Total Overdose was a game I always heard of but for the longest time never actually tried, some people really like it, others are critical of it but I'd say the game is just "solid" and nothing more. It's not the third best person shooter you can find now and even back then but it fufills it's role as being a dumb fun action romp that doesn't want you to think about it in an overly complex way.
The best way of describing Total Overdose is that what if you have Mafia 1 and Destroy All Humans' open world, with Dead to Rights' shooting mechanics, with Stranglehold's special attacks, Prince of Persia Sands of Time Trilogy's Sand Rewinds and early Saints Row's respect system? You pretty much get Total Overdose.
Here's some of the biggest misconceptions regarding the game I want to address of the way first, it technically has an "open world" the same way the Grand Theft Auto series does but unlike GTA, the open world is actually mostly optional, you probably need to engage with it on occasion, but for 95% of the game, you can select the missions in a level select menu and this is fascinating to me since, I feel the biggest problem open world games have is that the open world is pointless and you can select all the missions in a level select menu and low and behold Total Overdose does just that, so if you don't like the open world, engaging with it is entirely optional which is good since the vehicle controls and open world itself is pretty barren, you ever wondered what Jak 2 would be like if you didn't have to spend so much time driving to the next mission? Total Overdose is your answer to that as well as answering the question of whether or not open worlds add much to games. Since the open world itself like I said is optional, that means it's more like Mafia and Destroy All Humans more than GTA which is a very good thing.
The shooting mechanics often gets compared to Max Payne when it's actually more like Dead to Rights with Enter the Matrix's contextual wall running mechanic. Like DTR, TD's shooting is basically just using autoaim where you activate it primarily by using the shoot dodge mechanic, you also pick up random weapons and you never need to reload either, unfortunately no Shadow or the ability to use human shields but you do a variety of special moves like in Stranglehold but I argue this makes the game too easy even on hard. Also, the contextual wall running doesn't really add much outside of using it by accident.
You also get the Sand Rewind from the Prince of Persia Sands of Time games and these work like lives when you die, you also get some health back upon use of a rewind but if you ever run out of lives it's restarting at the last save point or autosave, but if you do die, save points tend to be fairly plentiful as well as autosaves so it's never overly punishing like the Grand Theft Auto games at the time were. You could criticize the Rewind for being a shameless ripoff but not many games even have the feature at all, it wasn't as widespread as say Max Payne's bullet time was so I'll let it slide.
There is also Saints Row's respect system, but this is honestly a trivial part of the game since you don't have to do many side missions to get to the main missions, it may seem like you need to try, but just do one or two side missions and main missions will be avaliable right away. It's trivial padding but it's nothing too bad.
The missions of the game are decent enough and what I like about them is that the feel like self contained levels where you have to search for switches and actually have to find the objective as opposed to looking at your mini map at all times, it manages to straddle the line between telling you enough but not too much. There is one mission where you are in a jungle and killing enemies while activating a receiver on a pyramid and then you to destroy 3 anti air guns before ending it off.
However the game's biggest flaw is the difficulty, and I don't mean it's too easy or too hard, it's just that if you play on normal or hard, the game doesn't really doesn't make you use all of your mechanics or abilities. Normal mode is easy where you can just use the auto aim, kill some enemies to get back health and then die and use rewind on occasion or play on hard mode where the cheap deaths number will increase and enemies hit harder, and I got to spam the scipted area of effect kill everyone in vincinity super move and El Mariachi on bosses. It is a game where you do fight human enemies with hitscan guns so it's already hard enough to make difficulty feel fine tuned but as a whole the game was a decently fun enough power fantasy romp on normal difficulty at least, the game lets you jump out of a car in slo mo while crashing into things, GTA doesn't even let you do that.
Overall, Total Overdose is an enjoyable game, it's a dumb over the top shooting romp that could've amounted to more but doesn't waste your time and can be enjoyed in the same way simple action movies can.
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