Total Overdose is a really cool game in concept. Max Payne meets GTA with Robert Rodriguez' Desperado aesthetics. That's how I remembered this game, and in most aspects it really does deliver that experience. The open-world is rather limited, but that's understandable in a game that focuses more on being a shooter, and it's still filled with side activities and collectibles. The story is ridiculous by design, echoing grindhouse B-movies.

What I misremembered though is what the shooting was like. It's in fact the furthest thing from Max Payne, as it's completely ruined by its consolified orientation. An auto-aim determines where your bullets are gonna land, unless you execute a special move (holding down the right click for about two seconds and left-clicking at a specific time), which allows you to perform a headshot. In other words, your actual aiming skills don't matter. Headshots are a hassle to execute and, the more intense the situation is, the less opportunity you have to do the stupid 2-second hold thing. Normally in shooters it's the other way around: landing headshots is hard, but makes enemies die quicker, which means you are rewarded for your skill, and in more intense battles you are encouraged to land more headshots. Not here. Enemies might as well be amorphous blobs, and you just point your gun in their general direction and hold down the left mouse button. This is a major problem because this game is a shooter first, and shooting is what you're gonna be doing most of the game. If that wasn't enough, every super power is basically another way for you to take out enemies without the need for accuracy. And it's not like this is one of those games where different enemies are more vulnerable to different guns. In fact, the actual physics behind the gunplay are almost non-existent. Every gun feels the same. Shots carry very little weight, even when you're using a sawed-off shotgun or a revolver. Similar criticism can be applied to the driving physics, but that is not very important in this game.

What's more important is that Sleeping Dogs came out 7 years later and did the whole John Woo-esque slow-mo combat in an open-world much better, effectively rendering Total Overdose obsolete. I think it only probably plays well on a console where you wouldn't be paying much attention to aiming anyway if it was there. Or might even hate it, as I've seen people do with accuracy-driven shooters.

Also, this is my personal nitpick, but why the hell is there so much yellow here? It's like they have yellow textures, yellow lighting and then on top of that yellow in-game light sources, like street lamps and such, which are on even during daytime. Why is Mexico always yellow/orange? I've seen pictures of it, it seems quite normal in real life.