
Grinding and bouncing isn’t just your main mode of transport, it’s also your only real advantage in combat. And it all works because it’s built with such purpose. There’s something to leap for or otherwise distract you around every corner. Collectibles and score challenges litter the city in numbers almost equal to your foes. The screen is filled with garish colors and busy environments. But Sunset doubles down on the sensory overload. The result is an action-and-traversal mix that owes some of its best moments to the Dreamcast classic, Jet Set Radio. In order to survive, you’ve got to keep moving. Pause too long to line up a target and you’re quickly overrun by the hordes of enemies. Despite the intuitive maneuvers - grinding is a one-button affair and bouncing is as simple as positioning a crosshair over where you want to land - this is a highly technical game with a by-design learning curve. In your hands, Sunset Overdrive plays like the bastard child of Tony Hawk and Ratchet & Clank, if Johnny Rotten were its godfather. The punk-rock spirit evident in the game’s dynamic soundtrack, which molds and shapes itself according to the tenor of the on screen action, is merely a reflection of the core fun-focused conceit. It’s an empowered end-times scenario, one in which everyone’s been given a chance to seize life by the balls and reinvent themselves in a world that is without rules and social mores. Sunset Overdrive forgoes the grit and filth of recent apocalyptic fictions like The Walking Dead or World War Z. Now it’s just you and a handful of circumstantial friends up against armies of slavering mutants, kill-all-humans FizzCo robots, and masked, gun-toting bandits (or “Scabs,” as they’re called). When a launch party for the new beverage goes awry and guests start transforming into flesh-hungry beasts, you - a put-upon janitor - flee the scene and fall into a survivor role. They were made that way by a toxic energy drink, Overcharge, from FizzCo. The premise: Sunset City is overrun by orange-blooded mutants. Sunset Overdrive is an empowered end-times scenario in which everyone’s been given a chance to seize life by the balls.
