Steam: Mutants, teddy bear grenades & Punk – bizarre RPG now just $4
Sunset Overdrive offers a wildly different take on open-world action RPGs. It’s bold, chaotic and bursting with color. The apocalypse here isn’t caused by zombies or nuclear fallout, but by a botched energy drink launch. FizzCo rushed its new product, "OverCharge Delirium XT," to market – and it ended up turning people into grotesque mutants known as the OD’d. In this offbeat disaster, you play a nameless former janitor who’s now fighting to survive with home-built weapons and a healthy dose of sarcasm. Along the way, you’ll cross paths with oddball factions like gamer kids, scout troops who live by a samurai code and ex-LARPers who’ve crowned themselves knights. The game leans hard into satire, constantly poking fun at itself and gleefully breaking the fourth wall.
Instead of realistic cover-based shooting, Sunset Overdrive puts the spotlight on fast-paced movement, stylish combat and total freedom. You’ll grind on power lines, leap across rooftops, run along walls and chain everything together into flashy kill combos. The weapons are just as wild as the action – like the “TNTeddy,” a teddy bear grenade launcher, or “High Fidelity,” which fires vinyl records at enemies. The more creatively you fight and keep moving, the more powerful your abilities and effects become. Your goal? Save the city – or at least make a spectacular getaway. On Xbox One, you can also jump into the co-op “Chaos Squad” mode, though sadly it’s not available on PC.
Reviews: Stylishly chaotic with minor weaknesses
The German website 4Players.de reviewed Sunset Overdrive and praised its arcade-style gameplay, which blends shooting, skating and jumping into a seamless, high-energy experience. The imaginative level design, packed with bizarre characters and quirky missions, keeps things fresh throughout. According to the testers, the game’s self-aware humor and punchy punk soundtrack perfectly match the chaos on screen. Memorable boss battles, amusing respawn animations and deep customization options round out the package.
Some criticism was directed at Sunset Overdrive for its repetitive mission structure. Reviewers also noted that the controls take some getting used to and that weapon balancing isn’t perfect. Visually, the game shows occasional rough edges, like pop-in and blurry backgrounds. Still, it earned a strong overall score of 8.5/10 from 4Players. On Steam, the response is even more positive, with 90% of roughly 10,000 user reviews being favorable. Over on Metacritic, critics gave it a solid 83, while the User Score stands at 7.4.
80% discount on Steam
Sunset Overdrive was developed by Insomniac Games with support from Blind Squirrel Games and released by Xbox Game Studios in November 2018. Normally priced at around $20, the game is currently available for just $4 thanks to an 80% discount during the Xbox Game Studios Publisher Sale, running until May 8 – a solid deal for fans of offbeat action. According to SteamDB, this is the first time since March 2023 that the game has dropped to this price.
Disclaimer: Notebookcheck is not responsible for price changes carried out by retailers. The discounted price or deal mentioned in this item was available at the time of writing and may be subject to time restrictions and/or limited unit availability.
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