6 Must-Own Xbox One Games

I cannot say I have ever been a big fan of Insomniac games-perhaps I was too old to fully enjoy my first experience with Ratchet and Clank, and Resistance felt almost like a run-of-the-mill shooter as far as I could tell. However, Insomniac making an exclusive game for the Xbox, that’s big news. And it has to be said, Playstation gamers don’t know what they are missing! Sunset Overdrive blurs the lines between open world superhero style titles like Crackdown and Saints Row 4, with a learning curve of more technical and skill-based games like the old Tony Hawk games and Aggressive Inline. I noticed many people struggled with the grinding-mechanic (imagine Tony Hawk grinding, but without a skateboard) at first, but I personally adapted to the gameplay quickly, perhaps thanks to my many years of Tony Hawk Underground addiction. Nonetheless, the richly colourful and beautiful, but dystopian Sunset City is a joy to navigate through, as you can run across walls, grind across fences, bounce off car bonnets and zipline down telephone wires.

Oh, and skim across water (take that, Jesus), all the while you are fighting the OD’d (kinda like mushy zombies, a nasty side effect of consuming this new-fangled Energy drink) that the city is ravaged by. The game does not take itself seriously at all, and in fact it is constantly self-aware with your character breaking the fourth wall, addressing the player with silly quips about the gameplay mechanics and references video game clichés. You can even create your own character with a rather extensive creation feature, and if you so wish you could even make an ugly character, or a character in drag. It would not be entirely out of place in this extremely cartoony setting.

The humour tends to be hit & miss but ultimately, the features that matter most were designed with utmost excellence. The gameplay mechanics feel tight and perfectly balanced, and this says a lot, as providing comfortable shooting gameplay without sacrificing the speed, acrobatics and sheer verticality cannot have been an easy task but Insomniac succeeded with flying colours!