which are abilities that give you buffs and bonuses in combat. Instead of typical weapons, you'll gain access to several different weapons that shoot acid, freeze enemies, burn foes, stun enemies, and shield you among various other ones.

Character customization is more than very serviceable. Creating a male or female character (who is referred to as just “Player:” in cutscenes) gives no advanced options for face morphing outside of selecting different facial structure parts, preset faces, eye color, and hair. Clothing selection also isn't as robust as say Saints Row 3 or 4, but feels more along the lines of the Tony Hawk Underground games. Considering the zany theme of the game, lots of wacky clothing items exist to make an interesting character.

While the main missions are fun, these mostly consist of going to an area, killing a group of enemies, going to another area, defending against a wave of enemies, escorting someone or an item, and repeating the cycle. Side missions consist of the same structure. Thankfully, the engaging movement system does make the missions more enjoyable even if they can suffer from repetition at times. Challenges do exist in the form of different activities like dashing through rings, killing enemies in different ways, delivering bombs within a time limit, and collecting points or destroying as many items as possible in an allotted time. A few main missions in particular were very luck based, like the Pigeon burning mission which requires you to burn a high number of barely spawning pigeons in a short time limit. Annoying missions like these did not pop up frequently, but the few that came up in an already repetitive mission structure made me want some variety.

Sunset Overdrive is also a short game, clocking in around 10 hours and 15 minutes (according to my in-game play time after the credits rolled.) Your game time may vary depending on your completionist and side mission focus. I could have seen this being a negative during the time when the Xbox One didn't have many exclusives and longer games were on the rise. On the other hand, playing this game in 2022 when almost every game under the sun is a lengthy experience was a welcome change of pace.

Sunset Overdrive is definitely a game that not only deserves to be played, but is highly in need of a sequel!