Total Overdose: A Gunslinger's Tale in Mexico

You load up the game. You watch the intro sequence, and you think, "What have I wasted my money on here?" Then you get to the title screen, and the brilliant soundtrack hits you right in the face. Brilliant song. Things start looking up. You start the game, the first level is absolutely pump. And the graphics? Below average. What happened to the decent soundtrack? This plays like a Max Payne clone! Except worse! Then you get to the second mission. Things start looking better. Throughout the game, it keeps on improving. Until it's brilliant climax.

The plot is pretty much nothing special, but enough to keep the game going: Man gets murdered, son goes out to avenge his death.... blah blah blah.

The game play is nothing short of insane. In a good way. This is how it works. When you kill somebody, a combo timer starts. kill somebody else before the combo timer ends and you've got yourself a score multiplier. The more stylish and varied ways you kill people, the more points you get. When the combo timer ends, your score multiplies by the amount of people you kill. It's simple, but very addictive.

The soundtrack consists of Mexican metal/hip hop. Sounds bad yes? You couldn't be more wrong. It really does contribute to the experience.

Get this game if you want a out and out insane experience. Enough said.

It has every cliché of the action movies, done with personality, flair and brazen tributes to Robert Rodriguez. It's got methephetamine level violence, endless outrageous stunts, fantastically timed and appropriate music tracks, memorable characters, and naturally lots of explosions. It's got an anti-hero fighting for vengeance and family honor with two-fisted guns blazing, a loose-cannon police operative swimming with sharks in murder, theft and betrayal.

The game does start weak with two prologue chapters in which you briefly play the Father (a hotshot DEA raider,) and the Good Son (a by-the-book DEA investigator,) before playing the Bad Son, a three-strike felon from California who earns and proudly wears the nickname 'El Gringo Loco'. This does allow you to pace into the action with well-timed tutorials, learning what you need to know when you need to know it without taking a contained 101 course to completely forget when the moments of pressure arrive.

This game stays more conscious of itself as a video game than most GTA-clone sandbox-wandering action games, and allows you to jump straight to the missions from a select menu, some of which are purely for the purpose of blowing people away and/or blowing things up. You can wander and collect upgrades to health, adrenaline, and weapon skill, and commit rampant destructive crimes with practically no consequence. And unlike GTA, when you carjack someone, they remain in the vehicle making panicked comments in Spanish. If you really want to get your unwilling passenger excited, try jumping from the vehicle while it's still speeding.

The special attacks are either exaggerated, superhuman action stunts, or purely zany. But for all the powerful arsenal you can gather, once you master your handgun you need nothing else for lethal efficiency and maximum killing points, which become more and more important to successful completion of missions. Well, that handgun and the occasional explosive, for when you need to turn something to smithereens quickly, or when you notice you've got too many grenades. The important strategy is to keep killing, and with maximum style, and you'll get all the bonuses you need to keep going, and this encourages a very rapid-paced action style throughout the game.

This is a fun game with a lot of replay value, and every mission becomes available for replay after you've succeeded the last story mission, even the optional ones you may have skipped.

This review is for the PC version. After the suspicious death of a man, one of his twin sons gets a job for the DEA like the father had, goes undercover(which is an... interesting choice, and obviously a completely unbelievable one, because every male in the family leaves a trail of extreme demolition and death wherever they go) to try to determine what actually happened. Well, he becomes indisposed, so what to do? Bring in the second one, who they have to release from prison to have him work for them, and I swear that he was doing time for making the wimpiest sound ever to be heard when jumping and the like, and, far more importantly, for every single thing he says being incredibly stupid, poor attempts at jokes and/or at sounding "hip"(granted, almost every line in this is, in general, but his are the worst). Personally, I'd have put him away for life, in solitary with no windows, visitors or possibility of parole for that slap in the face, but I'm not authorized to sentence fictional people, and perhaps that's for the best. He begins infiltrating from where his brother left off, and that's where the plot, which is a veritable Frankenstein's monster of "been-there, done-that", and by that I mean that this is quite literally stitched together entirely from age-old clichés. The characters have no personality, and the world presented here is entirely black and white. There is no drama and no emotional impact. Apart from what I've already mentioned, this just has a tendency of not being terribly original, with a couple of definitely noteworthy exceptions. This is a Grand Theft Auto clone. They add some Max Payne, as well. And they swipe the wire-riding(OK, that one, I will say, is less of a sure thing than the others) from Splinter Cell, and the Rewind feature(that, trust me, can almost completely and always keep you from dying, thus eliminating most of the excitement that the threat thereof produces) from the recent Prince of Persia titles, only it limits it to right after you're killed, though it would be useful at other times, too. Yes, the don't even get the things as good as the games they get them from. GTA has bigger cities(the one here isn't downright bad, only small) is longer(this is pretty short, frankly), and, as also goes for MP, with much more story, and you get into it more. This is almost invariably one-note, and there are only a few places where the game-play varies from the 50% shooting(with occasional protection duty), 37,5% racing, and 12,5% fork-lifting(!). Yes, you read that last one right, and trust me, if they were going to put that much of that(I'll grant them this, I haven't seen it elsewhere), they should have made the picking up less inconsistent. This does have a greater amount of freedom outside of the car than aforementioned franchise, if it is also fairly linear, overall. You can also leap out of whatever you're driving very easily. This tries a little too hard to be cinematic at times, putting cameras and slow-motion in several places where it isn't necessary, and risks cheapening the times where it does fit. They were also *really* scared of people thinking this was too slow, because you can use Taxis to instantly teleport to the different areas, and you can choose the Missions from a menu(each time you beat one, it disappears from there, though completing this will get you a full Selector), each, without moving to where they occur. There are two types, the ones that move you forward, and the ones that are about doing well enough to get rewards(including unlocking levels). In addition to what you can find and pick up, you get extra stuff when reaching certain amounts of the points that you can earn. Attacking civilians and randomly destroying won't do anything, neither negative nor positive(there is no police response whatsoever). Why does this, in some areas, try to be "safe"? It's gory, bloody, violent and the body count approaches that of genocide. This plays like starring in an exploitation flick set in(and perhaps also made in) Mexico. The majority of this is spent in gun-battles, and that is where this has some new to offer. Dodging can be used to execute cool acrobatic ways of stylishly blowing away foes that get your score up, and you can rack the number up by being fast enough at taking out a high number of enemies. The Loco Moves are nifty, as well, 7 types of power-ups that you can unleash upon opponents. Melee is cool, no matter the angle, you can attack, if you're close enough to hit them directly, without firing, then you will, no matter what you have in your hands at the time. This can be intense, energetic, high-octane fun, though I would say that this needs more and other things, because you're likely to get tired of it before you're done playing. The graphics are reasonable, and the animations are smooth. This has a well-done engine, and there are only few glitches and bugs, such as the occasional sticking to stuff, floating goon and such, you seldom come across show-stoppers. I'd say this isn't terribly tough, though do not let this be your very first VG, have the reflexes and motor(pun not intended) skills before you try your hand at this. The Headshot Targeting is nice, holding down the Right Mouse Button will activate it, and then you have to time it perfectly to get one, and this can be done at nearly any time, provided you're armed with something where it makes sense that you could aim that carefully with it. Saving is done by checkpoint. The weapons are mostly standard stuff. Some can be dual-wielded. This has pretty bad-ass music. The finale is rather satisfying. Sound is well-done, voice acting is fine. I recommend this to anyone who mainly is looking to play around in a non-committing game. 7/10