Open-world shoot-em-up
Total Overdose is a third-person shooter in which you take on a Mexican cartel to avenge your father’s death.
Released for Windows on PC in 2005, Total Overdose: A Gunslinger’s Tale in Mexico sets players on a trail of vengeance. As criminal-turned-DEA agent Ramiro Cruz, it’s up to you to stop the cartel that killed your father...in as stylish a way as possible.
GTA-inspired action
Open world
Taking a cue from GTA, Total Overdose gives you the chance to explore an immersive open world, or at least, a facsimile of one. Many areas in the fictional town of Los Toros have invisible walls until you accomplish specific main mission objectives. Still, there are plenty of places to discover and blow up with maximum style.
Arcade action
Total Overdose emphasises combo attacks and kill-streaks, which earn ‘Loco’ points. You can use these to unleash frankly ludicrous special moves, like twin guitar cases that are actually guns, and a mysterious luchador who appears to help kill enemies.
Insanity is clearly the point, though, as the game takes liberal inspiration from the early films of Robert Rodriguez as much as open-world videogames.
Technical specifications
Since it’s a 15-year-old PC game, don’t expect stunning graphics. Vehicles (many of which can be commandeered) are ugly blocks, and characters look like they’ve been chiseled out of angry clay.
The good news is this means the game runs very well on modern machines, as it doesn’t require a high-end graphics card or gigabytes of RAM. Plus, it only takes up 1.2GB of disk space once installed.
Enjoyable but lax gameplay
Total Overdose’s plot is generic and obvious, but that’s okay since it’s as much relentless action movie as video game. It hasn’t aged well. It could reinforce culturally-insensitive stereotypes, although part of this is clearly the point. So if you’re in the mood to stylishly kill bad guys repeatedly, it’s worth a go. Otherwise, you can try the gloriously nuts Saints Row 3 or developers’ Deadline Games follow-up remake/sequel Chili Con Carnage.
