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Sunset Overdrive: The Mystery of the Mooil Rig!
Score: 75%
Publisher: Microsoft Studios
Developer: Insomniac Games
Media: Download/1
Players: 1; 2 - 8 (Online)
Genre: Action/Free-Roaming/Online

Introduction:

Downloadable content tends to be either excellent throughout or not worth your time or your money. For each Borderlands expansion, there’s an overpriced map pack. It’s usually easy to tell from the get go whether your money would be well spent. Sunset Overdrive is a game that should lend itself extremely well to downloadable content; it boasts a marvelous sense of self-awareness and features a world that we genuinely want to see more of. The possibilities are endless.

But here is Sunset Overdrive and the Mystery of the Mooil Rig! to challenge my perception of what makes good DLC. Don’t get me wrong: what’s here is great. But there isn’t nearly enough content here to make it worth a standalone purchase.


Wink, Wink:

First and foremost, Sunset Overdrive and the Mystery of the Mooil Rig! is a standalone series of story missions. So from the start, we’ve got new cutscenes, new quests, and new characters. The story proper concerns the dashing quadriplegic Troop Bushido Master Bryllcream enlisting Player (for he/she doesn’t really have a name) to assist him on a mission to the offshore Mooil Rig.

Once you arrive there, you discover that the OD problem has made its way there, too. Combine the vaguely new OD types with a gang of seriously pissed-off union workers, and it’s clear that this is not a very friendly place. There’s also the matter of the tentacle monster that lives beneath the polluted surface…

I… guess there’s a bit of mystery behind the Mooil Rig, but the story treats this mystery only slightly less murderously than it does the fourth wall. The final cutscenes that precede and follow the final boss battle are laugh out loud hilarious, but at the end of the day, the whole ordeal feels like a big dumb diversion. And since this is Sunset Overdrive, a game that’s famous for not caring, that’s okay.


Junk Food:

Water mobility has been tweaked, allowing the player to traverse long stretches of water if they need to. Water Dashes can now be chained, but perhaps the biggest addition to mobility is the Water Slam Bounce, a move that has the player diving into the water and exploding vertically out of it with such force that you ultimately end up flying higher than any other move allows.

There are a couple of sidequests, one of which nets you a flamethrower weapon called Feel the Burn (and provides one of the biggest WTF moments in the entire game), and another which hearkens back to South Park’s lampooning of James Cameron’s undersea exploits. There is some grade A stupidity on the Mooil Rig, and that’s by design.

If you head back to Sunset City, you’ll be pleased to know that Two Hat Jack is offering a new weapon for purchase: the Rivet Blaster. This weapon shoots a series of rivets which arc electric area-of-effect damage between them. It’s a great weapon that’s a ton of fun to use. There’s also a new trap and a couple of amps thrown in for your trouble.

Finally, there are some other diversions you can partake in; new collectibles, new challenges, and new Chaos Squad locales/missions.


Value:

Sunset Overdrive and the Mystery of the Mooil Rig! is woefully short, and if you buy it on its lonesome, you likely won’t feel as if you got your money’s worth. The Season Pass is always there, and you’ll get much more for your dollar, but if the other bits of downloadable content are as sparse and inconsequential as this one, I’m not sure I’ll be able to recommend it.

-FenixDown, GameVortex Communications
AKA Jon Carlos

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