Total Overdose

Written by John Scalzo  on January 12, 2006

Review: "Welcome to the Day of the Dead!"

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It's beyond pointless in this day to go on about all of the Grand Theft Auto clones that are currently choking store shelves. Thanks to GTA, "sandbox game" is this close to becoming its own genre. So is it really a big surprise when a fresh handful of them were released during this GTA-less Christmas season (what, is GTA Liberty City Stories chopped liver? - ed?)

An alternate title for Total Overdose could be GTA: Mexico as the game's look and feel seem lifted wholesale from the great king of the gangster games. But there's more going on here than meets the eye. Total Overdose is the game someone would make if they couldn't obtain the rights to make a game out of the films of Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino. Which is ironic considering that SCi, Eidos Interactive's parent company, has had a game based on Reservoir Dogs in the pipeline for years. While it feels way too much like GTA, the whole game gives off a more action-packed vibe than GTA could ever dream of. And that all comes down to the use of an old dog known as the Shoot Dodge.

John Woo made the double-barreled hero, flying through the air in slow motion, hitting every target in his sights an action movie archetype almost overnight. Total Overdose's Shoot Dodge brings that mechanic into the video game world in a big way. Holding the L1 button during a firefight makes our hero, Ramiro Cruz, fly through the air pumping lead into anything that moves with the help of a very easy to use targeting circle. During a Shoot Dodge "Ram" can jump directly into enemy fire and twist around the bullets Matrix-style and use a wide variety of weapons in his quest to take down a Mexican drug kingpin. Best of all, the Shoot Dodge is powered by an Adrenaline Meter that refills very quickly so Ram is never without a new fix.

On the other side of the Shoot Dodge are Loco Moves. By stringing together kill combos (blowing away banditos in quick succession) Ram earns special moves that range from Exploding Pinatas to Golden Guns (perfect head shots) to crazy Mexican wrestlers to an invincibility fueled double machinegun-guitar case attack called the El Mariachi. Loco Moves are extremely useful and very plentiful, but it's hard to select the one you want in the heat of battle. If nothing else, it keeps the action flowing at a good clip.

All of this action funnels itself down through Total Overdose's plot of guns and drugs. You see, Ram's father was a DEA agent working to bring down Papa Muerte, the most evil drug overlord in all of Mexico. But he was betrayed by his partner and killed while Ram and his brother Tommy were just kids. Tommy grew up to be a DEA agent like his pop. But Ram became a petty criminal who is broken out of jail to take Tommy's undercover place at a drug deal after an errant grenade breaks his leg. Naturally, this leads to more missions for Ram and an eventual meeting with Papa Muerte...

At the end of each of these missions Ram is dumped back into the city at large, Los Toros, and the next story mission and a bunch of side missions, known as Point Challenges open up to him. In a pure stroke of genius, story missions and Point Challenges can be selected from the Pause Menu. This is due to Total Overdose's major flaw as a sandbox game. The sandbox parts suck. Walking (or driving) around the city is a complete chore as there's nothing to do in this burg. Drive around, hit a load point, wait for the next section of the city to load, run over a pedestrian... Bo-Ring.

But the Point Challenges on the other hand (usually assassination missions, fetch quests or driving missions) are great. Confined spaces, lots of ammo and lots of drug dealers to kill. They're awesome. And earning the points these challenges provide unlock more powerups, more weapons, more Loco Moves and more Point Challenges. There's no part of this that isn't fun.

All of the missions, both story and Point Challenges, are super polished. There's something perfect about careening through the streets of Los Toros, leaning out the driver's side door and then diving for safety right before the car plows through a burrito stand. Of course this sends it flaming skyward as if it were loaded with Acme-brand TNT. In fact, if it's an option, I love getting in a car, picking up some speed and then jumping out just before it crashes into the thugs/bikini-clad guards/police barricade. Mayhem is fun.

Parts of the rest of the game are less polished however. A list of little annoyances that add up to some hurt feelings. It's very easy to get caught on the edge of obstacles. If you get too close a ledge or a railing, you'll climb on top of it and then fall to your death. After saving at a Save Point, enemies spawn behind you. And for a game so centered on pure blood-soaked glee, there is a surprising lack of ammunition for the myriad of guns Ram will use throughout the game. Resorting to a rake halfway through a mission is nobody's idea of fun.

But the worst offender would have to be the fact that boss battles are a joke if you have an El Mariachi in reserve. But without it, the bosses will not die and you will be massacred by their superior firepower. I guess that's survival of the fittest and all that, but it doesn't make the boss battles very interesting.

The game's graphics also fall on the side of not very polished. Everything is bland looking buildings, dockyards filled with containers and a farm filled with plain green grass (and pot, lots of pot). For a game with so much style to it's action, it's a little disappointing. The graphics are average. No more, no less. Thankfully, the voice acting is suburb and the wild Mexican-American music is a perfect complement to the non-stop action. It covers all genres, from rock to rap to meringue. Have you ever wasted a goon squad to meringue? It's a trip.