Sunset Overdrive Creative Director Marcus Smith recently opened up about the light-hearted tone of Insomniac Games' upcoming apocalyptic shooter.

"Games are kind of like uber-serious right now," Smith told Siliconera in response to a question regarding the goofy, self-aware tone of Sunset Overdrive."In a lot of cases, people are trying to make interactive movies more than things you are entertained by. For us, we just wanted to divert and go back to our roots. Insomniac has always done games that were pretty self aware, always had a sense of humor, and are fun for different groups of people."Sunset Overdrive is a third-person shooter set in an energy drink-induced apocalypse. Rather than the bleak setting of the studio's Resistance series, however, the Xbox One exclusive features colorful environments and fast-paced methods of traversal.Its setting is just one of many examples of how the development team wanted to create a game that was self-aware, humorous, and fun."I love games that are really cinematic, but I also really love the Sega games of the late 90s. You know Crazy Taxi was just fun, you just jumped in and did it, and Jet Grind Radio. Those games were fun for the sake of being fun."Ultimately, Smith hopes that Sunset Overdrive is its own unique experience built on the ideas of games that came before."More than anything, the last thing you want to be is derivative," he says. "For me, the worst thing in the world is to read a review that says 'it’s like this game.' Especially video games from the coin-op days, they had to be different. At Atari, if you came with a game that was close to some other game they would be like, 'It’s too close to the other one, start something new.'"Sunset Overdrive will release exclusively on Xbox One October 28. You can learn more about it by reading IGN's own preview

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