We reviewed Sunset Overdrive

Driftwood
Monday, October 27, 2014 | 8:01 AM
36 comments

GSY Review Xbox One

After Southern France and Northern Italy, Microsoft is taking us to Sunset City to discover their brand new exclusive. Historically attached to Sony's consoles, developer Insmoniac Games delivers Sunset Overdrive on Xbox One, a title that had failed to get much interest from most of the Gamersyde team over the course of the previous months. Yet, our good friends dark10x and Ghost_Deus, who had a chance to attend a presentation of the game respectively in Cologne and Tokyo, were pretty optimistic, which got the attention of the rest of the crew as the release date was getting closer. Because we were intrigued, we put on our sexiest mini skirt to face the awesomepocalypse for you guys. As usual, for the full review head over to the French side. Our verdict along with the positives and negatives have been fully translated inside where you'll also find a bunch of direct feed videos.
Note: More videos will be available tomorrow as we are still tied by the NDA and can't show you anything past the first two hours.

Verdict

Influenced heavily by many historic video games, Sunset Overdrive isn’t the least bit afraid to admit those influences and is always ready to take a pot shot at the sometimes over serious nature of modern gaming. As a tribute to classic Japanese arcade games, and a game never hesitating to break the fourth wall, Insomniac’s latest certainly doesn’t lack its own personality even if it may not be to everyone’s taste. All is not perfect, though, as there’s no doubt that the developers could have pushed things even further but as their first attempt on a next gen console, it’s a lot more promising than we first expected. Insomniac's DNA is certainly recognizable in this mash-up between inFamous and Ratchet & Clank - among others - and it’s with great anticipation that we await the sequel which seems inevitable given the game's ending. For a game which, at first, we had little interest in, the end results are pretty great. The question is whether or not you will take to the unique style with which the studio has taken with this game. If you’re someone looking for a great new way to relieve some stress by blowing up monsters while using cool traversal moves, there’s no need to wait for sunset before deciding.

On the plus side
Totally crazy and funny
Heady traversal
The impressive level design
Crazy arsenal
Ability to modify weapons and abilities at will
Lots of personality
Playing dress up with your character
Boss fights
Time attack challenges
The length (more than 25 hours not counting challenges in our case)
A nice variety of scenarios (missions and quests)
The writing
Fun and varied respawn animations
Colorful visuals and top notch animation
Stable frame-rate
Crazy Taxi/Jet Set Radio/Crackdown/inFamous/Dead Rising/Lollipop Chainsaw

On the down side
No change in lighting or weather conditions (aside from the end sequence)
Night time is reserved only for tower defense
Appearance customization could have gone further
Too few bosses, too easy to beat them
Could have been even crazier
Readability is difficult at times
Risk of going on too long for some players
Multiplayer could become redundant

High quality stream and download

Commented on 2014-10-27 08:15:50

I knew this would review well. First game I want on any current gen console so far!

In reply to

yippee123

Commented on 2014-10-27 09:02:53

The review from Gamersyde doesn't have the score ? only plus and down?

This message and account have been deleted at the user's request

Commented on 2014-10-27 09:27:15 In reply to yippee123

Posted by yippee123

and I hope it stays that way, everyone skips reading reviews and looks at scores these days which I think it's very lazy! Some badly scored games can sometimes be quite delightful surprises.

SirAdamFrisk

Commented on 2014-10-27 09:32:33

Halo, Forza, Sunset Overdrive, Project Spark. Damn, if only Xbox didn't had such a hard time with multiplats, I wouldn't even think of buying PS4.

Driftwood

Commented on 2014-10-27 10:18:38 In reply to yippee123

Plus & down is a new thing. Scores will never be used on Gamersyde. We believe they are irrelevant.

scoobs0688

Commented on 2014-10-27 10:24:03 In reply to SirAdamFrisk

Posted by SirAdamFrisk

PS4's a great console too, but there's no denying Xbox has the better exclusives so far. If you can, buy all the consoles

Commented on 2014-10-27 10:38:50 In reply to Driftwood

Posted by Driftwood

Hell to the Yes!

Commented on 2014-10-27 10:40:30 In reply to SirAdamFrisk

The XboxOne may be having a hard time in the press but I think we can all rejoice at the fact that both consoles are selling really well and both are selling better than their predecessors - 2015 is going to be EPIC!

Commented on 2014-10-27 10:53:32 In reply to alimokrane

Posted by droezelke

They never do. First review you read here?

not first, have read one or two before
but i thought the first few reviews with no score is because GS was not ready

No score is not a big deal, but in that way your review can not be added to the meta score

Commented on 2014-10-27 10:55:37 In reply to yippee123

We do not approve of Metacritic and of the way it has come to rule the industry so it's fine by us. We're not after fame or anything. :)

icecold1983

Commented on 2014-10-27 11:50:01

plz do more reviews in the future guys!

jmd749

Commented on 2014-10-27 11:53:24

This is the one game I wish I could play that's only on Xbone. :( Good for Insomniac, they had a really bad spell, glad to see they're getting back on their feet. I hope it sells well for them. Sadly this isn't enough to warrant an Xbone purchase for me, but who knows, perhaps a few more games like this might twist my arm enough to finally own an xbox console.

Phaethon360

Commented on 2014-10-27 12:00:43

With this bundle being $350 and Master Chief Collection inbound...

Bueno.gif

Commented on 2014-10-27 12:18:17 In reply to Driftwood

In fact recently, the game Legend of Korra is a really good game with solid gameplay made by platinum, and many neogafers approved that
however the average score from meta is really terrible.

IGN gave it 3 out of 10 and gamespot 4.2 out of 10

Tbh that score really affects me for quite sometime, but then i'm like "whatever, i just want to play the game, screw the scores"

That is a rare example that a game with low score turns out to be a good game for some people.

But if a game has very high average score, then the game is good indeed, the question remains is whether it is your type

eternaldragonx

Commented on 2014-10-27 12:49:50 In reply to SirAdamFrisk

It doesn't..... everyone makes too much of a deal between 1080p and 900p upscaled to 1080p. What nullifies this for me is the fact taht Xbox live is far better than the PSN so most my multiplats goto the xb1. Unlesss of course the framrate is different like Tomb Raider...PS4 all day long on that.

Commented on 2014-10-27 13:12:36 In reply to Phaethon360

Posted by Phaethon360

I'm going to NY for Thanksgiving, at $350, that's a steal. Thanks for the headsup. :)

Commented on 2014-10-27 14:40:36 In reply to scoobs0688

I will, but money man. That's just so painful to know that you have this system for only 20 games. They're amazing, no doubt, but numbers don't lie. (

Commented on 2014-10-27 14:41:42 In reply to scoobs0688

But PS4 is good so far. I play a lot of multiplayer games on it and I love it.

Commented on 2014-10-27 14:42:18 In reply to Driftwood

That's why I come here.

Commented on 2014-10-27 14:46:43 In reply to eternaldragonx

Posted by eternaldragonx

It's not a big deal, but I can definitely spot a difference. However it all comes down to which system is "default", if you will, for the rest of the gen.

Oh and I played through Tomb Raider on PS4 and framerate is unstable mess of 25-60fps. Gfx are pretty good though.

synce

Commented on 2014-10-27 14:47:49

Game looks great, but man I hope it goes multi or else I'll never get to play

abduloc

Commented on 2014-10-27 15:09:49 In reply to SirAdamFrisk

that is absolute nonsense, i played through tomb raider on ps4 and not once did i notice a big dip in framerate, also, in digital foundry's review of the game on ps4, he said the lowest fps it reached was 36fps momentarily and the game averaged 55fps, which blows xbox one's 28fps average out the water.

amerakindesi

Commented on 2014-10-27 15:39:34

Why are we comparing a game that was ported and optimized during the first few months of nex-gen console release to validate the 2 consoles that are obviously outdoing it 1 year later. No one cares about tomb raider anniversary anymore guys.

catfish

Commented on 2014-10-27 16:53:01

Game looks cool. Would cop it if I had an xbone for sure.

We reviewed Sunset Overdrive

Verdict

Introduction

Learning

Character Creation

Traversal (edited Version)

Action

Sam

All comments (36)

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