Why not so serious?
What’s better than jumping around a town, shooting ridiculous weapons at energy drink-induced zombies? Doing all of that, but with 8 other friends.
Sunset Overdrive is a promising, tongue-in-cheek, third person shooter from the team behind the Rachet and Clank series, Insomniac Games. This game is going in a completely different direction than most action games; it’s colorful, unrealistic, and just plain fun. A departure from hiding behind cover and hard-boiled heroes, Sunset Overdrive is creating a different type of apocalypse and it’s not taking itself too seriously…and that’s a good thing. In an interview with Gamespot, Ted Price, CEO and Founder of Insomniac Games, says, “Fun trumps realism in this game…” In true Insomniac fashion, Sunset Overdrive is looking to change up the shooter genre in a fun way. Freedom of movement, appearance, and creative combat are all at the hands of the player. It’s a deviation, perhaps, from what we’ve been playing for the last decade,” Price says. So, what makes it a deviation? Maybe that what we have come to expect from a third-person shooter is completely ignored in what Sunset Overdrive is bringing to the table.
What I find most notable about Sunset Overdrive is the amount of color in its environment. A lot of games recently have a much more muted color palette, but Sunset Overdrive is not afraid to show some true colors. So much so, that whenever you see any part of the world, it just screams “FUN!” and invites you to rampage. I didn’t even think about how little color other recent games titles had until I saw Sunset Overdrive use it so well.
Character customization is just as open and hilarious as the rest of the game. “It’s not just a character, it’s you…,” Ted Price states, “…We allow players to customize their characters however they want…” This includes gender, ethnicity, hair, whatever you want; and players will be able to change it at anytime within the game. You won’t be tied to one character design through one playthrough; allowing players to mix things up on the fly and be whoever they want.
Movement and weaponry is probably the most fantastically outrageous part of Sunset Overdrive; exploding teddy bears, grinding on rails, jumping off of patio umbrellas – Insomniac is taking everything you know about shooters and throwing it out the window. Price continues, “What have we been doing for the past ten years? We’ve been cowering behind cover, right?…We [Insomniac] have made shooters which are cover-based…Our goal was to change things up.”
Sunset Overdrive is indeed going to change things up; in a time of multiple annualized military shooters, Insomniac is bringing a breath of fresh air to the shooter genre and much needed comic relief to all the “down-to-earth” shoot-’em-up games. Not to mention that we will be able to enjoy this quirky, chaotic apocalypse with up to seven other friends! What more could you ask for?
Sunset Overdrive will be coming to Xbox One on October 28, 2014.
Source: Gamespot