Polygon: 9
WiredAs a collection of mechanics and ideas, Sunset Overdrive is an impressive evolution of things Insomniac has been doing for a long time. Every part of Sunset Overdrive hooks into every other part somehow, and often in multiple ways, and it makes the whole shooting, grinding, wall-running package better for it. But the best thing about Sunset Overdrive is how it's unabashedly enthusiastic about what it is, in just about every way. That enthusiasm, and the freedom behind it, is contagious.
EGM: 9Finally, a Reason to Buy Xbox One
Game Revolution: 5/5Sunset Overdrive may not be destined to receive the same kind of attention or hype fellow Xbox One releases like Halo: The Master Chief Collection or Titanfall have, but that doesn’t stop it from being one of the most creative, enjoyable, endearing, or satisfying gaming options the console has to offer.
Eurogamer Germany : 9Sunset Overdrive doesn’t take itself seriously, making the action and character of the game stand-out about as much as its vibrant color scheme. Sequences that slightly alter gameplay or offer up a big boss manage to delight beyond most of what’s available on the latest consoles today. If I couldn’t recommend the game to you based on its intense sense of motion or wild enemy and environment design, then I’d say the third-person shooter combat and unique upgrades will do the trick. And I didn’t even have to reference Jet Grind Radio to get the job done
Gaming-Age: A-This is currently the best exclusive the Xbox One has to offer.
Game informer: 9.25Outside of a sluggish opening hour, wherein you might struggle a bit getting used to the controls and traveling mechanics, this is one hell of a console exclusive. It’s bright, loud, and occasionally funny, but more importantly Sunset Overdrive is a ton of fun to play.
Biogamer girl: 9.7Outside of the mission monotony, Sunset Overdrive is an immensely rewarding experience that has a look and style all its own and a great gameplay package to complement it. It’s a colorful return to form for Insomniac games, and a hell of an exclusive for Xbox One.
Slash Gear: YESIn the end, Sunset Overdrive is a beautifully chaotic masterpiece that combines great visuals and soundtrack with uniquely entertaining characters in one of the best storylines to ever appear in a video game. The game's nonstop humor manages to keep even the dullest moments in Sunset Overdrive exciting and players will find that gameplay is insanely addictive with the possibility of becoming one of the OD'd!
Thesixthaxis: 9This game is crazy. It's insane, it's full of itself, and it's very, very loud. Visually and spiritually loud.
Power Unlimited: 96Sunset Overdrive has so many amazing moments that I could just fill this entire review with them. It is hilarious, chaotic, stupid, brash, intelligent, explosive, and empowering, and revels in it at every opportunity. If everyone thought Master Chief would carry the Xbox One’s fortunes, then they’ve got another thing coming.
Gamefront: 9.2Sunset Overdrive is the most fun I've had in a game so far this year. A brilliant combination of all the best parts of other open world games, complimented with really enjoyable traversal mechanics and a unique sense of style and humor.
Joystiq: 5 starsBut honestly, if having a resolution of 900p, a framerate of 30 FPS, and some slight framerate hiccups in rare moments of multiplayer are Sunset Overdrive’s biggest flaws, I think that’s pretty damn good. Fact is, I had more unadulterated fun playing Sunset Overdrive than nearly any other game this year. You can tell that Insomniac had a blast making this game, and that joy transferred directly into me as I bounced on balloons in an amusement park, on to the rails of a rollercoaster, and then rained down explosive hairspray bombs to result in a brilliant orange explosion of goo.
IGN: 9Each of the game's systems feeds into another, making the experience feel complete and purposeful. More importantly, it gives players a plethora of choices in how they look, what weapon they use and how they play, and then makes every single possible combination feel vindicated. Nothing goes to waste in the awesome-pocalypse, and everyone's invited to Sunset City's after-party.
Gamespot: 8Sunset Overdrive is big, gorgeous, and a hell of a lot of fun. Never has getting from point A to point B in an open-world game provided so much enjoyment. It provides some of the most fun, frantic, and fantastic gaming I've had on the Xbox One. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to once-again adorn my wolf mask, leap off the highest ledge I can find, and fire an explosive stuffed animal at that group of angry robots.
We Got This Covered: 4.5/5Insomniac Games has crafted an excellent game in Sunset Overdrive. It's not without a few niggling issues, but you'll be too busy enjoying yourself to care. You can compare it to games like Crackdown, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, and Ratchet and Clank, but by combining the best elements of those games into a single package and injecting it with an anything goes, rock and roll attitude, you'll never think of it as anything but a singular achievement that stands tall on its own merits. It's one of the best games on the Xbox One, and a refreshing shot of merriment.
Shacknews: 8Sunset Overdrive, in my opinion, one of Xbox One's best games to date.
Press-start: 8Sunset Overdrive is a very different kind of game for Insomniac, but it trades well on all the experiences that brought the studio here. Fans will recognize its knack for inventive weaponry and nicely-designed traversal, but the two haven't been joined in this way before. Those elements make this rebellious teen something special that even its sometimes overwrought attitude can't dampen.
Kotaku: Verdict: YESSunset Overdrive is a success for Microsoft. It brings forward one of Playstation’s most celebrated developers who have delivered a game that only Insomniac could create. The game is full of creative brilliance from everything to it's enemies to the insane arsenal of weapons. Customisation goes beyond any game that I’ve ever played. Multiplayer is the skeleton of something that has the potential to become brilliant in the future. I feel that almost anybody will get initial enjoyment form the game, however it’s not clear to me how long that enjoyment will last for. Ultimately some bland, repetitive story missions and lack of punishment may turn some gamers away quickly.
USGamer: 4.5/5That's Sunset Overdrive in a nutshell, too: a series of increasingly frenzied battles set in a bleached-out dreamscape so ornately twisted that it forces you, quite literally, to always think on your feet. It's gameplay carves a deep, particular groove one must learn to fit into for any of it to be fun. But once you find that niche? It can be pretty great.
Metro.co.uk: 7Sunset Overdrive is a welcome change of pace from the dour, serious AAA games we've been playing all year. Insomniac asks "who do you want to be?" with tons of customization options, some great weapons, and a very physical way to get around the city. The game feels a bit light in the content department, but it's undeniably fun.
The escapist: 4/5Shallow, simplistic, and never quite as funny as it thinks it is, but there’s still more energy and imagination at work here than most other new next gen franchises.
Digital Chumps: 9.0While its commitment to madness can be maddening itself, Sunset Overdrive is an energetic, fun-focused adventure. The jokes don't always hit home, but this is a game that loves being a game, and you can't hate that sort of honesty.
Rev3games video review: "Must have if you own Xbox One"In the end, Sunset Overdrive left me profoundly surprised at the strength of its systems. I've liked a lot of Insomniac’s past work, having playing everything from Disruptor to Fuse with plenty of Ratchet and Resistance in-between, but Sunset Overdrive is the first time I’ve felt like they're really out there doing their own thing. Everything else, save maybe Fuse, has been functionally fine and enjoyable, but I've always felt like Insomniac’s riffing on whatever seems hot at the moment. Creating an open world game in a post Grand Theft Auto V world is no easy task, but with Sunset Overdrive they've made something so willfully different than everything else out there, Watch Dogs and Infamous: Second Son among them. Remember when Gears of War changed the game with a fully functional cover system and was subsequently ripped off by every third-person shooter in existence? Sunset Overdrive's devotion to keeping the player in constant motion feels like a similar paradigm shifting moment. With any luck it'll be The Next Big Thing™.
Hardcore gamer: 4 out of 5
Eurogamer: 8There are few games like Sunset Overdrive. It’s a comical, highly diverse shooter that has a strong focus on being fun rather than realistic. While the fetch quests are overly aggressive and the music will occasionally cut out at the oddest of times, there’s still a lot here to love. A well-written script chock-full of fourth wall breaking references, some of the best traversal mechanics available, colorful visuals and a dense world to explore, players will be immersed in this awesome-apocalypse. It’s a shame the campaign doesn’t support full cooperative play, though, as it feels like it could have excelled with it, but the multiplayer component ensures for a decent substitution. All in all, Sunset Overdrive is a breath of fresh air in a stagnant, overpopulated marketplace of gritty shooters.
Digitalspy: 3/5If you wanted to be uncharitable, you could voice the suspicion that a great many baseball caps were turned backwards in the echoing board room where this project was greenlit, but with the campaign done and the city freshly filled with challenges, I don't really feel like being uncharitable. Beneath the glorious tech, and once the writing relaxes a little, Sunset Overdrive's wonderfully lurid and heartfelt - a bit like playing an old 4AD album sleeve. If you get that reference, you'll probably get this, too.
Gamertime.co.uk: 9.4Most annoyingly, Sunset Overdrive overplays its trump card. The traversal options are fun to begin with, but they lose their shine thanks to an enforced over reliance on them. Not a bad game, then, but it does feel like a missed opportunity
Destructoid: 8.5ts hard not to see the things that have influenced this game, whether it be the over riding Tony Hawks Pro Skater feel or the Scott Pilgrim style text pops. There is even a little Infamous and Jet Set Radio thrown in there for good measure but overall, I haven’t played a game that is this much fun for a long time and I can’t see me rating a game higher than this for a long time either. Sunset Overdrive delivers a superbly fun experience and a nostalgic thrown back to how games used to be. Just great fun. This will surely be a console seller for Microsoft and the developers should be proud of what is one of the best games I have ever played.
Gametrailers: 70Sunset Overdrive may have a few flaws inherent to many open-world games and lack an engaging narrative, but it's an incredibly fun, vibrant game that's a nice break from the overly gritty tone we see far too often in today's market. After Fuse, this is exactly what Insomniac Games needed.
Everyeye.it: 78There’s a lot of greatness within Sunset Overdrive, but it’s obfuscated by a lack of difficulty and an aggravating tone. Ultimately, it’s worth dealing with the game’s worst moments to enjoy the many things it does get right. When you’re darting around the world like a ninja in a denim jacket, there’s nothing quite like it. If there is a next time for Sunset City, and hopefully there is, maybe things will come together more smoothly than they have here.
The Guardian :3/5When the "grind&gun" works at its best, Sunset Overdrive is a joy to play, and the time needed to master the controls is well spent. On the other hand, the screenplay can't keep up the pace, offering boring characters and anticlimax, and the characters' growth in strength is slow and weak. Hundreds of collectibles and copycat secondary missions don't add much to the short main story mode: a true shame, since a more balanced offer in terms of gameplay and missions could have made a great exclusive out of Sunset Overdrive.
Videogamer.com: 6Despite these creative flourishes, Sunset Overdrive never quite surpasses the chaotic physics of Just Cause, the coherent style of Blood Dragon or the assured sense of place of GTAV – nor does it manage to draw its story and systems toward a coherent, impactful point. In the end its hero escapes the purgatory of a boring job and successfully wreaks revenge on the judgmental consumers he once served. But the game itself does little to undermine the increasingly over-familiar, open-world establishment, instead quietly celebrating the status quo
gamesided: 6.5In retrospect, however, Sunset Overdrive is a game that doesn't seem to have been able to build out on its initial promise. For every excellent element, there's a poor design choice ready to scupper it all. Even the free and easy traversal is sometimes hampered by the sudden realisation that there's no music playing, nothing driving you to new heights or better combos. Instead there's just deathly silence, often followed by the observation that the world is empty. Multiplayer (see below) is the highlight of the package, but can't rescue a poor campaign.
Gamersyde
v0mitg0d video reviewInfluenced 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.
Metacritic
Jim Sterling
Other times, we get to see genuine cleverness married to a wry observation of videogame design. The nameless protagonist makes fun of NPCs that magically disappear after cutscenes end, or smugly informs allies that even if they die, he/she will be fine and "Just respawn over there somewhere." The self-aware banter is woven so casually into the script that it works a lot better than it should, and once the hero starts complaining about NeoGAF tearing the game apart, you know you're in a world crafted by people who love games maybe a bit too much.
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