We reviewed Overpass

Driftwood
Thursday, February 27, 2020 | 9:01 AM
1 comment

GSY Review PC PS4 Xbox One Switch

BigBen Interactive has managed to proved they can handle the racing genre pretty well, with the WRC series and TT Isle of Man, Parisian developer Kylotonn has been quite an asset from the French publisher, despite budgets far from those of the likes of Turn10, Playground Games or Polyphony. Overpass wasn't developed by Kylotonn though, it's a small Swedish team located in the city of Umeå and they have yet to prove that they can deliver on their promises...

Verdict

Overpass is not perfect, far from that. In some ways, it's like it's not even finished yet despite the fact that it was delayed for 5 more months. Optimisation is not great on PC, our i9 9900K and RTX 2080 Ti struggling to maintain a smooth framerate in 1440p (even in 1080p some sort of occasional stuttering remains) and there is even some tearing on Xbox One X, a technical issue we thought we'd left behind with our dusty 360/PS3. Even the in-game menus look more like placeholders than anything else, so yeah, really, Overpass is clearly not a looker. That being said, after playing the game for about 8 hours, we would lie if we said we didn't have fun. The physics engine may be a bit lacking, collisions aren't always great, but trying to overcome obstacles to beat the best time is actually refreshing. There are about 40 different tracks, they are full of rocks and traps and, though not visually impressive from a technical standpoint, they are very detailed and beating them is very rewarding. We haven't mentioned the game's biggest problem though, and you know what, the developers are not the ones to blame. The main issue with Overpass is its European price. On PC, it's €/$40, which is still a bit expensive considering the different problems we evoked, but European console owners will have to pay up to €69.99 depending on the retailer (and game's edition). If you're in the US, you won't be charged more than $49.99 on consoles but it still remains too pricey to our liking - and we'd like to know why BigBen favors Americans over, say, French gamers. We are aware game development costs money, but from a customer point of view, why would someone pay that much for an imperfect AA game? Sure, it definitely has a capital for sympathy, but at the end of the day, staying on track is only going to be possible if people are willing to pay the price for the ride...

On the upside
Quite a refreshing concept in hte racing genre
Neither overly complicated nor too easy
Career lets you choose what you want to do
Tracks are both detailed and interesting

On the downside
Visually dated
Still some technical issues
Menus will make you depressed
Quad bikes are less convincing
A tad expensive on PC ($40)
$64.99/69.99 on consoles!!!

High quality stream and download

Commented on 2020-02-27 05:04:51

Great review, which brought up many important points. Honestly, if the absolute masterpiece Hollow Knight was $15 at launch with well over 25-40 hours of content, this type of game - specially with so many technical issues - shouldn't have been more than $30. Even without so many issues, the price still shouldn't be over $30. For these prices, I would vastly recommend Forza Horizon 4, DiRT 4, WRC 8, Project Cars 2, GRID (2019), Wreckfest, and many more better Racing games.

" and we'd like to know why BigBen favors Americans over, say, French gamers." - Even more damning when you realize Bigben Interactive - known as Nacon now, they're merging Bigben and Nacon into one entity - is a French company. With 3 subsidiaries in France, others in Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Italy, and Spain. Interesting since as you've said both the developers and the publisher are European and yet they charge Europeans more.

Resembles my country, a 100% nationally manufactured car is from 80% to 100% more expensive here, than when sold in other countries - even after the transportation and the taxes costs are taken into account. It's like some people want to screw their countrymen/women in favor of foreigners. This isn't an American game being sold into Europe, it's an European game being sold into Europe. You guys should be getting a discount, instead of getting charged more.

All this does is make it harder for Europeans to support European developers, of which a lot of times games are janky as hell and have many technical issues. But people want to support them because it means supporting the local industry so it grows and gets better. But with situations like this, there's nothing you can do about it other than just ignore it whenever possible. Far harder to do with cars than with games, but that's just life. I just hope that if it doesn't sell well, they don't start blaming players, specially Europeans for "not supporting European developers".

In reply to

"[i] and we'd like to know why BigBen favors Americans over, say, French gamers." - Even more damning when you realize Bigben Interactive - known as Nacon now, they're merging Bigben and Nacon into one entity - is a French company. With 3 subsidiaries in France, others in Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Italy, and Spain. [/i]Interesting since as you've said both the developers and the publisher are European and yet they charge Europeans more.

Resembles my country, a 100% nationally manufactured car is from 80% to 100% more expensive here, than when sold in other countries - even after the transportation and the taxes costs are taken into account. It's like some people want to screw their countrymen/women in favor of foreigners. This isn't an American game being sold into Europe, it's an European game being sold into Europe. You guys should be getting a discount, instead of getting charged more.

All this does is make it harder for Europeans to support European developers, of which a lot of times games are janky as hell and have many technical issues. But people want to support them because it means supporting the local industry so it grows and gets better. But with situations like this, there's nothing you can do about it other than just ignore it whenever possible. Far harder to do with cars than with games, but that's just life. I just hope that if it doesn't sell well, they don't start blaming players, specially Europeans for "not supporting European developers".