Sunset Overdrive grinds onto PC today minus multiplayer

Sunset Overdrive, Insomniac's silly semi-open-world platform shooter has arrived on PC after a long stint as an Xbox One exclusive. It's bright, loud, dumb and the PC version launches at budget price, including all the previously-expensive DLC. There's just one horrible mutant fly in the ointment: Our version is single-player only, and misses out on the excellent eight-player Chaos Squad multiplayer mode. Still a good game, but it's a pity to see such a major part axed in the transition. A familiar (but slightly sharper) trailer is below.

Sunset Overdrive feels halfway between Insomniac's colourful cartoon Ratchet & Clank series and their more grounded, open-world PS4 Spider-Man game. The end result is a game about highly customisable but mostly normal-looking humans bouncing fifty feet in the air, grinding on anything vaguely rail-like with just their shoes, and carrying a huge arsenal of weird weaponry. There's a story about an evil soda company turning people into brightly coloured mutant monsters, and a robot army deployed to stop them, but mostly it's an opportunity to deliver crude jokes.

Watch on YouTube

While the loss of multiplayer does suck (eight player co-op is a hell of a feature to cut), the PC version has a lot going for it. For starters, it runs far smoother than it did on Xbox, and looks sharper too, as the game had to cut back on the pixels on its original platform. Mouse aiming is a nice perk, but a lot of the shooting is lock-on based or using big messy area-of-effect weapons, so not as much of an advantage as you'd think. It's a good game, and almost certainly worth the price, given that it includes a good slab of DLC on top of everything, but it's a pity it's an incomplete version.

Sunset Overdrive is out now on Steam and the Microsoft Store for £15/€20/$20 - the retail version published by THQ Nordic, while the digital release is Microsoft Studios. Its also not included in the Game Pass subscription, unlike the Xbox version.