We’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: Sunset Overdrive feels like a return to the sunny, arcade inspired skies of Sega’s Dreamcast. Its chunky, colourful visuals, cheery abandonment of realism and narrative logic, and its breathless rhythm all conspire to create a reassuring sense of nostalgia. But more importantly, Sunset Overdrive feels like a proper Insomniac game, a return to form after the studio's first foray away from PlayStation hardware, Fuse, which struggled to find an identity within its generic looks and lacklustre implementation.
The one thing Sunset Overdrive does have in common with Fuse is a focus on co-op. Find one of the photo booths dotted around the city and up to seven other players can join you in a mode called Chaos Squad. This plays out across the same city as the singleplayer campaign, and you get to keep your character, too, but the group votes on which o: the proffered co-op-specific missions to attempt. Each new voting opportunity presents players with two choices: one mission will increase the Chaos level - which equates to higher difficulty and greater rewards - in your world, while the other will provide the team with buffs, ammo or health, but only slightly increase the Chaos level, if it does at all.
A competitive element is introduced by the need to play stylishly in order to bag the best loot. This means staying on the move by grinding across rails, roadside barriers and even phone lines; dealing the most damage to enemies; and even getting to the mission start point first, which brilliantly ensures that the moments after voting always turn into a frenetic dash across the city.
Once you’ve played a handful of co-op missions, the objective switches to Night Defense. Here, you’ll have to protect a base, one of several strongholds located across the islands that make up the game’s Sunset City. The higher the Chaos level you’ve accrued in the previous missions, the more aggressive the waves of enemies that you face will be. As well as your weapons and special abilities (called Amps), you’ll also be able to place traps during a short period of downtime before each wave arrives. Again, the most stylish players will reap the best rewards, and any weapons or items that you win — some of which can only be acquired by playing Chaos Squad - can be taken back into the singleplayer game with you.
But even when you're not playing with friends, Sunset Overdrive's fallen city feels vibrant and alive. The OD’d - the city's former denizens, who have been mutated by an energy drink called Overcharge Delirium XT - are almost everywhere, clambering over street furniture and usually gathering in overwhelming numbers. They'll quickly surround you if you stay still for too long, which not only provides a natural incentive to make use of the various grinding surfaces available, but also adds a real sense of mounting pressure as you leave the relative safety of your base and move out towards objectives. The few quiet alleyways or shaded junctions that you come across seem all the more eerie as a result, especially when you’re rarely more than a few dozen feet from something that wants to give chase.
Even the most basic OD’cl variants will do their utmost to block or disrupt your travel across the city, climbing up onto rails and even scaling buildings to get at you. There’s rarely a clear path open, which means you’ll often have to leap between grind rails when you’re closer to the ground. Up high, it’s less of a problem, but many foes have projectile attacks to make your life more difficult. The Gunkers, for instance, shoot gobs of liquid nitrogen that crystallise on rails and other surfaces, causing damage if you run into them, but also knocking you into the hands of the clamouring crowd of mutants below. The hulking Muggers, meanwhile, can leap huge distances and, if not avoided, will lay into you with large, powerful claws. If you do find yourself back on the ground, you’ll have to contend with Poppers, which run at you and explode when they get close.
The energy-drink-addled population is joined by other enemies, too. Unmutated scavengers called Scabs will defend the areas they occupy and their right to their loot, while at the other end of the scale, FizzCo’s armoured robots prove to be extremely hardy aggressors. And while the OD’d and humans are vulnerable to flaming ammo, FizzCo’s bots will shrug off such crudely Paleolithic attacks, but are extremely vulnerable to energy-based weapons. Since you’ll often be fighting a mix of different enemy types, you'll need to keep switching your weapon as well as your grind trajectory In order to stay effective. A quick tap of LB will switch to the previous weapon you used, making managing this extra layer of strategy easier, while holding the same button will open the weapon wheel and plunge your game into temporary slow motion. While aim assist (and the distance you need to be from items to scoop them up) is more generous while grinding, you can hold the left trigger to slow yourself down further for particularly tricky shots. The right bumper, meanwhile, gives you a short boost to make traversing the large city a little quicker.
Beyond simply jumping, bouncing on cars and grinding, there’s a range of advanced traversal moves to master, which will help you with navigation and crowd control. Pressing X while grinding on a cable or suspended rail allows you to Undergrinc, hanging by a hook and avoiding any enemies in your path, but tap A right after switching back and you’ll leap a little higher than normal. You can also Smash Bounce by hitting A immediately after a ground smash, which will send you shooting back up into the air — particularly useful for attacking a group of enemies and returning to your rail perch before they can retaliate. The height you'll leap to from any springy object (known as Bouncies in the game) is also multiplied by hitting A at the right time, and the longer you fall before you bounce, the higher you’ll go.
Every move, mechanic and architectural flourish in Sunset Overdrive is there to amplify the simple pleasure of travelling through a world with ease and style. But like greats such as Bayonctta, which has similar grace, there's satisfying depth to be tapped beyond the accessible basics. Your first few journeys will be defined by a staccato rhythm as you adjust to a world that never wants you to stop, but after an hour cr two of acclimatisation, you’ll will feel exactly how Insomniac wants you to: unstoppable. Perhaps that momentum will also translate to its host hardware. Taken together, Sunset Overdrive’s riotous spin on open-world action and Forza Horizon 2’s similarly colourful — and arcade-infused — open-world racing could be the shot in the arm that Xbox One so desperately needs.