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One of the breakout hits of this year's E3, Sunset Overdrive's blend of bandy-legged acrobatics and toonified gunplay drew some of the longest queues of the show. It's just the sort of vibrant exclusive Microsoft needs, but - given Xbox One's performance issues with the similarly effects-heavy Dead Rising 3 - can the console actually deliver this anarchic visual style at a stable frame-rate? As well as analysing Microsoft's E3 conference footage, we go hands-on with the game's show-floor demo to evaluate the state of its current build. First up, developer Insomniac Games has been very upfront about the technical setup of its platform shooter. Running from an in-house engine, brand development director Rob Schneider admits the game operates at a native 1600x900 with 30fps as its refresh target. With post-processing AA and full-screen motion blur in effect though, the depreciation from a full native 1080p frame-buffer isn't always noticed here in practice - it's still a fine looking game. Even so, long views of Sunset City's skyline lack the clarity seen in similarly post-processed titles, including inFamous: Second Son.
But even with resolution dropped to 900p, performance is a nagging concern during our hands-on with Sunset Overdrive at E3 - a Chaos Squad co-op match involving eight players defending a central point. The Wondertown Land level shown here uses a similar fairground theme as the E3 conference demo, but with effects engulfing the screen far more incessantly during play. As a result of all the rapid rail-grinding and TnTeddy explosions from all sides, the frame-rate is distinctly in the 20-30fps range at most points. Given the arcade-focused approach of the game, this unfortunately adds a huge sense of weight to the controls and makes hops between rails trickier to land.
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