Overload is a Six Degrees of Freedom first person shooter with a single player story mode, replayable challenge modes with leaderboard, and online multiplayer. If you enjoyed Descent, you will enjoy this. But why? What about this game is special?

1) The Nostalgia

The moment you teleport into Ymir Outpost and start moving around, you already begin to recall the feeling of the original series. The first secret you discover. The first robot that pops out of a secret room after you trigger it. The first time a Scorpion surprises you. The first cryotubes you rescue. The first secret level you find. You will remember everything you loved about the original game as you get introduced to some of the new concepts that Overload brings to the table.

2) The Music

Much of the music of this game comes from Descent music legends Dan Wentz and Allistar Brimble. You'll hear styles from Descent 1 and 2 as you play through the game. But can we talk about Descent 3's Jerry Berlongieri and his absolutely brilliant "Unmanned", the soundtrack to level 14? If there's nothing that gets me, it's music that fits what's going on. Kantor's descent into madness is captured perfectly by this soundtrack, which starts making you, the player, start questioning reality.

3) The Story

The story starts out with you investigating various accidents that happened. As you learn more, you start to feel that things are wrong. This culminates in the level 15 mission briefing, AKA the "Three Queens" story. Everything is PERFECT about this. Not only does this briefing explain everything up to that point, it invokes a level of terror that you'd expect from rounding the corner into a Scorpion. The voice acting on this part is exceptional as well, sends chills up and down the spine.

4) Challenge Modes

And after the story campaign, you can keep playing more with the addictive challenge modes. 12 maps teeming with robots for you to destroy and set high scores on the leaderboards. Try to play as long as you can with infinite, or see how fast you can kill things on countdown mode. It's a simple idea that players love.

While I can't help but glow about the single player experience, the multiplayer experience isn't quite as good. This is largely because multiplayer wasn't intended to be part of the 1.0 release. However, the team at Revival pivoted and decided to add multiplayer to this mix late. This really shows in the disparity between in polish between single player and multiplayer. While it might be difficult to justify criticizing the game for including something that it wasn't planning on, it is no longer Early Access, and needs to be looked at as such.

There are a number of missing features with multiplayer: co-op campaign compatibility, server browsing, joining games in progress, hosting dedicated servers, Hoard CTF & Monsterball game modes that were popular in Descent 3, and a way to observe games in progress (my #1 feature request). It really seems like multiplayer is something that either should have delayed the release of 1.0, or should have been part of a 2.0 release several months down the line. It is not great that multiplayer was released half-or-less-finished.

For playing multiplayer itself, you're forced into playing client-server. There are no peer to peer options, which means that a 50ms swing in ping can be the difference between winning 9-8 and losing 11-20 against the same pilot, just because you had different pings on different servers. The lower your ping, the more what you see is accurate, which means you get a pretty big advantage over someone who is at a higher ping.

Anarchy has a strange points system that rewards 3 points for a kill and 1 point for an "assist", which requires you to do a certain amount of damage right before someone else gets the kill. I very still much believe anarchy should just be based on kills, because now you get situations where games end because someone with 18 kills and 6 assists win over someone with 19 kills and 2 assists.

Don't let this get you totally down about multiplayer. The actual multiplayer games can be quite fun, and as long as you can deal with these nitpicks, you'll still have a good time. No other game outside of the Descent series has a multiplayer that can even be called comparable to that series, so Overload at least has that going for them.

The other thing that Overload has going for them is their exceptional and responsive dev team (edit: See below for update). All those multiplayer nitpicks I discussed above? They're *working* on resolving some of them, and are very good at listening to player feedback when determining what to tackle next. I feel confident knowing that this game will continue to evolve, especially remembering where the closed beta of multiplayer was a month prior to release, and how far it has come since. (Spoiler alert: It was *terrible* back then.)

So if you're looking for an authentic Six Degrees of Freedom single player experience that brings the genre into modern times, I can't recommend this game enough. It even supports both Individual Level and full game speedrunning, has a new game+ mode where the levels change up to add even more difficulty, and has a ton of replayability. Multiplayer feels unfinished, but give it a shot, and if you're not happy with what you see yet, don't be surprised if in an update down the road you see something added that you wanted in the game.

[edit]
I wanted to edit this review because eight months on from release, and not a whole lot has changed with multiplayer. The main nitpicks are still there. There've been some weapon balance passes, but no major change into how multiplayer works.

What's worse is the dev team has gone silent. I have said in a number of places that this now seems like a 2019 indie company thinking like a 1995 corporate studio. I don't know what happened between May and now, but this no longer feels like it's going to get any major updates, and the lack of communication from the dev team on this and other major issues (XBox is *still* unreleased) is frustrating a lot of players.

I still highly recommend the crap out of this game for single player, and the DLC has extended the life of the game for sure. However, it's a shame that the best multiplayer 6DoF game is going on 24 years old this month, and no game in 20 years has managed to even exceed Descent 3's multiplayer.
[/edit]

[edit2]
Revival Studios is no more, so no more updates will be coming for the game. They did make a v1.1 update to allow for online play without their own servers, but the experience kind of sucks because there were no changes to the net code. So, if you really want to play Overload multiplayer, be sure to check out my Steam guide on olmod to learn how to play multiplayer in olmod. olmod was conceived by Arne de Bruijn, and since has been modified by no less than a dozen other developers who love this game. It has many improvements and quality of life features that have made multiplayer an awesome experience.
[/edit2]

Overload is a Six Degrees of Freedom first person shooter with a single player story mode, replayable challenge modes with leaderboard, and online multiplayer. If you enjoyed Descent, you will enjoy this. But why? What about this game is special? 1) The Nostalgia The moment you teleport into Ymir Outpost and start moving around, you already begin to recall the feeling of the original series. The first secret you discover. The first robot that pops out of a secret room after you trigger it. The first time a Scorpion surprises you. The first cryotubes you rescue. The first secret level you find. You will remember everything you loved about the original game as you get introduced to some of the new concepts that Overload brings to the table. 2) The Music Much of the music of this game comes from Descent music legends Dan Wentz and Allistar Brimble. You'll hear styles from Descent 1 and 2 as you play through the game. But can we talk about Descent 3's Jerry Berlongieri and his absolutely brilliant "Unmanned", the soundtrack to level 14? If there's nothing that gets me, it's music that fits what's going on. Kantor's descent into madness is captured perfectly by this soundtrack, which starts making you, the player, start questioning reality. 3) The Story The story starts out with you investigating various accidents that happened. As you learn more, you start to feel that things are wrong. This culminates in the level 15 mission briefing, AKA the "Three Queens" story. Everything is PERFECT about this. Not only does this briefing explain everything up to that point, it invokes a level of terror that you'd expect from rounding the corner into a Scorpion. The voice acting on this part is exceptional as well, sends chills up and down the spine. 4) Challenge Modes And after the story campaign, you can keep playing more with the addictive challenge modes. 12 maps teeming with robots for you to destroy and set high scores on the leaderboards. Try to play as long as you can with infinite, or see how fast you can kill things on countdown mode. It's a simple idea that players love. While I can't help but glow about the single player experience, the multiplayer experience isn't quite as good. This is largely because multiplayer wasn't intended to be part of the 1.0 release. However, the team at Revival pivoted and decided to add multiplayer to this mix late. This really shows in the disparity between in polish between single player and multiplayer. While it might be difficult to justify criticizing the game for including something that it wasn't planning on, it is no longer Early Access, and needs to be looked at as such. There are a number of missing features with multiplayer: co-op campaign compatibility, server browsing, joining games in progress, hosting dedicated servers, Hoard CTF & Monsterball game modes that were popular in Descent 3, and a way to observe games in progress (my #1 feature request). It really seems like multiplayer is something that either should have delayed the release of 1.0, or should have been part of a 2.0 release several months down the line. It is not great that multiplayer was released half-or-less-finished. For playing multiplayer itself, you're forced into playing client-server. There are no peer to peer options, which means that a 50ms swing in ping can be the difference between winning 9-8 and losing 11-20 against the same pilot, just because you had different pings on different servers. The lower your ping, the more what you see is accurate, which means you get a pretty big advantage over someone who is at a higher ping. Anarchy has a strange points system that rewards 3 points for a kill and 1 point for an "assist", which requires you to do a certain amount of damage right before someone else gets the kill. I very still much believe anarchy should just be based on kills, because now you get situations where games end because someone with 18 kills and 6 assists win over someone with 19 kills and 2 assists. Don't let this get you totally down about multiplayer. The actual multiplayer games can be quite fun, and as long as you can deal with these nitpicks, you'll still have a good time. No other game outside of the Descent series has a multiplayer that can even be called comparable to that series, so Overload at least has that going for them. The other thing that Overload has going for them is their exceptional and responsive dev team (edit: See below for update). All those multiplayer nitpicks I discussed above? They're *working* on resolving some of them, and are very good at listening to player feedback when determining what to tackle next. I feel confident knowing that this game will continue to evolve, especially remembering where the closed beta of multiplayer was a month prior to release, and how far it has come since. (Spoiler alert: It was *terrible* back then.) So if you're looking for an authentic Six Degrees of Freedom single player experience that brings the genre into modern times, I can't recommend this game enough. It even supports both Individual Level and full game speedrunning, has a new game+ mode where the levels change up to add even more difficulty, and has a ton of replayability. Multiplayer feels unfinished, but give it a shot, and if you're not happy with what you see yet, don't be surprised if in an update down the road you see something added that you wanted in the game. [edit] I wanted to edit this review because eight months on from release, and not a whole lot has changed with multiplayer. The main nitpicks are still there. There've been some weapon balance passes, but no major change into how multiplayer works. What's worse is the dev team has gone silent. I have said in a number of places that this now seems like a 2019 indie company thinking like a 1995 corporate studio. I don't know what happened between May and now, but this no longer feels like it's going to get any major updates, and the lack of communication from the dev team on this and other major issues (XBox is *still* unreleased) is frustrating a lot of players. I still highly recommend the crap out of this game for single player, and the DLC has extended the life of the game for sure. However, it's a shame that the best multiplayer 6DoF game is going on 24 years old this month, and no game in 20 years has managed to even exceed Descent 3's multiplayer. [/edit] [edit2] Revival Studios is no more, so no more updates will be coming for the game. They did make a v1.1 update to allow for online play without their own servers, but the experience kind of sucks because there were no changes to the net code. So, if you really want to play Overload multiplayer, be sure to check out my Steam guide on olmod to learn how to play multiplayer in olmod. olmod was conceived by Arne de Bruijn, and since has been modified by no less than a dozen other developers who love this game. It has many improvements and quality of life features that have made multiplayer an awesome experience. [/edit2]