Star Overdrive is a game that looks upon the surface to be a thing of true aesthetic beauty, with ambitious and expansive exploratory gameplay, but it is a classic example of style over substance with a sense of emptiness that matches the mysterious abandoned planet upon which it takes place.
You play as hoverboard riding, keytar-wielding protagonist Bios who crash lands on said planet after chasing down a distress signal from his girlfriend who has gone missing. From the first time the demo landed for this one there were a clutch of rather obvious touchstones; the way it looks and feels will always draw comparisons to recent big hitters like latter day The Legend of Zelda or even No Man’s Sky, but where those two are genuinely innovative open world games with an almost staggeringly overwhelming amount of content, Bios’s adventure is hollow and boring once you get past the initial appeal of whizzing around a cool alien planet on a hoverboard, pulling off tricks with the right stick like a futuristic Tony Hawk.
The traversal of the landscape is the most fun part of Star Overdrive, thanks to a cool rocket boost, dashing both on the ground and in the air and a nimble evasive roll. It can feel exhilarating at times and even though the camera can be a bit clunky this aspect of the gameplay loop is the best part of controlling Bios. There is a Metroidvania aspect linked to unlocking new abilities – more of which later – but also collecting components which can be used to trick out your hoverboard and bestow it with new abilities such as being able to glide across watery or other hazardous areas that you previously couldn’t access. Once the board is fully powered up it is a thing of real beauty to ride it around the planet, taking in the well rendered landscapes and feeling at one with this eerie yet beautiful planet.
The same cannot be said for Bios during standard movement, which feels leaden and laborious, or the keytar based combat which lacks oomph and just feels weak and inconsequential, not to mention repetitive and dull, just like young Bios himself who is soulless and without the kind of distinct enigmatic character traits that make him someone you want to root for, and that anchors the emotional core of these kinds of games.
A bit like Zelda, there are special areas that equate to the dungeons encountered in Hyrule, and eventually you get to add three special abilities to Bios’s arsenal to help both in combat and when exploring planet Cebete. One of the abilities gives Bios the strength to pick up, move around and throw objects he encounters including using them as projectiles as a handy alternative to the weak-ass keytar. Another enables Bios to summon a gadget that acts as a trampoline/platform to reach hitherto unreachable areas. Finally you can get a laser that can be used to hit switches in the environmental puzzles or blast enemies. Just like recent Zelda games these abilities are linked to a depleting bar which acts a cooldown for their repeated use, and you can only top the meter up during combat or when pulling off manoeuvres on your hoverboard.
The loop of Star Overdrive mostly consists of travelling between waypoints where you use your special skills to solve puzzles, beat a load of enemies, and then repeat. The problem is the combat is rough and some of the design in the dungeon areas are so poor that it doesn’t really feel worthwhile getting really stuck into it; the rewards are low, the enemies annoying and not fun to take on, and the repetition levels high.
That isn’t to say Star Overdrive is all bad. There are some surprisingly excellent, very cinematic boss battles which I enjoyed, including one which feels like an alternative universe nod to Frank Herbert’s Dune. The hoverboard is one of the coolest modes of transport in videogaming when it clicks into place. And the design visually is absolutely sublime and everything runs like a dream on the Switch. Sadly if you are expecting a companion piece to the likes of Breath of the Wild this one is way off the mark and feels like a missed opportunity, and something of a sci fi disappointment.
