Insomniac Games is in a bit of a bind. After releasing its critical darling Ratchet & Clank: A Crack in Time on PlayStation 3 in 2009, the studio just can't seem to catch a break. It created a fantastic, atmospheric shooter in Resistance 3, but few people noticed. It abandoned Ratchet & Clank's roots with All 4 One and Full Frontal Assault, attracting the ire of the PlayStation hardcore. And it released Fuse, a forgettable, sanitized shooter that failed to please critics and consumers alike, a shocking fall from grace for a studio so rife with real, tangible talent.

Welcome to Sunset City.

“ Long gone is Resistance's dark, dire setting, along with its brown and black color palette.

So very colorful.

“ ... I recognized influences ranging from (or at least similarities to) Infamous, BioShock Infinite, and Tony Hawk to Prince of Persia, Sly Cooper, and Dead Rising.

Your enemies will suffer. And so will that teddy bear.

“ It's this sort of comical approach that adds such a thick layer of facetiousness to Sunset Overdrive, and I'm not totally sure the game would work without it.

Fizzie is very angry.

“ Oh, and tellingly, Insomniac has no plans to include Kinect functionality in Sunset Overdrive.

In other words, Insomniac is in need of a hit. And with Sunset Overdrive , it might just have one.Sunset Overdrive is an open-world third-person action game-slash-shooter with a heavy emphasis on traversal, and it's designed around a brilliant premise. Co-creators Marcus Smith and Drew Murray -- who last collaborated on the Resistance franchise -- have again gone into the realm of the post-apocalyptic, but there's a major, significant twist. In the year 2027, society begins to crumble, but it's not all bad. In fact, Sunset Overdrive's dystopian future is good. "Instead of gloom and doom and the world is over, and now I have to figure out how I'm going to eat," Smith said during his presentation, "[all of that] is replaced with fun in the end times."The fictional metropolis of Sunset City is economically dominated by a mega-corporation known as FizzCo (Smith notes that it's a city that exists because of and for the corporation, much like Hershey, Pennsylvania). FizzCo has created a "hot new energy drink" called Overcharge Delirium XT, and to celebrate its release, they throw a huge party. Your nameless character, who you can fully customize, from gender to the absolute minutiae of the clothing he or she wears, is employed by FizzCo to clean up during and after the party.The OD'd, as you find out that night, are mutated humans that drank way, way too much Overcharge Delirium XT, and while FizzCo concocts a made-up story to explain away their responsibility for the epidemic, the world crumbles around them as a result of something as innocuous as the release of yet another energy drink. Sunset City is suddenly quarantined as a result, and societal rules "totally change." You're charged with getting out of the city, but with the OD'd standing in your way -- not to mention FizzCo reps and other human enemies -- you're going to have your hands full surviving at all, let alone escaping.In Sunset Overdrive, fast-moving traversal -- often referred to as "velocity" by the development team -- is everything. If you're just walking along the street, you're going to be caught flat-footed by the OD'd, and they'll make very quick work of you. To avoid that, you need to use everything around you to grind, jump, and bounce your way through danger. Leap on a grind rail and start propelling forward through a city street and you'll be safer. Doing so will also allow you to take aim at foes with a unique, Ratchet & Clank-style arsenal of weapons. In fact, the game discourages you from more conventional movement by completely excluding the ability to run. You can't take cover, either. You're either moving fast, or you're probably dead.Interestingly, death didn't seem to have much consequence in the build I was playing. I died fairly often as I acclimated myself to Sunset Overdrive's control scheme, and always found myself back at or near the same place I was when I perished, just a little lighter in the wallet. Still, such a lack of meaningful death gave me cause to be more daring while I explored, bouncing on umbrellas to find my way to nearby rooftops, or skating along electrical wires as I obliterated my enemies with bizarre, often amazing weapons. I just wish that jumping from object to object wasn't so magnetic. While this design decision was no doubt made to facilitate seamless movement, it looks silly at times when you're clearly not on a trajectory to make a jump, yet find yourself grinding a nearby object you probably should have missed.TNTeddy is a grenade launcher, but instead of launching your typical explosives, TNTeddy shoots out teddy bears with dynamite attached to them. Then there's the Captain Ahab, a harpoon gun that does devastating damage to a single enemy. And how about High Fidelity, the firearm that shoots vinyl records at foes like sharpened blades? The Hover Turret is a toy helicopter with a pistol affixed to it, while the Roman Candle is nothing more than typical fireworks-turned-weapon. Each gun is bound by ammunition counts, though no weapon needs to be reloaded in between clips. New weapons can be found during the campaign or purchased from in-game stores.It's this sort of comical approach that adds such a thick layer of facetiousness to Sunset Overdrive, and I'm not totally sure the game would work without it. Thankfully, Insomniac decided to take a different angle with how weapons are upgraded, however, walking away from Ratchet's and Resistance's leveling system to something based on Amps, which allow players to mix and match special components onto weapons that make them faster, stronger, and crazier. It's like if Final Fantasy VII's Materia system drank too much Overcharge Delirium XT.Interestingly, everything in Sunset Overdrive -- from the weapons to the traversal -- combines into something meaningful called the Style Meter. The Style Meter is prominently displayed on the top of the screen, and will increase as you do cooler, more stylish things. Grind along from rail to rail and never touch the ground and the meter will go up. Throw a few headshots in there, and some devastating explosions taking out a slew of OD'd, and it will go up even more. The Style Meter ties everything together and makes you want to do things quicker, deadlier, and cooler.Side quests, on the other hand, were triggered by going to certain parts of the city while looking for skull icons on the map. Once activated, they’d unlock various kinds of missions. One had me using my melee weapon to smash television sets in an alleyway. Another had me delivering bombs to various parts of the city, with an ever-moving time limit keeping me on my toes. And a final quest had me collect five comic books from mutated humans for a nerdy, shut-in collector that refused to go get them himself.Oh, and tellingly, Insomniac has no plans to include Kinect functionality in Sunset Overdrive. "This game was definitely built for a controller, not jumping around the room," Marcus Smith remarked during his presentation. Sounds like the Awesomepocalypse really won’t be so bad, as promised.

Colin Moriarty is IGN’s Senior Editor. You can follow him on Twitter.