00:00.00 Dave Hello everybody. My name is Dave Jackson and you're listening to tales from the backlog. This is a video games review podcast where each week I'm joined by a guest to bring a game out of the backlog, play it and discuss. My guest today is a friend of the show streamer youtuber and parkour punk rocker Goohi welcome. 00:21.18 Goohi Thank you, Thank you? Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to talk about this game. I was so excited to be able to revisit this game. Um, it's just such a. It's such an amazing experience and I feel like this game was so underrated. 00:34.56 Dave Yeah, absolutely, it's great to have you on the show. It's good to meet you for the first time and today we are going to talk about a game that I feel like is not really talked about a whole lot anymore. So I'm pumped that that game is sunset overdrive. 00:35.33 Goohi Ah, super stoked to be talking about it with you today? yeah. 00:50.27 Dave It is an action game developed by insomniac games and published by Microsoft Studios for Xbox one and pc in 2014 we're to see an xbox exclusive insomniac game in this day and age that was a trip for me. 01:06.55 Goohi Yeah, for sure. Um I mean we're seeing games like ratchet and clank now. Ah more recently and those remakes of those games although done really really well are PS 5 exclusives so it is definitely different. It's a change of pace. 01:17.35 Dave Yeah, yeah, spider man games and stuff but cool that I could play an insomniac game on game pass. So um, if you are listening and you have not played sunset overdrive. This is kind of another unique-ish episode. We usually do no spoilers sections and then like that spoiler wall and then full spoilers after that this game has a story like by definition. There is a story in the game but there is really nothing of substance in the story that can be spoiled. It's more like a carnival of ah. Events that happen like there. There is no possible way that I think you can get spoiled on this game so we're not going to do the spoiler section in this. We're going to try to keep it as general in the podcast anyway, just because I don't want to talk shop too much for people who haven't played the game. But we are not going to like to dance around like hey this is what this boss in late game looks like we're not going to dance around that because even if you hear it experiencing it in this game is something completely different. So that's what we're doing today. Um, yeah, awesome. 02:28.42 Goohi Definitely definitely going to keep the spoilers light on my end as well. 02:31.57 Dave So we will start the show as always with elevator pitches in case people don't know what Sunset overdrive is. I say Grind wall Run bounce vault and grind. 02:44.74 Goohi Um I was just the same. It's the same gist just keep moving as my elevator pitch. Oh yeah, oh yeah. 02:49.00 Dave Oh yeah, absolutely we should probably throw like a shot in there somewhere. But yeah, it's all about moving and shooting. Um, this game. I played on pc game pass like I said before I just played this for the first time. It took me 14 hours to play the main game and both dlcs are included in the version that's on game pass at the time of recording here. Ah, so where did you play this and how long does a playthrough take you. 03:19.64 Goohi I played when it originally came out. I can't tell you how long it took me the first time but when I played through it again. Kind of focusing a little bit more on getting the game done. Um, so I definitely could have taken a little bit more time to grab all the collectibles and stuff but it took me 10 hours to beat the main story and then two extra hours on the dlcs. 03:35.16 Dave Yeah, so like it's right in that sweet spot I think I like. I want more games that are like 5 to 15 hours long and this game's right in that sweet spot. You can have your full experience and not have it. Take up like an entire month of game time or something. 03:56.90 Goohi Ah, those longer experiences like I like to incorporate valhalla because it's probably 1 of the longest most time committing games that I've ever attempted to be I have not been. 04:01.81 Dave Oh yeah. 04:11.52 Goohi Um, but yeah, long long games are wonderful and it's really exciting to get into those because you're like yes this is going to take ah you know a good amount of my time I have something to do on my off time and everything like that but a little bit of a palette cleanser in between with these short and sweet games that are just fun. Um, it is definitely encouraged for me. I Love that. 04:30.49 Dave Yeah, absolutely like I'm no stranger to long games either. I just recently beat Baldur's gate 3 all hundred hours of that but it is nice to get a like you said a palette cleanse so ah, speaking of. What about sunset overdrive first appealed to you. The first time you played it. You said you played it at release. So what was interesting about it and then tell us your history with this game in particular. 04:54.41 Goohi I actually didn't know anything about it until I got it so when I bought the Xbox it came as one of those bundle packs I believe it was this game and also maybe like a forza or something another Xbox exclusive and I figured I'd play it because it was quote unquote free. It came with the Xbox. 05:11.11 Dave Yeah. 05:14.30 Goohi Within about an hour of playing the game though I knew it was going to be a favorite I fell in love with the game. Um, it was an arcade game that I didn't know I needed. I had been playing games like at the time I was playing alien isolation and a shadow of mordor. 05:25.60 Dave Sufficient. 05:30.38 Goohi 2 games that take themselves very very seriously and are completely different genres so it was nice and nice. Refreshing. Um break from a game that takes itself very seriously to a game that. 05:42.46 Goohi Intended to be there to have fun and I just had you know a smile from ear to ear as I was playing through this um and experiencing all the funnies and and the gameplay the fast-paced gameplay and everything like that replaying it recently? um because you know we were doing this podcast I was like let me get a refresher because I don't know what the game. 06:00.98 Goohi You know you get your memory butchers. A lot of what a game was, especially if it came out ten years ago. Um, but it reminded me of what I loved about this game and I was surprised that it aged well. 06:03.87 Dave Yeah. 06:11.94 Dave Yeah, yeah, um, before you played it did you have any other experience with Insomniac stuff before that like a ratchet and clank or something like that. 06:22.70 Goohi Um I grew up on adventure games like that I grew up on crash Bandicoot ratchet and clank um my parents were ah one of the few that didn't allow me to play and for mature games so I was pretty much exclusively playing games like ratchet and clank and. 06:32.89 Dave Um, oh yeah. 06:37.27 Goohi And crash bandicoot and all those adventure types. What is another one? um Jack and daxter. Um, yeah, so those games I definitely grew up on so this was a welcome addition to those types of games that I had straight away from since I was able to play other games that were rated m. 06:38.61 Dave Oh yeah, yeah. 06:54.49 Dave Um, yeah. 06:55.70 Goohi Definitely went on a binge with the gtas and the call of duties after I turned 17 So yeah, this was a welcome addition to the genre. 07:03.12 Dave Yeah, the contrast I guess between playing this and then alien isolation like I don't think you could pick 2 opposite more opposite games to play back to back. So. 07:16.60 Goohi To be fair alien isolation gave me anxiety it was. It was not a relaxing I want to kick back and enjoy my day type of game. It was ah okay I'm really enjoying it but you know holy shit I'm terrified at Twenty four seven as I played. 07:31.20 Dave Yeah. 07:33.34 Goohi This came so it was definitely a palate cleanser with that. 07:37.52 Dave Yeah, absolutely ah for myself so I had an xbox 3 60 and I never got the Xbox one I kind of skipped that generation. Um, and. So I'd never heard of this game. It came out in two 14 but I didn't have the console it came out for I also didn't have a pc so I never heard about it and ah the first time I heard about this game was one hi-fi rush got revealed and suddenly everyone was on Twitter and stuff being like this looks like sunset overdrive and I was like this looks like sunset. What. 08:09.14 Goohi Yeah. 08:10.40 Dave So I looked it up in what I saw that name insomniac I was like oh shit insomniac made this they make good games so I should probably like keep my eye on this and then I got a pc eventually I got game pass sunset overdrives on game pass and then ah friend of the show Jared from play along podcast picked this for me to play on their kind of side series. They do where they bring on a guest. Each person recommends a game to each other that they've never played. They call it get wrecked and Jared recommended sunset overdrive to me. I recommended Stranger of paradise final fantasy origin to him and if anyone's interested. You can listen to that episode on the play along podcast to find out about our thoughts about both of those games but that was really what got it out of the backlog for me was Jared being like alright Dave You 're playing sunset overdrive. And then as you know the show goes I can't really play a game that's like 15 hours long and then not do a podcast about it on this show. I don't have enough time to just not do that so we put it on this show. We got gooey on the show today. Ah little opening thoughts here about. Sunset overdrive. Um, first of all before I get into anything else. You want a game that is just fun to play and move around in and shoot stuff that is sunset overdrive. super super fun satisfying game to do the parkour and grinding and. 09:42.51 Dave Bouncing and you know ground pounding and shooting and all of that stuff. It's really really good. I think this game is a little bit too long and there's some game design things that started to wear thin but every time I started to get really tired of playing a game because I did get into that mode where I was like. Man This game's still going huh every time I started to feel that way you would get like a really creative boss fight or a mission that was pretty funny or something like that that would pull me back in so I did end up of course finishing the game on the strength of that. Top level opening thoughts here. Oh and ah aesthetics like visuals and music are Fantastic. What would you say just at the top of the show opening thoughts. 10:30.36 Goohi Um I wish I could have erased my memory and experienced this game just fresh Again, It's one of those games that like really surprises you with the amount of charm that it can bring to the table because of you know how much detail and insomniac as ah as a development studio has always done this with their games. But. 10:48.34 Goohi I Think they did it in a more mature way with this one. They were really straying away from it being a kids game so it was really nice to see comedic things injected in there in the Insomniac fashion. But for adults the story isn't anything revolutionary and I don't think it tries to be. It's simple. 10:51.24 Dave Yeah, yeah. 11:08.29 Goohi Sets itself up to make you laugh while also being really aware of the fact that it's you're playing a video game. The story itself knows that this is great. But unfortunately the game doesn't completely stray away from feeling repetitive at times like you mentioned. 11:23.68 Goohi Gameplay is a nice addition to the experience. It can be simple and to the point or you can dedicate time to flushing out the mechanics and the weapons to tailor the experience a little bit more to your liking and of course I want to talk about the setting really. 11:39.69 Goohi It's the cherry on Top. It has a lot of memorable Landmarks, detailed world design and it's got.. It's got an excellent use of vibrant colors I Really really thoroughly enjoyed just. You know, zipping and bouncing and grinding and looking around in the aesthetics of the world. It's super super satisfying. Yes, this is going to be a reoccurring topic for sure. 11:58.21 Dave Yeah, Grind wall Run bounce vault and grind for sure. Um, yeah, exactly. So we are going to take a little music break and then when we come back, we will set up the story of Sunset overdrive. 12:14.51 Dave Music sunset overdrive takes place in the year Twenty Twenty seven very cool I mean in 2014 it may have seemed like the not so distant future I always love when video games do this when it's like oh and we're taking place in the the distant future we're going to have all of these cool things and then that's three years from now. 12:34.27 Dave So This is what we can look forward to in the future. Um, it takes place in Sunset City where you play as an employee of the fizzco corporation and you create a character. It's a pretty fun character creator I think. This is a really goofy game so they give you a bunch of goofy clothes and haircuts and stuff like that to give your dude like I had like a nice like white tank top Hawaiian shirt combo on my character with a pompadour haircut. It's ah it's a good time. 13:06.31 Goohi Yeah, um I had the ah I think I had a mohawk I don't know something that I wouldn't normally do in a game and some short shorts and you know a tank top it. Yeah, it's definitely something where and you know I was surprised by the variety of the outfit choices as well. 13:09.64 Dave Um, yeah. 13:21.24 Goohi I didn't. I didn't remember how many outfit choices there were and if you're into that personally I could look like a bag of trash in any game and be totally content with it. But it is a nice addition for people that do enjoy collecting different outfits and really making. Their character looks unique throughout the entire experience. 13:36.88 Dave Yeah, for sure you can pick male or female for your character. The voice actors are for the female voice. It's Stephanie Lemmelin I hope I'm saying that correctly and a male voice Yuri Lowenthal Famous Insomniac voice collaborator. So. Your nameless character by the way your character is nameless. You don't give them a name and in the game they comment on the fact that your character doesn't have a name. I forget what they call you. They just call you like a player character or something like that whenever a name should pop up or something. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. 14:09.54 Goohi Player One yeah is something like that. 14:15.65 Dave Um, your character begins kind of on the run as these um people that are consuming this energy drink from Fizzco turn into zombies overnight like they drank too much. Something's wrong with the drink. Ah, so they turn into zombies and the opening of the game shows your character at Work. You're a janitor for the corporation and shit hits the fan and you run away and then the story is on Basically after that like. Again, This is why we're not doing a spoiler section.. There's not a lot of plot to the story like you just go from place to place meeting different groups of survivors and you're going to take it to the corporation. That's what the story is and that kind of fits in with the tone of the game too like this. Ah, we're punk rock and we're going to stick it to the corporation here. 15:08.40 Goohi For sure for Sure. They do have a lot of memorable characters throughout the story. But I 100% agree I mean it starts with let's get out of here and then it ends with let's Stay. So. You're like excuse me like what? What do you mean?? Let's stay. Let's get out of it. There's no point in trying to follow the plot but it is definitely an experience trying to figure out what you're going to see next. I think that was the most exciting part of the game. 15:37.72 Dave Yeah, um, different. Let's see if we have a group of characters. That's like a group of larpers who've set up like their own role playing Kingdom and this is like. It is like the zombie apocalypse but it's all in like a goofy comedic tone in this game like this is the least gritty Zombie Apocalypse Story that's ever been told so you meet like the larpers you'll meet like the. 16:04.70 Dave Ah, like the group of cheerleaders or something that have like Mexican day of the dead face paint and stuff. It's a real smorgasbord of weirdos that you meet so much when you're talking about memorable characters for sure. Lots of those. 16:18.43 Goohi The guy who likes to make entertainment out of everything I don't know if you remember him he's up in the tree. He's got this gut. He's like hey I want to film you doing crazy stuff. 16:30.11 Dave Oh yeah, yeah. 16:34.30 Goohi Is another memorable event. It's cool and the introduction to each character they do the same thing that borderlands did with their boss fights where they do the cool you know, freeze frame and zoom in and you get to see the character name that I love when. 16:42.65 Dave Yeah. 16:49.28 Goohi When games do that I get a little giddy feeling inside when I see that game. 16:53.19 Dave Yeah, this game does a lot of that stuff visually , like when you meet a new character or when a boss fight comes up. They'll do that splash screen with like ah you know real stylized it shows their name and stuff like that. It's also got a bunch of real comic bookie stuff like as you play. Um, you hit something and an enemy There's enemies called poppers and when they pop it will say pop up in the air or something like that. Um real real comic bookie vibe on top of the other stuff which I'll talk about in a second the punk rock side of things. 17:27.30 Goohi Yeah, for sure I wanted to see more of that. But I noticed that they added a little bit more of those types of animations in the Dlcs. I don't know if you kind of paid attention to that. I wanted to see more of that in the main game. But obviously you know they weren't going to. Make updates to it at the time . It's such an old game now but it was nice and refreshing to see that they did put more of those types of details within the dlc. 17:52.15 Dave Yeah, yeah, the dlc probably just had like more of that concentrated stuff because they are shorter and like there's ah, there's more jokes. There's more fighting. There's more everything in the dlc's um, like we said this game has. 18:04.85 Goohi Um, yeah, yeah for sure. 18:09.83 Dave Ah, we restart that. So like we said this game doesn't really have a plot that you're Following. It's more about moving from one group of weirdos and bosses to the next group of weirdos and bosses. So It's kind of more about this consistent vibe and tone throughout it. There's that Comic Bookie Goofy Meta side of it like the humor is really meta um about video games and pop culture and stuff like that like this game has so many references to like. How video games work and like open world rpgs and stuff like that like your character will say stuff like well you don't have a floating icon over your head. So How important are you really stuff like that? Um, that stuff was pretty funny. They don't do it too often for it to get old I think. 19:03.42 Goohi They definitely hit the sweet spot with the fourth wall breaking and references they do it enough to where you put a smile on your face here and there but it's not like okay I get it. 19:17.25 Dave Yeah. 19:18.89 Goohi I get it. You're a video game So it's definitely ah in the sweet spot for all of the comedic. They have good comedic timing which I think insomniac has done really really well throughout their entire library of games. 19:27.69 Dave Lots of pop culture references in the game too which kind of date the game back in 2014. There's a lot of breaking bad references very early in the game where I was like oh ok so. We've had like 4 breaking bad references in the first two hours. Is this just going to be like this the whole time? It wasn't but um, there are a lot of those references throughout the game. So your mileage will vary. I guess like how funny you think those are but I think their writing is good enough that most of those land. 20:01.30 Goohi Oh yeah, for sure and I um I mean I don't we don't know each other too well but I have like the worst ah knowledge of pop culture just in general like unless it's a Spongebob reference or a Shrek reference I usually goes right over my head. So. I'm sure I missed a lot of references but the video game references I think were the most impactful to me when they ah 1 of them that comes to mind is when he's talking to somebody and they are having him do you know different things and he's like oh the rule of 3 because usually when you do ah. 20:21.37 Dave Yeah. 20:31.96 Dave Man. 20:36.66 Goohi Quest you have to do whatever it is 3 times and they know their audience when it comes to that type of stuff so they hit the mark on those things as far as other other pop culture references and stuff like that I'm sure I missed a billion of them. 20:49.66 Dave Yeah there's a lot and it wouldn't surprise me if there was like a Spongebob or something like that reference around like you do fight a giant sea creature at one time. So I'm sure I'm sure there is something the other kind of side of this game's tone is like I mentioned before. I think Punk Rock is a big influence on the game's writing on the game's soundtrack on the characters that you meet. There's a lot of like irreverent. You know jokey slacker like. Stick it to the man type of attitude in the game especially from your main character who is just like a sarcastic joker asshole. Basically. 21:37.98 Goohi That's a great way to describe it. Yeah sarcastic Joker Asshole but like in the lovable sarcastic Joker asshole. 21:57.80 Dave Ah, right? Yeah, your main character is like this is another thing that I guess like I would be kind of picky about like this is a thin line to walk like video games trying to be funny is tough I think like there's a lot of games. For me personally Borderlands is one of these where it's just too much I can't take it and there's a lot of games that like to try to be funny or do comic relief and it's just like not as good for whatever reason there's maybe there's something about. Interactivity and video games or like the quality of writing in a lot of video games that just doesn't hit the same level of comedy that a Tv show might or something like that. Ah, but I think sunset overdrive does it pretty well and I think it really starts with your main character. He's where or she. Is where a lot of those meta references come from a lot of those pop culture references or just commenting on like the people you meet how people treat each other like the ridiculous situations that you get in but also having like this like I said like. Fuck the man type of you know attitude or in this game specifically fuck this corporation I mean obviously fuck them because they ruined the world in this story but also like that's probably how he felt before the game started to. 23:16.30 Goohi Yeah. 23:24.27 Goohi Yeah, you can tell the tone is definitely set from the beginning where you know your character is I believe that picking up trash and they're not doing it enthusiastically. They are not enjoying their job. Ah by any means So this whole end of the world thing is almost a. 23:28.55 Dave Yeah now. 23:41.53 Goohi And this is a theme that I feel goes not only with your character but with every character that you meet everybody has a fresh start. It's not like everyone's lives were amazing before the you know end of the world per se or end of this town because I dont they don't really reference or. 23:57.49 Dave No, not really. 23:58.22 Goohi Say anything about what's going on in the rest of the world now that just in Sunset City everybody that you meet somehow some way benefited from everything going to shit which is really funny because they do show certain situations that are fucked up and you're like damn that's that's not. Ah, good situation to be in but somehow the character turns around and looks at the camera and is smiling. It's like yeah I'm having a great time and you're like wait a minute. 24:21.28 Dave Yeah, yeah, it's definitely like if you're one of those people who like it if you watch or play a zombie apocalypse story and you need people to be taking the situation seriously then like you're not going to like. How they handle this story because nothing is taken seriously really like there's a couple characters that die but like it's not a sad moment in the story like there's still jokes going on then too so it is really just like a goof fest throughout. The Ah Punk Rock Vibes I think are also felt like right from the get go when you first boot up the game. Ah you hear the sound of an an electric guitar being plugged into an amp and then like this power cord rock or like pop punk type stuff starts playing. And so the soundtrack like throughout the game really backs up like the vibe of the writing and the characters too. Um I don't know if you like this kind of music but this is what I grew up on like very formative era in music for me like the. Ah, green day bowling for soup new found glory type stuff and this soundtrack really hit that. 25:35.77 Goohi Yeah, absolutely I think a big reason why? um oh my gosh you mentioned the game and I'm blanking on it for some reason. Ah the game that a lot of people were referencing when hi-fi rushed. Thank you! I'm so sorry I blanked on that. 25:45.54 Dave Um, oh Hifi rush all right. 25:50.14 Goohi But I think this is the one of the biggest reasons why it was ah compared to hi-fi Rush is because it hits a lot of the same genres when it comes to the music and the sound development throughout the entire game doesn't get old it kind of goes with like you know it's an adventure and you go out and it's fast pace and the music really. Really really complements the fast pace of the gameplay and the combat and moving through the city right. 26:11.23 Dave yeah yeah I I'm basically like I have the music taste where I think I could just listen to like 3 chords like power chord rock for hours. Basically you know and there's like there's songs that have vocals and stuff like that too. But there are songs that play when you are just grinding around the city and stuff like that that are just like these repeated 3 chord structures from you know the pop punk that I grew up listening to. As soon as that started I was right at home here. Um, it really reminded me of that one album by the hives that got famous back in the day. Um, just like it's not a sound that you hear in video games very often. So like when i. Booted it up I was just so happy like you know, hit me with some power cords. You're just going to tap right into my nerve center. It's great. 27:12.57 Goohi Yeah, and I can't sit so I'm not a big music Junkie. I Know it's crazy to think about my genres range from anything really from classic music to rock to metal to.. It could be. It could be in the background and I won't pay attention too much to it. But I think what is so special about the soundtrack in this particular game is that even if you don't, if that's not really what you know, go to the music Genre. It goes so well with the vibe and the aesthetics and with the setting. 27:43.54 Dave Yeah, yeah. 27:49.28 Goohi It's just it really does set it up to be just this fun vibe. 27:52.79 Dave Yeah, at best you're going to connect at it like you're going to connect with it on a level like I did at worst you're going to be like oh yeah, this complements the vibe of everything else about the game which is as you mean that by itself is already a compliment for a video game soundtrack. So. 28:05.29 Goohi Absolutely. 28:12.32 Dave It's cool. Um I don't really have a whole lot else to say about like the story or like the vibe or writing or anything like that. We've already kind of established. This is a goofy time.. It's like a theme park ride of like I said weirdos and cool creative bosses and stuff like that. Ah. And 1 one-liner and jokes and stuff along the way. Ah, but you know I'm not sure that it's like ah, a real criticism or like a ding on the game to say that the story has no substance. I don't think that's the point like I don't think they were trying to do that and I think that. When Insomniac tries to do that I know that they can because the spider man games do that they write good stories in those Games. So I Just don't think that was a point of emphasis for them and so it's not really a point of emphasis for me either. 29:03.32 Goohi Oh absolutely and I mean just thinking about it now that you kind of planted that bug in my head I can't think of what the story was for ratchet and clank the new one that came out. There's a bad guy and you're chasing. 29:15.21 Dave Right. 29:22.28 Goohi Something for some reason but the entire experience of the game is what really makes the game memorable when you walk into a or you go travel to a new planet and you get to look around and the planet is just you know fills you with awe things like that is what insomniac. 29:39.97 Goohi I Think strives for in these types of games. That's how they make these games memorable not through their storytelling techniques. 29:44.90 Dave Yeah in gameplay also so let's listen to a little bit more of that music and then when we come back, we'll talk about the gameplay in sunset overdrive. So sunset overdrive is an open world. Third person shooter basically but before we talk about open world design or combat we need to talk about movement because that's the point that was the elevator pitch of this game was. Ah, what did I say: grind wall run, bounce vault and grind. Ah that is the point of this game is movement. They've created a movement system where you grind on rails throughout the city. You can wall run. You can swing from bars and jump. You can do wall jumps, you can bounce on stuff. You can do super jumps. It's all like you have so many things that you can do and then the joy of this game is stringing these together and basically like you can play this game like the flora's lava for you know minutes at a time and it's ah it's just like really fun. So just setting that baseline is like moving in this game. Is super fun. 30:59.24 Goohi Yeah, absolutely um, the movement is cool because it works as expected. It's like you know that cars are not bouncy. I know that cars are not bouncy and yet I aim for cars when I'm trying to fall down because I know that they will be bouncy in this game. So. 31:02.87 Dave Yeah, yeah. 31:14.89 Dave Um, yeah, exactly. 31:16.76 Goohi The amount of bounciness is just it's fun and it really does work flawlessly I've never I never encountered a piece of the game where I was trying to do something and it didn't work and I got frustrated because of it for the most part, the reaction of everything that you wanted to like all of the. Buttons that you were pressing. They all worked really really well and I think they perfected the movement in this game and that was definitely a highlight. 31:35.34 Dave Yeah, yeah. 31:41.10 Dave Yeah that's a good point so we talk about this like you're grinding your wall running. You're balancing. You're vaulting all of these like complicated verbs that you're doing but like you said they work as expected. And they're easy to do like wall running is easy. You press one button when you're near a wall. Your dude will start running. Ah you press 1 button when you're getting up to a ledge and your dude will vault over it. You press one button to grind you don't have to balance when you grind this isn't Tony Hawk it's just it's all set up in a way to be easy. 32:16.16 Dave It's all set up in a way like the world design is set up so that you can keep doing this forever like this is ah not a world that is designed with realism in mind. It's designed so that you can grind forever. Basically. 32:29.53 Goohi Exactly exactly which is really fun. It's really fun to think about and you mentioned Tony Hawk and I totally blanked but I did think at one point this is like a diet version of a Tony Hawk like you have your combos and stuff that you can do as you. 32:40.67 Dave Yeah. 32:46.29 Goohi As you traverse through the world, they're not nearly as difficult but it definitely has the same feel to it. 32:49.60 Dave Yeah, absolutely like that endless feel of stringing together combos and stuff like that. The only thing missing is if they gave you a score for Well they do give you a score you get like a style score for yeah I Never really paid attention to that It helps you in gameplay. 33:00.50 Goohi The style points. Yeah yeah. 33:07.19 Dave I Think maybe you do more damage or unlock higher level abilities or something if your style is higher. 33:15.65 Goohi Yes, so if you have um I Forget how many levels at this point but the more you build your cell the more amps are activated and your amps that you have in your weapons will you know do more damage and or whatever abilities you have. There's so many of them that you really can't. 33:21.38 Dave Right. 33:33.27 Goohi You know, narrow it down to 1 thing. But for example, if you have a weapon that has an amp on it that eventually starts freezing enemies. It will not be active until your style points hit a certain amount. 33:40.35 Dave Um, right? and amps for people who didn't play are little customizable things you can attach to either your weapons or there are amps that you just like to put on your character. Basically so. 33:54.43 Goohi Yes. 33:56.88 Dave Think of them as rings or something like that I don't know. But yeah, so good point. Ah you are incentivized to build up that style and the only way to build up the style meter is to keep grinding while running vaulting all of that and stringing those things together. Um. That's one way they encourage you to keep doing this like always using these movement mechanics. The other way they encourage this actually there's 2 more ways. The second way they encourage this is ah you run super slow like on the ground and you don't have a sprint button. So. Anytime you hit the ground in this game. You're like ah so slow, let me get back up on those rails. 34:39.17 Goohi For sure. There was absolutely no way in hell you would catch me running somewhere because of this mechanical loan which again isn't a bad thing because you can tell the intention was to push you to use the grind and the bounce to traverse. 34:43.25 Dave Yeah, yeah. 34:51.92 Dave Yeah, and it's great , it's satisfying. It's fun even when you're grinding on rails like or like on telephone wires and stuff like you've got a grind where you hang from the telephone wire and then you can flip yourself up on top and. They've scattered collectibles all over the place like you collect like people's shoes that are hanging from telephone wires. Um, so as you're going around. You always have stuff to look out for if you're into collectibles you can do that You know as a lot of insomniac games do and. 35:29.50 Dave Ah, this also I didn't fast travel like ever in this game because I just had a lot of fun using these traversal abilities just like in the Spiderman games I don't fast travel in those games either because it's just fun to to move around so they really mastered this and. 35:45.50 Dave You know this game came out before any of those spider-man games. 35:48.81 Goohi Yeah, and just the ability to fast travel is usually a very welcome mechanic for me in any game I'm like oh thank goodness. There's fast travel never felt like that in this game. I was like oh cool, there's fast travel. 35:58.71 Dave Um, yeah, yeah. 36:06.51 Goohi Forgot about it immediately and went on with you know, bouncing on cars and boats and whatever else I could bounce on. So definitely a welcome mechanic but I'm not necessary in a game like this. 36:18.38 Dave Yeah, yeah for sure and it's always like a kind of feather in the cap for um games that have fast travel. But if I find myself not using it. It means I'm having fun with something else or I'm engaged by something else in the game like. Red dead redemption 2 is another one I didn't even know you could fast travel and I played that entire game like one and a half times and then I did the podcast about it and my guest was like yeah I use the fast travel sometimes I was like what you can fast travel didn't even notice because I was so engaged with the game world that they made. 36:47.95 Goohi That's funny. 36:52.16 Dave I didn't need the same thing here in this game. 36:54.48 Goohi Yeah, it's either 1 of the 2 It's either. You're so engaged by the exploration and things to do and or the traversal like in the spider-man games or this game is just so fun that you don't feel the need to fast travel. 37:02.36 Dave Yeah. 37:10.82 Dave I'm glad that you brought up like those 2 types of I guess engagement with open worlds. We did an episode on tales from the backlog a guy a year ago or like two years ago now I don't fuck. It's been too long I don't remember at this point but we did an episode about. Different kinds of open worlds and like some open worlds. You are really engaged by exploring and getting rewarded for exploring like Eldon ring or something like that and then there's other ones where like. The exploring is not worth it like it's not really worth it to go out of your way and be like hey I wonder what's like under that staircase there's nothing under the staircase. So don't even try but it's fun to be in those worlds because traversal is super fun and we talked about that in that episode a lot. And 1 of the games that we brought up as an example of like bad or unsatisfying exploration but fun open world is Spiderman because it's just fun to move in that game and so I'm putting sunset overdrive like squarely in that category. You will not be rewarded for exploring. Off the beaten path in sunset overdrive. Um, you don't even really have to the only things that you can find out. There are some places where you find side quests, some places where they have challenges like movement challenges or like you know. 38:34.81 Dave Hey speed run these two city blocks like follow this path and see if you can do it in 15 seconds like you'll find challenges like that. But those are marked by huge glowing icons that tell you that it's there like you don't find those by exploring you'll just be moving around and be like oh my god there's a giant green thing. Ah. Traversal challenge. We'll go check that out. It's that kind of game. Did you do any of these challenges? 39:00.80 Goohi I did ah just for the sake of it. Ah by no means a completionist so I never felt like I had to do them all. But as in in order to experience the entire game I like to do 1 or 2 of everything. They also brought the challenges of. They introduce the challenges of trying to get the most points for the gentleman that wants to film you doing crazy shit so he'll tell you hey kill the o d by doing this and you have to like to follow that prompt and those were fun as well. But I didn't feel the need to nor was it like I wouldn't level up if I didn't do these things. It was just. 39:18.86 Dave Yeah, yeah. 39:38.40 Goohi There because if you like to complete these types of things you can. But if you don't you don't have to so that was a nice, a nice addition to. 39:42.34 Dave Yeah, yeah, agreed that's kind of how I did it too like I did all the different kinds of challenges at least like 1 or 2 times. Um I didn't do a lot of the combat arena challenges because. 39:57.89 Dave They're the exact same type of combat that you do in all the main quests so I was like I don't I'm not itching for more of this but I did do a lot of the timed movement challenges and like that high score challenge like you said those were fun because Like. It's like oh we're putting coins on all of these rails and you grind around and pick up the coins and like my gamer brain is just like having a field day with stuff like that. So Those are fun. Um I obviously didn't do all of them. I'm not a completionist either. But I had a good time. 40:29.68 Goohi Yeah, for sure and like you mentioned exploration is definitely not.. It's not rewarded. There's big markers in the city and throughout the game that are really detailed and great to stop and look at, definitely very memorable but the smaller areas where you know. Usually you would want to look into to see if there's any loot behind those that don't exist. They're definitely just there to pass by and not stop to see if there's anything in there and I wouldn't consider getting all of the shoes in the toilet paper which are essentially. 40:54.00 Dave Um, yeah, yeah. 41:01.96 Goohi Upgraded materials I wouldn't consider those necessarily exploration based I would say if anything they make it feel like more of a collectathon. 41:06.99 Dave Yeah, and it's like you know I already said I'm not fast traveling so I will take 5 minutes and grind across the entire city and while I'm doing that I'll find like 3 of these you know lamp posts that are toilet papered and like 5 pairs of shoes. So I'll just collect those on the way. Ah, but I don't need to go out on my way to try and get all of them. There's an obscene amount of collectibles if you want to try and get everything and they are upgrade materials like you said, but this game number one is not that hard. And number 2 it gets hard sometimes but like not usually and number 2 like if you just know you're going from quest to quest and you see a toilet paper thing just grab that don't worry about finding everything you'll end up with enough materials to upgrade enough stuff. You know. 42:05.44 Goohi Yeah, for sure I never felt the need to grind or well I guess to grind out materials definitely felt the need to grind not to ah not to sit there and try to find everything. There's there's certain games that will do that just to add length to them. 42:09.79 Dave Yeah, yeah, always yeah. 42:22.59 Goohi Which in my opinion does not add value to the game. It just adds an okay, great now I got to do this chore this if you want to do So it's there and it's available and ah it'll definitely make the combat easier in certain areas. It is a little bit challenging but it's by no means necessary. 42:37.46 Dave Yeah, yeah, so like oh I mean rest in peace to all the 1000 gamerscore sickos out there when they play this game because there's a lot of stuff to collect. But that's not me so I got enough of those things just the way I play. 42:55.59 Goohi Definitely definitely. We're on the same boat on that one. 42:56.79 Dave Yeah music here combat in sunset overdrive like we said again, it's third person shooter and you're fighting often against hordes of enemies. It's either the zombies that they call the o d in the game. Ah, human enemies that they call scabs and then later they introduce these phystec security robots that go out and patrol the city and since you're fighting a lot of them the third kind of way that they incentivize you to move use those movement abilities is that if you are standing still. Where you're just running on the ground. You'll get killed really fast. You actually can't take that many hits in this game. Ah, but when you're grinding or jumping or something like that. You basically rarely get hit. Ah, sometimes they'll throw stuff on like the rails you're grinding on. You have to jump off before you hit them or something like that. But you are really incentivized to always be moving using those movement abilities. So this turns out to be like. Kind of frenetic, sometimes it's action packed. You're always moving. You're always jumping like things are always exploding nearby like it gets pretty hectic. But again if you are using those movement abilities I actually didn't think this game was that hard most of the time. 44:23.93 Goohi Yeah I didn't struggle with it. I Personally don't think I died at all in the main story. I died a couple of times on the dlc. I Thought the dlc was a little bit harder if not a lot harder than the main game. 44:30.66 Dave Um, yeah, yeah. 44:38.78 Goohi Um, maybe they did that on purpose because they heard feedback or maybe they just wanted it to take a little bit longer since the dlc was going to be a shorter experience but I did not struggle with the main game whatsoever and definitely struggled during the dlc. 44:52.60 Dave Yeah, the second dlc in particular I died many times. I failed a lot of missions in that it's a significant step up and challenge for sure. But the main game I probably died 5 to 10 times in 10 hours or something. So. Not a huge level of challenge. That's not really the point they want you to have fun getting in that flow state in this game. Um, the thing I think that makes this combat system enjoyable is because. 45:28.54 Dave I think there's a lot of repetition in the gameplay which I'll talk about the only thing that kept it enjoyable for me and this is a good thing about the game is your weapons are creative and varied and you get a lot of them I think. You know I'm imagining the weapon wheel in my head. There's got to be like 10 or 12 weapons. You can carry out time like a lot of stuff and they're all varied. Um this felt to me like ratchet in clank dna in this game. You know, ratchet and clank are also big on like. Varied, colorful cartoony weapons and this has a lot of stuff along those lines too. 46:10.11 Goohi Yeah, for sure Weapon variety. Um is to me what it made it What made this game so engaging with the movement being such an integral part of the combat you pair it with various different types of weapons and it. 46:13.47 Dave Um, yeah. 46:23.69 Goohi Kind of prevents the repetitive nature of the game like fighting hordes of zombies from being really stale. Um I also enjoyed the addition of enemy weaknesses against certain weapon types which is my theory on why I think the dlc was so much harder because um. 46:42.62 Goohi You know you're fighting different types of enemies and whatever weapons you've been perfecting through this time you've used on Od So the weapons the weapons that I had in particular were not effective against the robots and I was sitting there taking. 46:51.75 Dave Um, yeah. 47:00.48 Goohi A lot longer to kill those guys in hordes of those guys than I would with the Od Um, but the weapon variety in general added a layer of intricacy to the combat that you could capitalize on to make the fighting slightly easier but you could also ignore which was which was another. 1 of those if you really want to take advantage of everything that this game has to offer you can, but you don't have to in order to be able to progress. 47:21.84 Dave Yeah, there are enemies that are weak to fire and you'll get like 3 weapons that do fire damage. You'll get electric weapons, ice weapons and then you'll get a bunch that just do you know you get your first weapon that you start out with is just like a pistol. Basically. But it's really good and I used it the whole game because it does like some of the most like dps of anything that you pick up. Um, but then you pick up a bunch of stuff that has very specific use cases. You get a bunch of aoe weapons. Um I really like the weapon that's like. A vinyl record launcher and like the records bounce from enemy to enemy and like you know if you're fighting those poppers that die in one hit they get. They run up and get close to you and they do this big pop explosion and hurt you a lot. But if you use that record launch. It'll bounce and just take them all out in just a couple of shots. Ah, super fun. Um I also liked the fire shotgun which I think was called like the fiery compensator is the name for it which is funny. Yeah, exactly. Yeah I was trying to remember that. Ah. 48:28.60 Goohi Yeah, and it looked like a penis. 48:35.72 Dave But I remember Jared saying that when I talked with him about the game. But yeah, the name makes sense for sure and one of my other favorites was the explosive Teddy Bear launcher which is like this game's grenade launcher. But it's ah it's a goofy game so exploding Teddy bears. 48:40.32 Goohi Yeah. 48:54.55 Goohi My personal favorites and I went a little bit crazy with this I don't know why but I'm in Maxed my like you know time to kill all the zombies and um I I don't remember I'm going to butcher the names because I can't further life remember what the names of each of the weapons were but. 49:02.44 Dave Aha. So. 49:09.00 Dave Yeah. 49:12.60 Goohi 1 where you shoot out a stuffed animal that creates like an acid aoe I used. I used the freeze bomb, the overcompensator which was like a penis of course. That's the only one who I remember because I have the humor of a toddler. Um, and then the pistol I used. 49:22.18 Dave Um, the over compensator of course. Yeah. 49:32.70 Goohi Throughout the game as well. Um, so I would start with the freeze bombs and I would get everyone frozen nice and ready to die. I would throw in some acid teddies and it adds dots to the enemies as well. Um I would then set them all on fire with the compensator and finish off the bigger ones with. 49:51.74 Goohi The pistol which does more damage to the Od if they're on Friar so you can definitely combo and and really tailor the fighting experience to be something where you can minmax if you want to. I Loved that aspect of the game. I had a lot of fun. 49:52.99 Dave Yeah. 50:08.11 Goohi You know you comboing different types of weapons seeing what works and what doesn't. 50:09.87 Dave Yeah I didn't get that deep into it which explains why I probably died more often than you did in the game but I did have fun just kind of playing this as like. Oh, someone far away pulls out that pistol and shoots from far away if they're up close. Use the shotgun. You know, I know how video game weapons work so I'm just going to follow those rules that have stood the test of time basically. But then there's those goofy weapons too like the exploding teddy bear or the record launcher or like the. Ah, the turret gun that is put up like drone turrets. Basically that helped out a lot because you get in like every combat scenario is like you versus like 200 enemies or more so you really need to. Stuff that can like do aoes or bounce around to different enemies. So like you said that? um, the freeze bomb does like an aoe freeze and then aoe pools of acid and stuff like that. So. That's really what you want and then every now and then they'll throw out one of these like. Big strong enemies that you can't really fight like with the same strategy as the smaller ones and so that's when you need to pull out like okay , use the fire shotgun, set them on fire then use the pistol or use the exploding Teddy bears and stuff like that. 51:37.71 Dave Ah, so they do get you to mix up the weapon you're using, you'll also run out of ammo and be forced to switch weapons pretty often. 51:43.82 Goohi Yes, absolutely I do like the web the ammo collection system. It adds another layer of incentivisation of going out and trying to actually fight them with the Melee weapon because you'll find a lot of boxes near the enemies and stuff like that. 51:58.30 Dave Yeah, yeah, yeah, you have a melee weapon that you pick up. Um, and if something is just right up in your face you can bash them. You can do that while you're grinding to like should go without saying you can shoot and. Everything while you're grinding or while you're in midair and stuff like that. Ah, but the other thing is like you can do with your melee weapon you can do this ground pound which will kill a bunch of things in an aoe and then after you do the ground pound. You can do like a super bounce back up in the air and then keep the movement chain going like. It's just like ah flow state when you get in the flow state even in combat it can be really satisfying you you feel like nothing can touch. You. 52:41.72 Goohi Yeah, for sure for sure and it's funny to think about that too because once it's interrupted. It's such a big ah feeling when you know, yeah, exactly what's going on here. What's what happened right? there like if you Miss A. 52:50.15 Dave Yeah, it's like the record scratch like when you get hit. 53:00.53 Goohi Ah, bounce or you think something's going to bounce and you land on it and you just kind of slump down so it just kind of puts into perspective. How important movement is with pairing it with combat. 53:12.88 Dave Yeah, ah so that is ah the first layer of bread in the complement sandwich that I have for the combat and like the gameplay in sunset overdrive the middle part of the complement sandwich is the missions in this game that they send you on. Like the combat encounter design will say mission design and encounter design is not varied enough for how long the game is There's like 3 kinds of missions in the game and it's it took me 14 hours to play ah the last dlc really mixed up the gameplay to a point where I was like what the fuck even is this right now when you like you're not even a person anymore and it's it's super fun, but it's either like okay you're doing a mission you go to this place and there's a bunch of o d and you need to kill all the o d. Ah, or you're riding on a vehicle and you need to protect it or you have these tower defense missions like your main. Quest giver Floyd and ah I don't like tower defense in general like in any video game these in particular I was like. Groan out loud every time they brought one up. It's because it's like they give you these traps and you go around and set up your traps and you're trying to protect them that were like the od juices that all the zombies want and shit. But I don't know anything about it. It's like you do it once. 54:44.84 Dave And then the second one comes up and it's exactly the same as the first one and then you go to a new place and you do the third one. It's exactly the same as the second and first one. I was like ah man this stinks. It's just. 54:59.00 Dave A lack of variety in the things that you're doing because every combat is basically the same as your fight. There's I don't know ten enemy types between humans Od and robots and there's dozens of them in every combat encounter. So it's fun to do combat. 55:18.33 Dave It's fun to move around but you are doing the same thing the whole game. Basically. 55:26.38 Goohi Yeah I mean they definitely introduced the gist of the game within the first I would say 2 hours if that um and I completely agree that mission variety is not something they put a whole lot of thought into. But I think what saves it for me. 55:29.72 Dave Yeah. 55:44.17 Goohi Is that the characters you meet throughout the story are super Charming. Um, what is essentially that there's a point in the game. This is ah the most spoilery I probably will get where it's essentially just an escort mission and that's with the larpers. Crazy larpers because they do mention that they are insane and they think that the larping has become real life. Um, but I hate escort missions and it's essentially an escort Mission. You have to take these guys and they have to gather food for their community or whatever. 56:15.63 Goohi It was still worth experiencing even though I'm not a fan of escort missions whatsoever because those role-playing nerds were insane. The bard is singing a really funny song if you're paying attention to what he's saying. Ah gets killed Midway through the mission. They're like waiters. What happened to the music? Oh he's dead you know stuff like that really saved the game in parts where the gameplay lacked a lot of variety. 56:40.84 Dave Yeah, there were a couple points when I started to question you know like you do gaming streams and Youtube ah videos and stuff like that like I'm sure that sometimes you get this thought where you're like. Am I doing this because I'm going to make something I'm going to like for me? I'm going to do a podcast on it. So I need to beat the game. But if I wasn't doing it for the podcast would I keep playing maybe not like I had that fought with this game because I think you're exactly right? like if you play this game for 2 hours you'll get it you get what the game is about there might be some weapons or like a movement ability or 2 that you won't get until later in the game but you'll understand sunset overdrive after a couple hours but the thing that helped was just how fun it is to move around. And then I think I said at the beginning of the show I feel like every time I really got in that mode where it was like alright I'm going to play this flip for like I'm just going to do one more mission and then turn it off I'm going to play something that I want to play more than sunset overdrive and then I would get to a boss fight. Or some big set piece moment that is really fun and it pulled me back out of it. I think as far as combat goes the boss fights are the star in sunset overdrive. They're super fun. They're really imaginative again. No. 58:11.60 Dave Absolutely zero sense of reality in their design or anything like that. It's just like hey wouldn't it be funny if you did a boss fight against ah, a blimp or some shit like that and so every time I got in those doldrums of like man these missions suck man I just did. 5 missions in a row where it's like go here kill 200 enemies and come back then you get a boss fight. That's really really fun and it just gets that spirit back in at least it did for me. 58:42.90 Goohi Um, it's almost like they knew that this was happening. It's almost like they put in filler missions in between the really fun set pieces because maybe they were trying to lengthen the game a little bit. You know there. 58:54.83 Dave Yeah, yeah. 58:59.13 Goohi They were working with Microsoft. This was their big heavy hitter for Microsoft for the release of the Xbox one and I'm sure there were a lot of expectations behind this game. I'm really glad that they didn't give up their artistic integrity for this game. You can tell they did put a lot of detail into. 59:16.36 Dave Um, yeah. 59:17.40 Goohi For example, the animations something as small as when you run out of ammo in a specific gun instead of it just saying no ammo, you actually shoot out a white flag and it's like oh oh the you know I'm out of ammo and stuff like that that makes me believe that insomniac didn't just put it out just to put it out to be a shell of a game. 59:23.81 Dave Yeah. 59:36.82 Goohi Um, but like you said in those moments where you're just like oh my gosh. Why are they having me just go back to this area back to just shooting hordes of zombies again. Um those definitely felt like filler. 59:50.12 Dave yeah and yeah I definitely got this sense when I was playing where I was like this game is too long if you asked them they would be like we have 8 hours of really quality content in this game but the game is 14 hours ah but luckily again. Every time I got into one of those you know mindsets where I didn't really want to play I got one? Um, but 1 of the boss fights or like a fun character mission or something like that that just kind of saved it. So I wrote down a couple of my favorite boss fights and like we can just like. Describe like keep in mind all the boss fights are based around this movement where you're grinding on rails. Sometimes they're suspended in midair like there's no realism here bouncing on these bounce pads and stuff um against these like oversized huge zombies. So there's one where you're like. Grinding and chasing a dragon around the city and it's like it's really fun because the dragon's like weaving in these streets and stuff and you're using all of the telephone wires and bouncing on cars and stuff to keep up and then you. Jump on the dragon's back and grind on its back up to its head so you can actually do damage to it. Stuff like that is really imaginative and it kind of contrasts like the lack of imagination in the other missions. It felt like it was like. 01:01:17.10 Dave All like the creative shit went into the boss fights I think. 01:01:22.35 Goohi Yeah, no for sure um stuff like that was really cool because it's a big set piece and it reminds me of what they're doing with the spider-man games set pieces are like some of the most memorable things in those games and they definitely. 01:01:30.33 Dave Um, yeah, yeah. 01:01:36.75 Goohi Included a lot of that in this game as well and it's crazy to think about because they're doing the same thing ten years later and it gets bigger and better and bolder and the graphics get more powerful and everything like that. But it has the same feel to it. 01:01:49.63 Dave Yeah, yeah for sure in this game like I guess we'll put a pin in Graphics Did you have any ah favorite boss fights or any where you were like just really stuck out to you. 01:02:03.21 Goohi Um, there's so many. There were so many of the ones that stick out to me and this is just because I think it's a very biased thing right? that ah the balloon. Sticks out to me, not necessarily because I thought it was the funnest game playwise but I love that the balloon was cussing me out the entire time and it's supposed to be like this kid Friendly. You know nice fizzy balloon that makes you want to drink their drink but instead he's like fuck you I fucking Hate you. 01:02:16.96 Dave Yeah, yeah. 01:02:27.40 Dave Yeah, yeah, like the little kid mascot. Yeah. 01:02:32.16 Goohi So that to me is definitely a sucker for a good ah gritty piece of commentary or a comedy and commentary. Yeah, both go hand in hand so that was my favorite just because I was laughing the whole time. 01:02:46.66 Dave Yeah, that one was fun. There's one where you're fighting like on an actual roller coaster track. So like grinding doing the grinding on a roller coaster track is cool, um in the dlc there's one where you fight a giant crab monster that I thought was a ton of fun just like a. 01:03:03.55 Dave Ah, fucking Kaiju of like a crab lobster thing. Super fun. 01:03:06.20 Goohi Yeah, yeah, it was. It was really good. They fleshed out the mechanics by then and it was done really? Well, it was fun. 01:03:14.60 Dave Yeah, for sure. Um, but we mentioned visuals there for a second. So like you said, Insomniac's really good at set pieces. They are pushing the boundaries of realistic graphics in their new games. Ah, this game is not going for Realism and I think that's one of the reasons why the visuals have held up so much since 2014, It's really stylized like I got the comparison in my head of Arcane Studios characters like. If people out there or if you have played dishonored or pray or something like that like they don't make people that look like real people. They're very stylized. This game's like that too, like everyone looks like a caricature kind of person and they're not going for that. Super high fidelity look to it like it's kind of cartoony even though it is kind of realistic but it's super colorful in everything. The style's cool. 01:04:14.60 Goohi Yeah, for sure The arcane style is cartoon. It definitely prevented it from aging poorly. I'm not sure if it was ported and upres’d to Pc. Do you happen to know it looked fantastic? 01:04:19.37 Dave Yeah, yeah. Like I played it in 4K So like it's at least possible. Yeah. 01:04:32.23 Goohi Yeah I was I wasn't sure but like if I didn't know any better and someone told me this game came out recently I would not have questioned it I would have been like yeah that looks like it came out sometime in 2023 you know what I mean. So I definitely think it was upres’d. 01:04:41.50 Dave Um, yeah, yeah, the games that go for that perfect realism are the ones that age the most even though there's not that much of a difference between some like early. Xbox 1 ps 4 games and games that come out today like the graphical leap between there is not that big but you can notice it in ah you know well some of those games are not even available in four k rest in peace Bloodborne ah, but ah yes, it does. Yeah. 01:05:17.11 Goohi Ah, that hurts the soul man. Ah you hurt me. 01:05:19.97 Dave Um, but the stylized look to it makes stuff like this timeless and the other part of that is like it's bright. It's colorful. We talked about that. Um lots of like I would say like orange is the dominant color in this game orange and yellow and like. 01:05:35.44 Goohi Yeah, for sure. 01:05:39.60 Dave Light blue and stuff like that. 01:05:43.39 Goohi Yeah, yeah, and another thing that they did write in my opinion was the lighting. Um, although it wasn't too necessary because of how bright the game is and it definitely shines during the day there were missions I didn't. 01:05:45.15 Dave Um, yeah. 01:05:56.33 Goohi I Think the missions dictated or the part of the story that you were in dictated whether or not it was day or nighttime but during the nighttime set pieces. There were really awesome highlights of certain areas in the map that used lighting like the neon lights and the blimps in the balloons were all you know, lit up it was them. 01:05:59.14 Dave Yeah. 01:06:16.16 Goohi Used it very very effectively. 01:06:17.30 Dave Yeah, for sure. Um, I think the other thing I have to mention that we already touched on a little bit is the animation in the game and all of the care that went into keeping things varied. You mentioned the lack of ammo. Like shooting out the white flag. But the thing that I got the most enjoyment out of was the animations for fast travel and then when you die and Respawn they're just so Good. So the fast travel one I think there's only one but your character drinks some of them. The Fizzco drink and just passes the fuck out and then black screen then you wake up in the spot you fast travel to just very like he doesn't he doesn't like lay down gracefully he just falls flat on his face and it's very slapstick and funny. 01:07:09.44 Goohi Oh yeah I think there were 2 fast travel animations depending on what you used, um, there's one where you come out of an ah you know portable toilet and he's like oh and you could see him holding his stomach so another like just amusing thing and I think you sent me the. 01:07:25.44 Dave Yeah I did yeah I was happy to find that. 01:07:26.77 Goohi Um, death animation responds I Yeah I Just you know, however long the video was I watched the entire thing and it's so cool to see how much they put into this game. How much love and how much passion went behind every little detail. 01:07:39.84 Dave Yeah, so when you die and respond and should be noted like when you die you just like pick up right in the middle of your mission most of the time like you don't you. Sometimes you have to restart from a checkpoint but sometimes it doesn't feel that way like you just picked up right? where you died but they have these animations that are just so good and there's like there's like 40 of the fucking things like someone really had fun designing these. So for example, like. 1 where you rise up out of a grave and you're a zombie and he walks like a Frankenstein zombie and then snaps out of it. There's one where you're like a shapeless lump of flesh and then like these two like factory molds come in and smash you together and then like your character pops out of it. Like just a couple of examples just really fun like so maybe you died and you're like fuck I died like that sucks I was I get a restart from a checkpoint or something but then you see the animation where like you're. Dude crashes down from space in a rocket ship and stumbles out of the rocket you're like well I can't be that mad. That's great. 01:08:50.37 Goohi Yeah, that absolutely happened to me like I mentioned I didn't die during the main game. So my very first death was one of those silly animations and I was like huh I'm not even mad like I want to go die again. You know what I mean. 01:09:03.77 Dave Yeah, yeah, ah yeah I think I was. I think I was watching your stream of the last dlc when you were like wait. What was that animation that respawned? 01:09:13.60 Goohi Yeah, yeah I hadn't gotten to experience those and it just has an extra layer of okay I'm going to maybe go die a bunch of times just so I can see different animations. 01:09:24.29 Dave Yeah, there's another one that I thought was really funny where a bunch of the O D zombies are driving a van and they just like pull up and they just toss your character out the side of the van and then drive away. It's really good. Yeah. 01:09:40.52 Goohi It's so but that's a great one. That's that's a really well thought out 1 01:09:43.72 Dave So yeah, this is like you know I Love it when you play games or I think it's more evident in games for me personally or maybe in like a comedy like a sitcom where you can imagine writers and animators in a room together being like all right more funny Resawn animations. Give them to me and they're just like you can just imagine everyone having a blast designing these things. There's a lot of stuff in Sunset overdrive that gives me that feeling. 01:10:13.45 Goohi Yeah, yeah, and very few games have the ability to not take themselves seriously so when they were writing out those types of things this response animations or even um to keep it like you know. Light on the spoiler section certain points of the story in the game where things happen where they break the fourth wall like egregiously. You know that somebody was like hey you know let's try this and when they said let's do it. They were like " you're gonna let me do this to this game where you're serious. So yeah, it definitely had some moments where I was like okay. 01:10:30.84 Dave Yeah, yeah, yeah. 01:10:47.30 Goohi This is cool. I like this game. This allows the writers to have a lot of fun with it and they're not taking it too seriously. 01:10:54.92 Dave Yeah there's ah 1 thing along those lines is around the town. You'll find these tvs that are playing this tv channel called sunset tv and it's the former community manager at insomniac who is the guy on the screen like doing those. Doing that Tv show and they do a very funny, egregious fourth wall break later in the game with that guy that was like when it happened I was like this is very very funny and again like you can tell they're having the best time writing and designing and then this guy. Performing these things. 01:11:31.79 Goohi Yeah, yeah, you can You can really see the amount of love they had when they were putting things into this game when they were writing for it and animating for it. They I love and it made me love insomniac even more than I already do I don't think that they they could. Probably put out any sort of game and it could be the weirdest idea ever and I would be like yes I want to play that game I will definitely enjoy that game. 01:11:57.78 Dave Yeah, hundred percent so I think this brings us into our final section here where we just kind of wrap up our thoughts kind of tie the knot and then answer the question. Who would you recommend sunset overdrive to? 01:12:21.18 Goohi So I would say I'm going to kind of do this backwards. I'm going to answer the question first. Um, you mentioned you didn't love the Borderlands games. I think that some are better than others. I'm a big fan of the first one I loved. 01:12:23.82 Dave Um, okay. 01:12:35.20 Goohi The introduction to that type of comedy genre in video games in the first Borderlines game. It will always have a special place in my heart. So if you loved the borderlands games and not just for the looter shooter portions of the gameplay portions but because they have charm and great comedic value then I would recommend this game to you. 01:12:35.91 Dave M. 01:12:53.74 Goohi The fourth wall breaking is fun throughout the entire game. It's really emphasized in the end as well. The art design and animations were detailed and were hit out of the park. The sound design is super satisfying even in the menus like not just the. Soundtrack but in the menus when you're scrolling through different things sound design has done really well and a good portion of the although a good portion of the game can feel repetitive and drags a bit It's worth experiencing for the few unique missions like I don't know if you remember the Leech's missions is stuff like that. 01:13:13.25 Dave Um. 01:13:22.89 Dave Oh yeah, of course. Yeah. 01:13:28.34 Goohi Um, you mentioned it and you put it together really well like the brakes where you're just like okay I'm no longer tired of the repetitive nature I Want to see what else there is to see in this game. Um, and of course that a character dialogue and fun boss fights are just cherries on top in the entire experience. 01:13:45.55 Dave Yeah I agree I think this game has a pretty easy pitch to a lot of people like it's Charming. It's funny. It's irreverent. It doesn't take itself seriously at All. Ah, but under all of that kind of like. Not taking it seriously in the story like the gameplay design I think is really good and like I think the things that they emphasized the most were setting up this movement system making fun boss fights and set pieces and they did that really really? well. So. Like we've said it's a really fun game to play. It's a good game to get into a flow state and just kind of chill vibe. Enjoy the music that's going on as you're Playing. Um I did have some issues with the way combat Scenarios and missions were designed. Brought me like brought Tedium into a game that like Tedium should not exist in a game like this So I Do think this game's a little bit too long, but the recommendation is still pretty easy like I think that this is a game that I. Like a lot of people are just going to pick up and be like oh yes, this is really fun like this is engaging. It's satisfying. It's what you want in a game like this that's movement based and yeah fighting hordes of enemies and stuff. Ah I Do think that like we said you could just. 01:15:15.68 Dave Like install this on game pass play it for a couple hours and be like yeah I get it I understand what this game is about like I don't think you need to beat this game. But if you do, jump out early. You will miss some of my favorite, you know, boss fights and set pieces and stuff from the later game. And especially the 2 dlcs were full of really memorable stuff. We haven't talked about in too much detail, not that it would ruin your experience to get spoiled but like to me it would be on a very surface level like hey you remember that time when this happened and yeah, that was fun but like. There's not a lot of depth to it but experiencing it for yourself is a good Time. So I don't really have a lot of people that I would say like you shouldn't play this like again if you want all your zombie apocalypse stories to be gritty and realistic then don't play this but I think everyone has it in their heart to play a goofy. Zombie Apocalypse Story So Pretty easy. Yeah, a pretty easy recommendation game is fun. Insomniacs are good at making video games. 01:16:14.10 Goohi Absolutely yeah I agree. 01:16:24.90 Goohi I love that the Unga Bunga version game fun play game. Ah. 01:16:27.46 Dave Yeah, this is a very yeah Unga Bunga type of game. You will get that type of enjoyment from it. Yeah yeah, so if your lizard brain likes grinding around and shooting a bunch of zombies. Yeah yeah, you'll find something here. So. 01:16:34.40 Goohi Um, yes, yeah for sure for sure. 01:16:45.52 Dave Again, no spoiler section. But so we're going to wrap up the episode here and we'll start with our plugs so Goohi tell people about your streams about your Youtube channel and anything else that you have going on. 01:16:57.40 Goohi Hey, thank you? So yeah I have um I do stream but not as often as I used to I have shifted focus to my Youtube channel because we're doing a lot of fun projects on there. We have weekly videos that come out that are either let's plays or game guides and or reviews so we have. 01:17:14.76 Dave Um. 01:17:15.82 Goohi Little bit of everything I work with 2 other people my partners in crime when it comes to that and because we have 3 different people working on the channel. We have a lot of variety. I'm more of the goofy personality who likes to get into discussions and just you know be. Everywhere is between really serious or just always goofing around and the others are more of the very serious minmaxers hardcore gamers we compliment each other pretty well they're 2 of my best friends and it's really fun to have that channel. So if you guys are at all interested. 01:17:52.88 Goohi You can follow my Youtube channel itsgoohi and it's pretty much that with every other major so major social media platform. 01:18:02.38 Dave Awesome. Yeah, and so like I've watched you stream I've checked out some of the stuff on Youtube um, this will date. This episode is going to come out in a few months but like recently I've seen some stuff where you're doing a let's play of the new prince of Persia game. Ah, which looked really really cool I'm not sure when I'll get a chance to play it but it does look tight so you can go check that out on the channel a lot of like co-op gaming content fortnite and I was looking back in the archives saw some lethal company which is a game that ah brings a lot of comedy and good times out. So giving people an idea of what kind of stuff they can expect and it's all fun. It's good stuff. 01:18:41.52 Goohi Yeah, absolutely we cover all the latest games in the Friday funnies are my favorite because it's just it's unga bunga content. 01:18:50.90 Dave Ah, yeah, good stuff. So again I recommend people check out the Youtube channel follow on Twitch if there's going to be streams going on to and I'll put links down in the show notes for that stuff so they can find you easily? um. 01:19:07.60 Goohi Thank you Thank you and 1 last thing I would just want a huge thank you to you Dave for reaching out. Um I like I told you before we started. This is one of my favorite things to do is to hang out and. Talk about video games so it was a wonderful experience being on here with you. You're an absolutely lovely person. I can't wait to hopefully do more projects in the future with you. 01:19:27.43 Dave Yeah, of course. Yeah, thank you so much. This has been a great time. Um, we talked about it before but like you worked with the offshore games cast on their game of their huge game of the year project that they do every year that I also participate in. And yeah, been following the channel for a little bit now. So it's good to connect as always and we can always look forward to more podcasts and stuff in the future for sure all right now time to talk about myself. Um, so if people want to support this podcast again. The best things to do. 01:19:49.25 Goohi Awesome! Thank you, thank you? Dave. 01:20:00.14 Dave if your favorite podcast platform allows it like on Apple Podcast or Spotify or podcast addict. You can leave a rating and review that's really helpful if people are looking for Sunset Overdrive Podcasts it will help them find this one. Ah, the show's also on Youtube you can go subscribe right now. I don't do anything except just upload the podcast there. But if I ever find some free time I might try making an actual video sometime. Who knows but the show is on Youtube if you like to listen to podcasts on Youtube so you can go subscribe there. 01:20:34.64 Dave Ah, we're gonna say hit the thumbs up and ding the bell and all that good stuff but you can do that you can also join the discord server come in if you've played sunset overdrive and want to talk about it. That's a great place to do it. We have a lovely welcoming community there. We would love to have you join too. There's an invite link down in the show notes. I do another podcast called a top 3 podcast that is just top 3 lists. Sometimes we do drafts for different topics. That's a good time and finally if you would like to support the show monetarily. You can do that at patreon.com/realdavejackson where you'll be able to vote in some games that I do on the show. You'll get some bonus podcasts and other treats. So that is all for the episode today again. No spoiler section. Go try out sunset overdrive. You'll see what we mean. But thank you everybody for listening. Thank you Goohi again for joining me today and everyone can tune in next week for the next game to come out of the backlog.