Review: Sunset Overdrive is exciting but exhausting

Everything you need to know about this is explained with the first gun you're given.

It's Insomniac's mission statement, a promise. It's probably something it designed early on to help set the tone of the game. And it's basically a great big cock and balls.

Alright, technically it's a shotgun that deals fire damage but, for some reason that's never explained, it's a long metal shaft with two spheres that dangle gently at the base. The game hands you a phallus and tells you to go forth: enter the world and do some damage with this.

That's most likely made your mind up right there. You're either nodding gently, murmuring 'cool' to no-one in particular, or gently facepalming with a mildly pained expression. And it's important to bear those feelings in mind because from the moment you're given that gun Sunset Overdrive doesn't let up, especially in the opening act.

It's a song that's all chorus; a meal that's only steak. So whatever your initial thoughts, they're unlikely to change.

The movement system is the game. You're able to grind edges, zip-line, wall-run and bounce off most objects. The focus is on always moving: sliding, dashing and leaping while unloading all sorts of fanciful weapons at a constantly closing monster mob. It's a kinetic and relentless form of crowd control that's slightly stilted in the opening hours until you unlock extra moves.

Early on the system only produces short stuttering runs or grinding back and forth on a single railing as you fight. That's partly due to a lack of mastery, but also to the range limitations of the early skillset. A super bounce and air dash, unlocked as you progress, make a huge difference later on.

Suddenly the city opens up as one long, limitless run, rather than that first collection of short streets that never quite link up. In the same way the crazy guns evolve as you progress, adding power ups, elemental effects and other options until you build out your ideal toolkit to deal with the hordes.

Our favourite mix involved a combo of Acid Sprinklers and RC helicopter drones with guns attached, for plenty of area damage, while mopping up survivors with whatever gun hadn't run out of ammo.

For a game built around holding your finger on the fire button and never letting go, dashing about to scrounge for ammo is a surprisingly common occurrence. Although when every mission is largely unbroken shooting from end to end it's hard to avoid.

When you find combinations that work it can be hugely satisfying, seeing you switching between weapons to maximise damage and effects. See a crowd congregating? Pop out a few TNTeddy shots, using the grenade-like bears to kill groups, then lay mines to cut off areas and switch to more aim-able weapons to target particular threats.

When you get a feel for what can be done you'll spend half a fight in the slow-mo weapons radial juggling guns as you bounce about. At the same time you're trying to build Style - a progress bar filled by continually moving and fighting - to unlock additional attacks such as exploding things you bounce on, or flinging fireballs with melee swings.

Despite the modern day makeover this is basically the new Ratchet & Clank. Insomniac has taken pretty much the entire structure of its classic, chaotic PS2 shooter as a foundation: the grind boots, the crazy weapons, even the way ammo and collectables are sucked into the hero like a reverse explosion - it's all here. After a few less than great games (*shakes head sadly at Fuse*) the studio is sticking with what it knows it can do and, for the most part, has done it very well.

It does have one thing that Ratchet & Clank didn't have and that's a huge and overly complex upgrade system. Guns level up and can have additional abilities and powers added. The player can bolt on amps for additional combat and movement effects, while there are perks to boost things like damage against certain enemies or Style generation.

'This is a game that tries so hard to please you, but in its desperation to be loved doesn't realise that it's done enough'

There are also seven different currencies to buy outits, guns and abilities. It's very dense and somewhat impenetrable. Many of the additions add very slight alterations, making them feel superfluous to the more impactful unlocks handed out at key progression points. The game can be so chaotic at times that choosing to boost damage against humans over mutants, or increase the Style generated by wall-runs over grinds, can largely be a gamble as you'll have no idea how things will play out or what you'll come up against moment to moment.

You can try to tune things on the fly but that would mean spending half the game in three different sub-menus swapping out various buffs during encounters. With the action so manic and messy it's easy to forget you've got a damage boost against robots you're not using when two factions are attacking, a boss monster's just turned up and you're trying to plan a trampolining path across car roofs mid bounce.

If the combat doesn't let up, neither does the story. Every line's a quip, every character has to wisecrack or wink at the camera. It's packed to bursting with references, continually dry humps the fourth wall and one key character seems to have been given strict instructions to do nothing but 'sassy Samuel L Jackson'. 'What if I...?' 'Jackson.'

There are moments where you can almost hear a little voice in the background: 'Hey, I'm fun aren't I? Look at all this fun. Look at me being fun! Love meee!!'

In among all that din the plot follows a group of survivors in a city after a new energy drink has monsterised all those that drank it. It's a very Dead Rising apocalypse with the people left taking on crazy personas such as Live Action Role Players becoming their characters, or a scout troop in a Japanese museum that go full Lord Of The Flies in Samurai armour.

Characterisation is largely two-dimensional but it has to be because everything moves at such a screaming pace - any attempt at subtlety would be lost like a blur of trees past a train window.

That sheer volume of 'stuff' going past means some of it will hit. We laughed a few times - the hero threatening someone by pointing to the weapons menu as it popped up on-screen was an actual LOL. Some of the best bits come from characters acknowledging they're in a game. Other parts are your-dad-wearing-red-trousers levels of embarrassing - mentions of Reddit feel like forced attempts to be 'cool' by Googling what the word means.

Taste aside both story and gameplay are relentless to the point of being numbing after while. Things improve as you progress, with some great set-pieces adding texture and more varied combat from character progression, but all the things all the time turned up to 11 really can be exhausting.

Even diversions are built from the same core mechanics. Time trials are a welcome break, focusing purely on racing against the clock, but combat side-quests can easily merge into the noise of the main gameplay loop.

What you have here then is a game that tries so hard to please you, but in its desperation to be loved doesn't realise that it's done enough and keeps going. A little more space in the gameplay would let it breathe, a less complicated upgrade system would make choices feel more important, and if any of the characters shut up for five minutes there would be room for laughs.

In among the density and neediness however there's a good game. One that's shamelessly focused on the fun of pinging around a city with an arsenal of ricocheting insanity guns, and so intent on being entertaining that it's endearing even when it doesn't work. There are fantastic moments where everything aligns perfectly, and even when it falls flat through over-effort the basic action is still a rewarding and noisy mess.

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