Sunset Overdrive is a 2014 action-adventure video game developed by Insomniac Games and published by Microsoft Studios. It is set in a fictional metropolis called Sunset City, where the company FizzCo has launched a new energy drink which has turned the people who drank it into mutants known as Overcharge Drinkers. The player controls an employee of FizzCo, who gets trapped in Sunset City when it is quarantined, and must fight off the OD while helping other humans trapped inside. Along with a large arsenal of weapons, the player can wall-run, ride zip-lines, and grind rails to swiftly navigate through the city, with evasion of enemy attacks reliant on maintaining momentum rather than a cover system. The game also has a cooperative multiplayer mode called Chaos Squad, which tasks players to complete a series of missions with seven players.
The development of Sunset Overdrive began in 2011 when Insomniac completed Resistance 3. After the project was green-lit internally, the studio partnered with Microsoft Studios, which helped fund the game and allowed Insomniac to keep the rights to the franchise. Insomniac described the game as a "celebration of games", as the team took inspiration from different sources, including Prince of Persia, Jet Set Radio and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, though at its early stage of development the team took inspirations from DayZ instead. The game is set in a post-apocalyptic future, but the team depicted it as an "awesomepocalypse" that turns the game's initial world depiction into a "playground" for players. The game uses Insomniac's internal engine, previously used in Fuse.
Sunset Overdrive was announced at E3 2013, and released worldwide for Xbox One in October 2014. A Windows version, developed by Blind Squirrel Games, was released in November 2018. The game received generally positive reviews from critics, who praised its visuals, traversal system, combat system, and humor. However, the game was criticized for the lack of a compelling story or innovative quest design. It sold about 1.9 million units, barely generating any profit for Insomniac Games. It received numerous nominations, including Best Xbox Game of the Year awards from several gaming publications. The game was supported with multiple pieces of downloadable content, including the story-based The Mystery of the Mooil Rig and Dawn of the Rise of the Fallen Machine, after the game's release.
Gameplay
Sunset Overdrive is an action-adventure game set in a third-person perspective. Players navigate a metropolis called Sunset City in the year 2027. This dystopian world has been overrun by mutants called the OD, short for Overcharge Drinkers. The player character is a former FizzCo employee, tasked with cleaning up the mess left behind from a party FizzCo had thrown to celebrate the launch of its new energy drink, Overcharge Delirium XT.
At the start of the game, players can customize the protagonist's sex, body type, hairstyle, and outfit using the character creator. Players may also alter the look of their customized character at any point during the game by approaching a vendor named Callista. After creating their characters, players proceed to the game's open world, which is free for players to explore at any time. A fast travel system is provided allowing players to reach different locations and to navigate the world quickly. The game features a main campaign with story elements and side-missions, which are triggered automatically when players enter certain locations in the city. These quests mainly involve players delivering objects to other non-playable characters and collecting items from the world. Some of these quests have time limits.
The game's combat focuses on velocity, and encourages players to defeat enemies in a fast-paced way. As a result, players can employ different moves including wall running, air-dashing, zip lining, performing parkour, acrobatics, and water traversal. Players use grind rails to deftly navigate city streets, and are able to switch direction instantly at will. The city is also filled with items for players to bounce up into the air. Players may utilize their weapons while performing these movements and slow down time for players to take aim. On-foot, players cannot walk, take cover, or take out enemies silently, but instead must rely on agility to survive as they will be overwhelmed quickly by enemies if they choose to walk on the ground. The game also features a Style Meter. Shown in the head-up display (HUD) of the game, the Meter increases as players perform stylish moves like killing enemies and grinding on-rails without touching the ground. When players are killed, they do not have to wait for the game to load. Players can respawn and return to the world by different methods, such as descending with a rocket or exiting a golden sarcophagus. Insomniac named this system "Next-Gen Respawning".
Throughout the game, players encounter both human enemies, such as gang members, FizzCo's robots, OD'd humans who have mutated from drinking too much of the energy drink, and several bosses who are more difficult to defeat compared with other ordinary enemies. The game features a variety of weapons for players to use to combat enemies. These include the standard assault rifle AK-FU and the TNTeddy grenade launcher, which fires teddy bears strapped to sticks of dynamite, fireworks and toy helicopters. All weapons eventually run out of ammunition but do not need to be reloaded while being used. Different weapons are effective against different enemies, and players unlock more weapons by progressing through the story or purchasing them from shops. Weapons can be upgraded and modified by applying "Amps", which increases weapons' lethality, efficiency, and strength, though some amps are only activated when the player reached a certain style level. The weapons can be leveled up when players earn enough experience points or defeat enough enemies with them. In addition, players gained different badges throughout the game for completing actions such as grinding and killing enemies. These badges can be used to purchased Overdrives which grant players additional passive skills such as increasing the damage or ammo capacity of a certain type of weapon.
The game features an eight-player co-operative multiplayer mode called the Chaos Squad, which tasks players to complete a series of missions, as decided by the players themselves. Players defend vats of Overcharge Delirium XT from waves of OD'd at night and stop their progression by setting up fortifications and barriers, in a manner similar to tower defense games. It is inter-connected with the single-player mode allowing players to transfer their story character, with all the weapons and gadgets they have already accumulated, to the mode. Although players work together, players also try to earn more Style points during play than their co-op partners.
Plot On July 13, 2027, megaconglomerate FizzCo hosts a massive pre-release party in Sunset City for its new energy drink, OverCharge Delirium XT (also known as OverCharge), allowing the citizens to be the first to try it. In an attempt to sell OverCharge faster, FizzCo skipped health regulation protocols and rushed through testing, leading to the drink being so toxic that anyone who drinks it transforms into a violent, boil-covered mutant known as an Overcharge Drinker (OD). The mutants infest the city within hours of the pre-release party, which comes to be known as "Horror Night". In order to cover up the deception, FizzCo claims that a viral outbreak has happened and quarantines the whole city, preventing anyone from entering or exiting. The player, a janitor employed by FizzCo, is saved from an attacking OD by Walter, a former FizzCo security guard. Walter admits him into a small group of fellow survivors, which also includes Floyd, a former FizzCo chemist whose concerns about OverCharge's safety went unheeded.
To help Walter build a makeshift helicopter to escape the city and reveal the truth about the outbreak, the player goes out looking for a propeller, and rescues nerdy college student Sam in the process. Once the player and Sam enlist the help of Sam's rich and lazy Oxford West classmates, they 3D print him a propeller. The player joins Walter in the helicopter to escape the city, but at the last second, Walter notices an invisible wall and rescues the player by pushing them out of the helicopter, sacrificing himself in the process.
Floyd tells the player about a friend of Walter's named Bryllcream, who is the scout leader of Troop Bushido and can likely help them figure out another escape plan. The player visits the troop's hideout in a Japanese samurai museum, where their interim scout leader Norton claims he hasn't been able to find Bryllcream. However, the player teams up with an exiled trooper named 4Kim to rescue Bryllcream from the back of a garbage truck (having been trapped inside by Norton for nearly three weeks since Horror Night, Bryllcream had to eat all four of his own limbs to survive). The three of them return to the Japanese museum to confront Norton and, in a last-ditch effort to retain leadership of the troop, he chugs a can of OverCharge that turns him into a dragon. The player then slays Norton to rescue Bryllcream.
Bryllcream refers the player to Ignatius, an engineer and passionate larper who can likely build them a boat to escape. Despite Ignatius and almost everyone in his LARP club "Fargarthia" being under the panic-induced delusion that their medieval role-play is real, Ignatius is able to design them a boat that, by being made of garbage, would trick the wall's sensors into letting them through. The player and Wendy, the only non-delusional member of the LARP club, make it past the invisible wall – however, FizzCo robots enter the city to try to kill all the witnesses inside (including the Oxfords and Troop Bushido), and when Sam calls the player to plea for help, the player feels compelled to go back to the city and rescue his friends.
After being rescued, Sam suggests that they try to infiltrate FizzCo headquarters in search of evidence, an escape route, and/or a rumored superweapon inside the building. He elaborates that the only people who managed to infiltrate the building are Las Catrinas, a band of La Calavera Catrina-themed Mexican American cheerleaders who rigorously defend the children's ward of a local hospital. Though they are standoffish towards the player at first, the player wins them over by organizing a concert for the children headlined by King Buzzo (voiced and mocapped by the real Melvins singer).
The player rallies the four factions to attack FizzCo headquarters, and attempts to destroy FizzCo HQ by riding a giant bottle of OverCharge into it. The player is killed in the blast, and the factions mourn them. However, the player breaks the fourth wall by pausing the credits rolling after this scene to complain about how depressing the ending is, and decides to change it. The player survives and gets respawned, and it is revealed that the superweapon is the FizzCo building itself, which turns into a giant robot and tries to destroy the city (erasing all evidence of the OverCharge outbreak). The player destroys the robot and has milk and crackers with the other survivors (forgoing alcohol because most of Troop Bushido is underage). After the credits, however, computers in the FizzCo headquarters automatically activate a protocol sending FizzCo helicopters full of OverCharge around the world, foreshadowing an international OD outbreak.
Development
Origin