Total Overdose Hands-On - Smash the Stash

Eidos recently stopped by to show off a playable version of Total Overdose, its upcoming third-person action game for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox. In the game, you play a young Mexican-American named Ramiro Cruz. You're an ex-con who's the son of a DEA agent on the trail of the drug lords who framed and murdered your father. From the single level that Eidos showed us, the game's core mechanics seem to marry Max Payne with Grand Theft Auto, resulting in fun-to-watch action that's easy to pull off.

The level shown to us, called Smash the Stash, required us to destroy a large fertilizer tower inside a farm. The first order of business was to take out the four smaller drums that fed into the large tower. But before we could do that, we had to get to the farm to infiltrate it. Finding a car was a relatively simple task, as the mission started us off near a gas station. Dispatching the few attendants was a simple task with the handgun we started off with (though we quickly netted shotguns and a rifle).

The game has a very generous auto-aim, so as long as you're looking in the general direction of a target and are within range of the weapon in hand, you'll see a red crosshair on the enemy, indicating that your shots will hit. If you're carrying a sawed-off shotgun or a handgun, the range of the auto-aim is much shorter than if you're holding a rifle, which will target enemies much farther away.

The Max Payne influence comes in when you hit the left trigger while you're in combat. This initiates a slow-motion shoot-dodge move, which lets you take down multiple enemies while jumping to either side or to the front or back. If you can kill a lot of enemies in a short period of time with some style, the game will respond with some silly but potentially offensive messages, like "Loco move!" and "Gringo frenzy!" The game will also reward you periodically with health bonuses for particularly nice combination kills, encouraging you to be a little more reckless as you wade into a group of enemies.

The shoot-dodging in Total Overdose changes contextually if you're standing next to a solid wall. Doing so will let you walk up the wall and flip upside down as you slow down time, much the same way that Keanu Reeves' character did in the famous lobby scene of The Matrix. It's not any more useful than a regular shoot-dodge, but it looks kinda cool.

The farm in the Smash the Stash level was of a fairly good size, so thankfully there were a lot of cars and trucks scattered around that could be used to get from place to place. The level also included some mazelike hedgerows and lots of scattered buildings that you could enter and explore. The best part of the level was making our way over to the last steel drum, which required us to slide down a high wire connecting a water tower and a garage.

The overall feel of Total Overdose was somewhat lighthearted...at least as lighthearted as shooting someone in the face could be. We're eager to see more of the game as development continues. Stay tuned to GameSpot for more details on Total Overdose as they arrive.