1. The story: (Spoilers)
The story of Sunset Overdrive is that "Fizzco" has made a new product, the energy drink/soft drink called "Overcharge" and are having a launch party in prestigious "Sunset city." Which is kind of a rave. The player character, while picking trash up at the rave, is caught off guard by a man coughing and barfing. Turns out he's been infected by something and is becoming a demon flesh zombie thing. While escaping and hunkering down at home, the player character beats up a bunch of these creatures.
A couple of weeks pass with the player stuck in their house until the OD break in, Plot armor enacted, they are saved by Walter, who is an old man. It's a tutorial mission and following it we learn more and more about what the Overcharge did and how it does it. Namely: Fizzco put nanobots of some sort into it. This puts people's Endocrine systems into "Overdrive" and makes them monsters the game simply calls "Overcharge drinkers" or "OD" for short. In the wake of this madness, Many factions have come to be of the humans, the only one really threatening to you is the Scabs, who are basically just modern bandits. The last enemy faction is the company Fizzco itself, which has a robot army and blocked the city off from the rest of the world, so the outside thinks a virus got loose and killed everyone.
The story from thereon is basically just the player helping people over and over again in attempts to get out of the city and make buds with new faction after new fiction. Including, and I am not kidding with any of them, a scout troop in samurai armor, a bunch of college kids hiding in a low-rent Chuck E. Cheese, a large group of LARPers, and a gang of Roller derby Calavera ninja chicks. It's awesome.
The plots of the DLC expansions are that the leader of the Scout Troop from earlier and one of the college kids have found out the locations of people who mean the world to them. The troop leader's sister is on the massive oil rig just on the city's bay, and the kid has found two of his teachers at Fizzco robotics. Simple enough reasons to go to those places. The results are thus: There are only OD for one mission at the robot factory because it's sealed off and no scabs at all, there are no robots on the "Mooil" (Moe-oil) rig, the "Scabs" on the rig actually think YOU are a scab. in the corporate sense, come to the rig to take a job or two from them, and the OD have aquatic features like fins and such.
Where the story fails though, is where it pokes holes in itself. For example, there are some OD that are MASSIVE. Like Herkers, who have Power shovel scoops for one of their hands. Or Spawners who keep generating OD from the Dumpsters on their backs. We see later how these things MIGHT have happened when (Spoilers) The first leader of the scout troop, Norton, drinks some Overcharge on top of a statue, the stuff spills and Norton becomes an OD dragon thing... So in that spirit, how many sloppy drinkers were at the rave? How many drank at the two or three construction sites in Sunset city? What about the blowers who all just have a leaf blower for an arm and that kinda thing? Where do the flyers and "Gunkers" come from? How many tarps were there at the party or post it? And post it, unless desperate enough to want to die a monster, who would drink it? Simple questions that throw it all off, ya dig? Especially when the game asks things like this itself.
The game is also too gamey with no explanation. As Yahtzee put it "Because it is a video game" is where some of your abilities like grinding on rails even when barefoot comes from. It's just... "You can do it." Basically. The game explains where your power ups come from, but not these starting ones.
Also, WHY DOES MONEY DO ANYTHING ANY MORE? There are multiple currencies in the game, that's just how it is. We'll get to it in game play. There are story reasons for it all though... Sans 2. Namely, Overcharge, which you use to buy guns from a guy who makes them, Two Hat Jack. What does he do with it? On top of that, there's Calista. A woman who only takes money for cosmetics... Society in this city has collapsed. WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH THE MONEY, YOU CRAZY LADY!? Then there's Floyd, who sells you "Amps" Which Amplify your abilities, Many collectibles in the game serve as the way you buy these things, though he explains why he explains all but one of them, the DLC ones, and we CAN ignore those.
Side note: Overcharge is Supposed to be this Energy drink... But if that's the case, Why the heck am I picking up 24-cases of this stuff? And how are there 2-liter bottles of it? Is this a soft drink too? I have no clue.
2. Graphics/Aestetic:
The is technically pretty good. The OD look like fleshy monsters made of disease, as they should. The skin looks okay but the hair looks overdone in some styles because they've tried to do individual strands while not QUITE having it down so it looks sparse... and too thick to be hair? That's the easiest way to explain it. The Particle effects are solid and the fire is passable. BUT the water is just blue. Just Blue. No reflections but it does ripple against surfaces and when you glide across it. That good stuff.
The game is trying for a cartoony aesthetic, very bright and colorful and somewhat exaggerated, but there is one problem, They try to exaggerate human faces just a little with some people and it's just a trifle on the uncanny side. the character Floyd's a good example. His face has this roundness to it that works until you get to his cheek bones... they're too definite. That is a consistent problem. They go for this cartoony roundness to a lot of things and thin just suddenly give the faces lines they don't need. This is probably a style thing, bust it just doesn't look good.
3. Gameplay:
The game is fun. There isn't another way to put it. To me it's fun and chaotic and nutty. See, you have an unbelievable range of movement. Like I said, you can bounce on cars and bushes and stuff, you can grind on rails, run on walls, dash through the air, do rolls. All that shwack. The game incentivizes this, in fact by making the player's walking speed slow and enemies REALLY darn fast and accurate enough, on top of that, you have this "Style" meter that fills the more flipping, grinding, bouncing and killing you do that augments your character gradually. So you're constantly moving to keep the meter up and the enemies off you.
You have some.... interesting choices for combat. You have your melee weapon, just in case you feel like pausing your grind just to smack smack someone or when you basically dive off the rail and cave in their skull. And then you have the guns. Theguns. This is Insomniac, people. I.E. The Resistance and Ratchet and Clank people. If they messed the guns up here, they've screwed up royally... And they didn't.... (For the most part) The guns in this game are interesting and weird as all get out, only three that I've played with are any measure of bad. The "High fidelity" Which shoots Records, the things bounce around but they're REALLY weak. They don't do much damage and it's important to have stuff that does loads in games like this. There are also a pair of deployable weapons that I honestly don't like. The "Acid sprinkler" which turns the game's Mascot Fizzie into a garden sprinkler that sprays acid on enemies, and the Turret Copter. The copter is better because you don't have to constantly orbit around it. The sprinkler, you have to stay near so idiots walk into it, the copter has SOME range. But both are stationary. Otherwise, the guns are awesome. There's a flaming shotgun, a regular shotgun, a laser rifle, a gun that shoots a cloud of Microbots, a gun that shoots teddy bear bombs, cluster bombs made of hair spray cans, it goes on. A lot of these weapons are really cool.
Helping that a bit, we have the "Style" meter. The higher your style (Achieved through combos, I.E. kills, unbroken chains of travel changing) The more powerful you become with the implementation of "amps". Amps are... "Amplifiers" of course. And you can get a TON with some of the collectibles. The collectibles in question are achieved through out but are in specific spots so you have to use one method of traversal to get them. You have to pole swing to get toilet paper, under grind for shoes, wall run for the holographic signs, shoot the cameras to collect the lenses, and bounce for the Fizzie balloons. The game explains why you need them, but it's too wordy for me, the long and short of it that those can be used for new amps. You earn "Badges" for stuff. Traversal, kills of the enemy factions, what weapon type you use, that shwack. These badges unlock "Overdrives" which are like amps, but for the character, where amps are just for the guns, the higher your style, the more of your overdrives become active, turning you from an adequate killing machine into a death god.
There's a story explanation for the handful of night-time missions in SO, basically, there are these vats of Overcharge you have to protect to get new amps. This introduces traps, which you need to lay down because the OD really want more overcharge for some reason. But these are fun missions, varied locations and paths around them help out, they really do.
So yeah... Lotta things. The last things to go over would be the guns leveling up as you use them, taken from RAC and Resistance, and the challenges... Which can be total nonsense. Lemmie try to explain something, the game itself, it moves fast. It's like a rollerskate tith Jet engines on the wheels. The character moves quick as well, but some of the challenges demand pixel perfection in a game that isn't all that concerned with it otherwise. You have auto-targeting for your single shot guns a lot of the time. Meanwhile, in these race challenges, where you go through literal hoops, mess up one time with a control scheme built for paintball and not painting, and you loose gold, the only way to get overcharge when the game's story ends, I.E. The only way to buy new guns and ammo. Which is insane. "Oh, just get better." A controller is only SO responsive, okay? When you have these stupid rings so close together that you have to have ended an under-grind the split second you have a ring by immediately flipping to a top grind, I.E. something the controller ins't responsive enough for all the time, you are hosed.
4. The little things:
Your character is fully customizable, but with some restrictions, yes you can dress in crazy fun ways, but the faces are from a list of presets and I HATE when games do that. You also have two voices to pick from, male and female, Played by Yuri Lowenthal and Stephanie Lemelin respectively. She does the better job. There's another problem: You can't make too many normal outfits. That's a silly thing to say, I know, but pretty much every article of clothing is it's own level of absurd.
Chaos Squad is the online portion of the game. Basically, it's night defense but longer, with more OD, and more players, all of whom must work as a team. Didn't get to play it, no Xbox gold membership. But it's the only way to get some outfits and a weapon called the "Propain launcher" (King of the hill anyone?)
The DLC isn't that bad, there are three packs and a season pass that gets you five bucks off the whole thing but the preorder skins and the like were stupid, I don't have them, but those were a thing. And as a semi-completionist, that bugged me.
The soundtrack is okay if you like punky rock stuff.
The Voice acting is solid but cringe worthy. They break the forth wall too much, or they just go "Game logic, lulz." a few times too many, looses the impact, you know?
Here's what I said I'd get to, the game IS trying too hard. "To do what?" you ask. To be Saint's Row 4. Look at it: Super powers, very little, if any, cares to it's name, Crazy weapons, chaotic gameplay, It's trying to be SR4... Which is weird because it only came out a year prior to this. So coincidence? Maybe. But that stuff falls apart here because this is a new IP. SR had this "Ramp it up" ethic for the games prior, this one's starting the Micheal Bay movie with the climactic fight and then keeping it going for several hours. Which is fun, sure, but they're overdoing it. In SR, you could stop, look around, see the world for what it is. Here, you don't move enough and get killed.
5. Final thoughts and verdict:
FT: The game is fun, get it if you have an Xbox. But mute the TV and put your own music on. Great ideas, overall quality, but needs more polish and love.
Verdict: Deserves a sequel.