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Sunset Overdrive, from acclaimed studio Insomniac Games, presents itself as a fast-paced shooter which masks its hyper violence with a cartoony style and overblown humour. Insomniac puts a lot of effort into establishing and exploring the game’s universe. While it’s all usually fun, the constant high-octane action means it stops being special after half an hour and becomes just how the game plays. Grinding around, firing rockets at groups of zombies becomes almost a chore. While the game does its best to break it up with mini-games and an almost tower defence-like mode, it still doesn’t do enough to stave off the mundanity that encloses the majority of the gameplay.

One of the main draws of this game is the humour. Sunset Overdrive tries its absolute hardest to joke about everything it can, whether it be some sarcastic remark made by the protagonist or some tongue in cheek meta joke that plays on traditional game tropes. For the most part, the humour ranges from decent to being horrifically awkward and poorly written, the protagonist loses appeal very quickly and the rest of the side characters are some variation of completely insane, rich and spoiled, or the butt of every surrounding joke.

The premise of Sunset Overdrive left Insomniac Games with a game in which anything could be considered acceptable. No matter how wild or nonsensical a mechanic is, it would fit into the universe of Sunset Overdrive. Instead of using that opportunity to have a game that is constantly throwing new mechanics at you to improve the experience, they found one and stuck to it, eventually resulting in the dilution of a fun experience with forced humour and fun gameplay that eventually grows stale.