Why was this game so hated by a lot of people on internet forums and whatnot? I played some of it and it seems honestly one of insomniac's best work. Was this just tribalism at work? I don't understand, this game should've been talked of way more than it was.

Not sure. Its the best exclusive game iv played on Xbox One.

People seemed to be really salty about the humor. I think the traversal was also something a lot of people couldn't accept.

Imo it's the best damn game on Xbox One right now by a long shot. I wish it would come to PC so bad.

I don't recall it being hated. Most of the impressions were generally positive, it just didn't get the amount of attention it deserved.

It's definitely one of my favorite Xbox One exclusives, and I see it recommended to new Xbox One owners on a regular basis.

Ageing punks not liking the aesthetic being appropriated. A very small number of the media and audience though.

I don't think it was hated, I think it was kinda overlooked.
Some people really disliked all the marketing and the "style" of the game, which I admit is a bit too much at times. I found the game really funny though.

In terms of gameplay, I think its Insominac's best game and one of the very best of current gen consoles. Its so much fun.

People are still really weird about hating the Xbox One, so they assume a game they can't play is bad.

You can say this about, literally, anything that has ever existed.

"Why do so many people on the internet hate sports?"

"Why do so many people on the internet hate dove body wash?"

"Why do so many people on the internet hate anime, wrestling, video games, movies, music, books, live entertainment, the internet, people, etc?"

"Why do so many people on the internet hate?"

The answer: the internet is our collective id run amok.

Don't remember it being hated at all - quite the opposite.

Sunset Overdrive should have been a spring / summer release its not an end of the year big hitter as a result it was simply forgotten not hated.

A lot of people thought the game was "trying to hard" when it came to humor and style. That and, this is just a personal observation, it seemed to come out around the time when it was still "cool" to talk shit about the XB1 so you had a lot of trolls and fanboys with nothing better to do talking shit on every review and Youtube video they could find.

I loved the game though. Easily one of if not my favorite current gen exclusive on either platform at the moment. It's super fucking pretty too.

I think it was the humour that pushed people off from it, like mentioned already. I also thought it went a bit overboard at times, but it eases towards the end...of course you wouldn't know that if you didn't buy the game, thus one could just safely continue to assume it's keeps the tone up at 11 all the time and never play it. Silly humour or not, though, I really liked it! Was the first game I picked up with Xbone and is still probably the best game I've played on it. Don't know how it did overall, though.

Somehow this reminded me again of the whole silly Insomniac business with going multiplatform after being a Sony exclusive from the start, then bombing hard with Fuse and going XBone exclusive and this year again publishing Ratchet & Clank remake exclusively for PS4.

A game not being universally beloved by everyone != hate. Though for me at least the humour was pretty hit and miss. A lot of it mostly relies on references (Goat simulator! Neogaf!) and its self-awareness of being a video game is less of a wink and a nod and more of a direct headbutt. Still a great game all the same, though. It features some of the best (if not the best) open world traversal mechanics in games.

What exactly are you asking? People really liked Sunset Overdrive. If you're talking about random internet hatred, it's because the internet hates everything.

I've just seen this game derided often brutally for it's humor by people who sport themselves hardcore gamers for some reason. Just seems weird to me since the game's probably the best return to fun, dumb and weird games since the ps2 era?

@babychoochoo: I always felt like if this was on the PS4 everyone would've been thrilled that the Spyro and Ratchet & Clank guys where making another Sony title. It kind of reminds me a bit of what happened with Rare. Microsoft acquired them and people started to turn their backs on them.

Game looked fun. The marketing campaign was pretty awful though. It's one of the few titles I'd consider buying an Xbox One for although I'm currently holding out hope that maybe it makes its way to PC at some stage.

I don't think this game was hated. Overlooked maybe, but not hated.

Personally, I played this last month and I didn't have a great time with it at all, although I did think the traversal was pretty rad and there were some great moments. Grinding round that roller-coaster, catching the cart and firing rockets into it was really fun. Aside from that, I thought the humour fell totally flat, I actually found it increasingly irritating as the game went along. The mission design was pretty samey and the UI was cluttered and confusing. Still glad I played it though. Having loved infamous I thought I'd really like this but it just didn't feel quite right for me.

Hated? I don't know about that. Along with forza horizon 2, it's still the best reason to own an Xbox one.

Giant Bomb staff and community liked it from what I remember.

I don't understand why the tc thinks the game was hated. It's probably the second best exclusive game after rise of the tomb raider. Original new exciting and not a rehash like most other ms first party games.

It's because it was a Xbox One exclusive. The vocal minority of the internet seemed aligned more towards PS4 in the early going of the console's lifetime, so there was a lot of Xbox bashing. Sunset Overdrive comes out pretty early on in the console life with extremely hit or miss humor and the marketing was kind of cringy. It felt like that just gave fuel to the "console wars" and it gave an impression that most people hated the game.

I remember some people saying they liked it and everyone else just letting it pass by.

I loved Sunset Overdrive. I think some of the negativity around it you see online is from people that saw the initial trailers and didn't even bother to play the game (as it the case with a lot of online hate).

It wasn't hated it was just an exclusive on a console that wasn't selling very well at the time, so a lot of people(including myself) didn't get to play it. If/when i get an xbone it'll be one of the games i pick up for sure.

Sunset Overdrive is definately one of my all time favourite games, though I can understand it got overlooked due to bad marketing and what not. I first saw this on GB and thought i looked fun but never bothered to keep a lookout for it. I got my copy with a console bundle and I am very pleased I got to play this game and to this day still am occasionally.

Hope there will be a sequel of sort soon, the DLC was good though, I would buy it immediately.

The "attitude" prerelease in their trailers put me off from the game and the humor sort of fell flat.

I thought this was commonly accepted as one of, if not the best Xbox One exclusive games.

I don't recall seeing anything that said it was that bad, but if it was on PC I would give it a shot. I've been interested in playing it

I remember it being pretty loved on Giantbomb

I don't think it was that hated actually. I personnaly didn't mind the "teenage punk rock" attitude that much. The songs were pretty good too. The game is great.

Why do people dismiss criticism as "online hate" and handwave any genuine complaints as, "well, they probably didn't play it"?

I don't hate it, but it was very disappointing for me. I think the humor is about 50/50. The aesthetic is really close to being one of the best looking games existing, but there are a couple choices I think keep it from getting there. The monster design is really generic and the people's faces are a little too real and don't really mesh well with the cartoony nature of the rest of the game, but that one might just be me.

I think there are a lot of issues with the gameplay. I like the game right up until the point where I have to fight enemies. I think the weapons just aren't up to par with some of Insomniac's best work and the focus on constant motion during combat just doesn't quite click. Because you always have to be moving, they need to put significant aim assist on the weapons resulting in control being taken away from the player. The individual encounters with enemies end up meaning less because by the end of the fight the player doesn't feel like they did much. Most probably couldn't even ballpark the number of enemies they just fought.

I think the tower defense segments are the worst part of the game. When I beat one it didn't feel like I earned it and when I lost one I wasn't sure why. These missions just should have been pulled from the game. Each time one came up I put the game down because I didn't want to deal with it.

I guess that is do to the fact that this game was revealed when Don Mattrick was the head of Xbox division. Back then Mattrick was thinking that Xbox One exclusives are enough to get us to buy into his his policies. Look back and you'll realize that even COD Ghost got its share of the hate... and still is.

But in reality Sunset Overdrive is one of the best Xbox One exclusive and if i buy an Xbox One it'll be on my list.

As someone who disliked what I've played of it and put it down (maybe I'll eventually get back to it), I'd say that not many people hated this game when it came out.

I think it's more indifference than hate. I remember thinking it looked neat when it was revealed, but when it came out I just didn't really care. I had forgotten about it til you mentioned it actually.

Wait wait wait.. Let's not rewrite history huh?

There was definitely no widespread hate for this game.

Critics seemed to really like it, but online it was just complete and utter indiference.

That's the situation from where I'm standing anyways..

Why that was the case is somewhat straightforward I think. We're talking about a developer whose entire following was Sony-centric and had recently released a pretty mediocore game. Add on to that what was happening with popular opinion around the XBO and bam, you've got a forgotten game.

The general internet bandwagon hate for basically everything Xbox One in its early days that's been mentioned was definitely a factor. Then again, I love my Xbox One, but you can count me among those who found the marketed "attitude" of Sunset Overdrive to be completely off-putting. That doesn't mean it was a bad game or anything (it's actually reputed overall to be a pretty damn good game), but I get where some of the hate for it came from. For me (and some others), that "cool guy" main character breaking the fourth wall to wisecrack in the commercials was fucking brutal. I recall a few comparing him to Poochie from The Simpsons, an observation which I found to be pretty spot-on. The game still seems like it's 100% not for me. That said, many people seem to like it a whole lot, and that's great. It was a critical hit for the most part as well. I'd say this is a classic case of the vocal minority more than anything.

I didn't think it was?

Some ppl ridiculed the tone and aesthetic I thought, but mostly it just seemed quickly forgotten.

Hey, this is the one game I have written a review of on this site. I am one of the people who wasn't really bothered too much by the humor, but found the gameplay unsatisfying and the overall story pointless.

I think it's a game that previewed really badly. The "attitude"/humour didn't really work out of context in the trailers, and gameplay-wise the traversal looks way too slow and inefficient. When you actually play the game, the movement speed is damn near perfect, and made me wish more games made actually traversing an open world as fun as this game did. The humour isn't as non-stop and grating as it was in the trailers, and it had way less of the "dudebro" or whatever humour they were using in the trailers.

So I think a lot of people (me included) wrote it off before playing it based on the pre-release coverage, and then everyone just kinda forgot about it. It's a shame, because it's probably the best exclusive that console has (especially now they've ported basically every exclusive but this one to PC).

Hated? It also is my fav Xbone game. IMO its still the best exclusive... Probably between both consoles. I really enjoyed the story and gameplay.

You mean the game that was #8 and #7 on Dan's and Brad's respective GOTY lists for 2014?

I feel like most people talk about Sunset Overdrive fondly. The humor might be divisive but I find when it's mentioned people still have positive things to say about it. Definitely wouldn't say hated.

It's the most fun I've had just making outfits for my character.

It didn't preview well and most people just didn't bother to pick it up. Not a lot of hate, but certainly a lot of indifference.

The game really hit its stride once it hits its second act; the first chunk of the game is a little too keen on beating you over the head with how funny it thinks referencing itself is, but once it eases into the story proper and you get to meet different factions, it's fantastic.

This game was not even close to hated.

It's getting to the point where we can't even have actual conversations about games anymore because too many people conflate criticism with hatred. It's possible to like something while still being critical of certain aspects of it (aesthetic, humor, marketing, etc.).

Came installed on my Xbox, so I unfortunately keep forgetting I own it without a proper box. Bought that bundle based on all the positive press, I don't recall much negative buzz at the time.

Game was fun, but I kept comparing it to Infamous 2 and disappointed myself (as Infamous 2 is probably a top ten game of last gen for me).

I didn't pay enough attention to the news on this game, but from what I've seen, the little I've seen (which is probably the reason), I didn't see much hate, so I don't know what you're talking about, but I will say I tried playing the game, and while I like the look of it, I find it hard to enjoy. I never beat it, but it's a game I wanted to get through despite the issues, but I just couldn't. I thought some of it was kind of funny, and the visuals are pretty good, but the gameplay isn't something that hooked me. I can usually tolerate and even appreciate a games use of licensed or licensed-like music in a game even when I don't like the music itself otherwise, but the soundtrack in it really turned me off as well, and the music is a big part of the experience of this game I felt, which didn't do it for me.

I think there was some disappointment in the movement speed. It looked like it was going to be a very fast game until game play was revealed that looked super pokey. Maybe that was just me, though. I had the same feeling about Bulletstorm. The trailers made it look Quake 3 fast and it turned out no speedier than a Call of Duty.

I don't know if it's hated, but the I was way into the atmosphere during all the preview coverage, but that all changed in a bad way when I started the game. I think it's boring as fuck and having to be constantly be on the move, grinding and shooting made me not want to engage with the combat anymore.

I've never seen any hate directed at sunset overdrive.