Take Grand Theft Auto, combine it with Max Payne, add in a ton of action movie tropes and Mexican stereotypes, and you pretty much have Total Overdose. The game might not be original, but it sure is funny as hell.
The plot involves the DEA, some Mexican gangsters, and drugs. Fill it out if you want but who cares about the plot, anyway? We're here to blow up cocaine burrito stands!
Total Overdose was created in 2005 by the Danish game company Deadline Games. A slightly more linear version was released for the PSP the next year, called Chili Con Carnage.
Tropes used in Total Overdose include:
- Badass Spaniard—er, Mexican
- Bullet Time
- Car Fu: You can do a Bullet Time-style dive out of a car before it crashes into something.
- Casual Danger Dialog
- Crowning Moment of Awesome: Plenty in cutscenes, even the opening: Ram sorting through weapons in the back of a pickup truck outside a drug farm where gangsters are loading up huge blocks of product. He kicks open the gate, carrying every single weapon in the game piled up in his arms (parodying the Hyperspace Arsenal), exchanges glances with everyone in the compound (including the chicken), spits out a stick of dynamite, drops all weapons except dual sawed-off shotguns, then opens fire—cue Molotov's "Que no te haga bobo jacobo".
- When breaking into the Vergilios to make a truce with them after gunning down hundreds over the first half of the game, and blasting dozens more on the way in, Ram slides down a zip line, with the opportunity to score triple head-shots on the way, and falls ass-first through a skylight onto a table surrounded by the gang's lieutenants, who immediately turn their guns on him.
Ram: Gentlemen...I'm going to make you an offer you can't refuse!" |
- Exploding Barrels / Made of Explodium Above average amount of exploding scenery for a shooter/driver, and every car becomes explosive on contact after diving from it
- Evil Twin: Ram is more accurately the Heroic Sociopath Twin, but still...
- Follow the Leader: Gameplay-wise, anyway.
- Guns Akimbo: You can dual wield almost anything after a while.
- Heroic Sociopath/Karma Houdini: Ram gleefully commits every crime in the book without consequence.
- Impressive Pyrotechnics
- Leap and Fire
- Revolvers Are Just Better
- Rules Of Cool And Funny
- Sawed-Off Shotgun
- Senseless Violins: The El Mariachi Loco Move.
- Shout-Out: The El Mariachi Loco Move is a rather obvious shout out to well... El Mariachi.
- South of the Border
- Super Drowning Skills: If you ever fall into the ocean your character will immediately climb out of the water and a caption will show up saying "THIS IS NOT A BOARD DIVING GAME!"
- Super Mode: The Loco Moves.
- Time Bomb: Several missions and side challenges force you to run for your life.
- Twin Switch: The player character is the Evil Twin who shoves off his brother's attempts to keep control of the missions.