Star Overdrive Review - Forget the Master Sword, Bring Me a Keytar
You’ve been searching space for seven years, trying to find your lost love. She headed out on a mining expedition and hasn’t been heard from since. Suddenly, a message breaks through the static, it’s her! You grab the controls of your ship and immediately head to the coordinates. As you arrive, your ship loses control and crashes, leaving you stranded. So you grab your favourite weapon, a trusty Keytar and head out into the desert. Before long, you are greeted by a semi-sentient hoverboard that belonged to your lost love and with its help, you set out in search of her and a way off this barren and, at first glance at least, uninhabited rock.
This is the setup for Star Overdrive, and what a setup it is. It sets the mood for the game early, with clear 80s hair metal vibes in both appearance and soundtrack. The addition of a hoverboard that even Marty McFly would be impressed with is just the icing on the stylish cake. I was immediately in love with how the game was presented, part Guardians of the Galaxy, part Saturday morning cartoon. It grabbed my attention with its clear artistic direction and never let go. There is some serious world-building going on here, too. I loved listening to the diaries and reading the documents that were left around, learning what happened to both the main character’s girlfriend and the mining crew she arrived with. It is a well fleshed out world that is a joy to be a part of.
All the style in the world means nothing if the game isn’t fun to play; luckily, that isn’t the case here. Star Overdrive takes clear cues from the more recent Legend of Zelda titles, with the game’s structure sharing many similarities. The game is set on a large open world map that is broken up by dungeons and missions that progress the story. The dungeons in particular feel like they have been taken from a Nintendo game, with most giving a new special power and then requiring the use of that power to solve some pretty ingenious puzzles. My particular favourite power was the bounce pad, which is physics-based. The higher you are when you land on the pad, the higher you bounce back. This means, with some clever use, just about every ledge in the game is accessible if you can get the timing of dropping the pad right. It is amazingly satisfying to climb a cliff this way, dropping a bounce pad, falling, bouncing back up to a higher ledge, repeat. It felt like such a unique mechanic, and I couldn’t get enough.
Getting around the open world is an absolute blast thanks to the hoverboard. Zooming over dunes and hills, performing tricks to get a boost, leaping over massive jumps and even racing across the landscape to beat a timer while hitting checkpoints. It was all such fun. The only issue I had with it was in later sections of the map, where you can find yourself in tight gorges and narrow valleys, which is no fun to navigate on a floaty, slidy hoverboard. Apart from that, though, it is an absolute blast. You can even upgrade the board using materials found in the open world or from defeated enemies. These upgrades allow you to add different parts to the board that will improve things like speed and handling, and later in the game, even combat ability. The board really becomes a companion, and it is such a joyful part of the game.
Combat is initially a simple affair. Your trusty Keytar is your weapon, and it lets you do quick and charged attacks as well as dodge and parry. As you unlock powers, though, combat becomes a riotous blast. All the powers have fun uses in combat. The aforementioned bounce pad power makes enemies bounce in one spot, leaving them open to attacks. Other powers allow you to throw one enemy at another or even shoot some ranged blasts. Mixing and matching the different abilities is a treat and something that is encouraged naturally as the game progresses.
On the tech side of things, I found Star Overdrive worked on a range of systems perfectly. On my gaming rig, my laptop and my ROG Ally X, there were no hiccups whatsoever, and the difference between the highest graphics setting and the medium settings I used on the Ally X was barely noticeable on the small screen. The game runs at a wonderful framerate, and even when I was blasting around at full pace on my hoverboard, there was no pop-in or stuttering in the open world. It is wonderful to see a game from a small team land in such a technically perfect state, and the team is to be applauded.
If I have one issue with the game, it does get a little grindy at times. This is due to the upgrade system of the hoverboard. Different surfaces require some specific upgrades for the hoverboard to work as intended when sailing over them, and while they aren’t strictly needed, they certainly make life easier. This forced me to go on runs into the open world to find crafting materials on more than one occasion. It felt just a little like a mechanic used to extend gametime. It is hardly egregious, but it certainly was noticeable. Whether this sort of thing bothers you, I can’t say, but for me it was a little irritating.
All that said, Star Overdrive is a wonderful adventure that draws inspiration from Zelda, but overlays it with its own wonderful sense of style. The 80s vibe, banging soundtrack, fun open world and awesome hoverboard more than make up for the minor grinding issues and late game map niggles. This is a game that works wonderfully on a range of PCs and has clearly been put together by a team of dedicated and talented developers who genuinely care about the experience. If anyone is looking for a cool 10-12 hour adventure that will work on just about any PC kicking around, Star Overdrive is the perfect fit, and you shouldn’t hesitate to grab it. After all, is there any other game that lets you use a Keytar as a weapon? I think not.
Star Overdrive was reviewed on PC with code kindly supplied by the publisher.
