Isn't it just great when you load up a new game for the first time and you're greeted with explosive, in your face action before you even reach the start screen? Damn right it is! And few games come to mind that are as funny and explosive as Total Overdose - even the publisher and developer logos come in with a bang! The opening scene begins with a couple of gringos arguing as they move crates of contraband in the courtyard of a compound, while our hero, Ramirez Cruz, checks and loads his guns. They turn to look, with terror, as Ramirez boots the front gates open, his arms full of everything from sub machine guns and a rocket launcher to pistols and even a garden rake! As the gringos go for their guns, Ramirez drops everything, to swing up two pump-action shotguns and blast the hell out of everyone in sight! And so the Mexican madness begins…

There's no doubt that Total Overdose has its tongue very firmly planted in its cheek; this is one game that is not meant to be taken seriously. It's best described as Desperado (the movie) meets Max Payne, set in a Grand Theft Auto style depiction of Mexico and while it steals ideas shamelessly from all of these titles and others, it succeeds in combining them together in a fresh way, providing an action packed roller coaster ride from start to finish.

The story is far more intelligent than you would normally expect from a game of this nature, told mostly in flashback. You begin as Ramirez's father, who completes a mission in the jungle, blasting the hell out of his would-be attackers as he zips down a wire and crashes through the roof of a building below, shooting his way to the airstrip where rescue awaits. However, after successfully completing his mission, he is betrayed by the government agent that hired him and pushed out of the plane to his death.

Now enter the son, Tommy Cruz, an agent for America's DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration). You play the next mission through as Tommy, gunning down a bunch of criminals at a gas station out in the middle of nowhere. Upon successfully completing this, a grenade lands unfortunately close to one of the petrol pumps and, one huge explosion later, Tommy is sat in a wheelchair, battered and bandaged, behind the desk of his DEA supervisor, Trust. We find out that these events took place a couple of weeks ago and that Tommy was onto something big to do with a mole in the DEA and the death of his father. Unable to complete the mission in his incapacitated state, he resorts to having his twin brother, Ramirez, taken out of jail to replace him as an undercover DEA operative. This excellent twist gives you free reign to cause as much havoc and terror as you want while you roam the streets of Mexico, despite the fact that you're working for the US government. Once into Mexico, Ramirez is invited to a training area and the game proper begins.

The combat system in Total Overdose is fantastic fun and brilliantly over the top, in a Desperado kind of way. You have an adrenaline meter that allows you to do something that the game calls shootdodging, which is basically diving around in slow motion, dodging bullets while shooting the crap out of your hapless foes. So far, so Max Payne, but there are some very nifty moves to pull off. As well as dodging in any direction, if you activate shootdodging close to a wall, you run up the wall and spin upside down, spraying anyone in front of you with bullets as you cartwheel through the air and back to the ground. Another nifty trick allows you to spin around 180 degrees at the start of the slow motion dive, taking out bad guys who're flanking you from behind.

There's an auto targeting system that helps you to aim properly during these chaotic slow motion shenanigans, which does slightly dumb down the skill needed but it would be a lot tougher without it and, when not shootdodging, you will need to aim properly. There's also a great head shot system, whereby you hold a button down and a red target narrows in on your selected bad guy's head. For just a split second it flashes yellow and if you shoot at that precise moment, you get a one shot kill. This definitely requires some skill to pull off and it's really satisfying when you manage to get a couple of headshots in a row. The final part of the targeting system allows you to auto target explosives - barrels, fuel cylinders, grenades in mid-air (yours or those of your enemies) and even vehicle engines.

The result of all this is a varied and satisfying combo system, which rewards you for mixing up the moves - for example, you might shootdodge around 180 degrees, get a slow motion head shot to kill one bad guy and then blow up a barrel to take out another, all in one swift slow motion movement. Going for multiple kills with one shootdodge racks up the score too - something that is all-important, as I'll come onto. This whole system is brilliant fun and it encourages you to make maximum use of your special moves and go for the most stylish ways possible of massacring hordes of attacking gringos.

As for the weapons, you begin with the pistol and shotgun, soon getting hold of sub machine guns, an assortment of rifles, combat shotgun, assault rifles, grenade launcher and of course the rocket launcher, plus grenades, firebombs and various melee weapons, like baseball bats, rakes and shovels. Charging up to an enemy, knocking them over and then smacking them to death on the ground is great! There are several areas of your character to upgrade and as you progress you'll get an increased health bar, a longer adrenaline meter and the ability to dual wield a number of weapons.

You start off completely free to roam the Mexican city, which is divided into a number of distinctly themed areas - the town, the industrial zone, a junkyard, a harbour, a rodeo, a posh high rise neighbourhood, a seedy district full of dodgy looking bars and more. You also get to visit other locations, such as the jungle, complete with the ruins of ancient civilisations, a luxurious island home and others, so there's plenty enough variety in the scenery and things never get stale.

The first thing you'll notice as you drive around town is all the pick-ups littering the place. Some of these are pink point bonuses, either 500 or 3000 in value. Collecting these points increases your global score, which rewards you with skill upgrades as you progress. Other icons increase your stats (weapon skills for dual wielding, health bar, etc) plus there are plenty of health icons for those times when you're running low. Total Overdose isn't trying to compete with Grand Theft Auto and while comparisons are inevitable thanks to its free-roaming cityscape, Overdose is a lot shallower experience - and it's proud to be! There's no subtle upgrading or moulding of your character here, you just earn the points and collect the bonuses to improve. With loads of these bonuses scattered all over the place, many of which can only be reached by speeding up ramps in sports cars, or exploring the back streets for ways up to rooftops, there's hours of exploration here for the completists amongst you and the amount of points you'll need to get everything from the global score will require repeated play of missions and challenges, all of which are action-packed and enjoyable.

As well as all this, there are two bonus pick-ups that result in high carnage challenges - in the first it's the Day of the Dead (a macabre Mexican festival) and all the pedestrians gain skeleton costumes and attack you. The second turns you into a mad Mexican wrestler and you get kills by beating other mad wrestlers to death! This is great stress relief when you've just scraped your way through a particularly tough mission or challenge.

The main story isn't actually that big - twenty missions that in total, which you can blast your way through in under ten hours if you don't stop to do anything else. However, the missions are such fun and so full of enemies to kill in a range of entertaining ways, that it keeps your interest until the end. As the story progresses you meet a range of quirky caricatures, from Marco the DEA informant to Cesar Morales, the drug baron you have to impress and get in with to discover the identity of the DEA traitor that killed your father. Ah, revenge, what better motive for a good, old-fashioned slaughter? Story missions vary well, considering that they all consist of slaughtering enemies and blowing stuff up. Objectives might include stealing a vehicle, gathering intelligence, defusing a bomb or escorting an ally to safety during an enemy onslaught. In almost every case your objective lies within enemy territory, be it a dock, apartment building, bar, car dealership or mansion, so you have to gun your way through loads of enemies to get there.

This brings me onto the combo kill system, which encourages you to race through the levels at high speed. After killing an enemy, you have a few seconds to get another kill, thus resulting in a combo and increased points. The more of these kills that you can string together without the timer running out (it resets after every kill, beginning to count down again), the bigger the points payoff when the combo ends and the better you score in the mission. Each mission and side challenge has three rewards at certain score levels and you'll need to make use of shootdodge kills and get large enemy combos to get the top reward, which might be stat-increasing tokens or, even more usefully, an increase in ammo capacity for a certain weapon.

What also makes the missions a lot of fun is that your approach is entirely up to you - you can charge in on foot and shoot everyone that moves, take it more slowly and explore as you go, or even hop into a nearby vehicle and mow some enemies down. You can also open your vehicle's door to hit and kill enemies before diving out of the car, leaving it speeding on without you to explode upon impact, often causing other vehicles to explode and taking out multiple enemies. Then there are the special attacks, which you are awarded for pulling off spicy combo kills. You can only hold two of each, but they're so much fun that you should use them as much as possible. Golden Gun gives you four instant one shot kills regardless of range, Torro puts you into a bull-like rage and you charge around at high speed knocking enemies flying, Tornado gives you dual SMGs and you spin around, shooting every enemy within range and El Mariachi gives you two huge guitar cases loaded with automatic machine guns, which can be used to decimate whole areas of enemies and their vehicles. There are other equally cool and hilarious attacks too, but I'll leave you to discover those for yourself.

The challenges, of which there are over thirty, are nicely varied, including straightforward killing missions where you must wipe out a whole group of banditos, timed bouts against endless enemies with an aim to score as high as possible, escorting someone to safety, plus a series of checkpoint races around town, which are a lot of fun, if perhaps a little frustrating at times, as the routes are quite tricky. Still, the vehicles all handle well and throughout the game you'll get hold of a range of cars, vans and trucks, lorries, motorbikes, even forklifts and mobile taco stands! These challenges are opened up as you progress through the story and you will have to complete a few of them, because sometimes another story mission won't open up until you win a challenge.

Graphically, Total Overdose isn't breaking any boundaries but it's accomplished and super stylish, with a slight comic book vibe to the characters. The environments are full of detail, the cars all look great, the explosions are huge and bright, the weapons effects are excellent and the animation is very good, particularly on Ramirez as he dodges around and runs up walls in super-cool slow-mo. Particularly hilarious is watching hapless bystanders get knocked flying into the air by your car and landing far ahead, or smacking into a wall off to the side, with blood aplenty splattering around whether you're shooting people or running them over. The Mexican theme is perfectly captured by the visuals, which give Total Overdose a distinctive and unmistakeable look.

The sound effects are really good, apart from some weak and whiny engines, but the explosions and weapons sound great, as do the crashing noises. The voice acting is surprisingly strong; all of the major characters are acted very well, the dialogue is punchy and amusing, while our semi-anti-hero Ramirez, along with his straight-laced brother Tommy, are both very likeable as characters, as is the love interest of the piece, Angel (no, not the vampire!) The main bad guy is a bit weak, as he's hardly in it, but the other villains are full of character and make up for this well. However, it's the music that steals the show, right from the start menu, where a classic Mexican tune is placed against a rap-style beat. The soundtrack is outstanding, with a variety of spicy tunes that perfectly complement the hectic action - this is one game that demands to be played with the volume turned up loud!

There's little to criticise in Total Overdose - sure, there are a few glitches here and there in the graphics, like enemies standing in thin air occasionally, or vehicles getting stuck in scenery, but these aren't regular occurrences or a big problem. Perhaps the most annoying thing is the frequent loading breaks, which aren't too long in duration but there's loading and saving before every mission (and every retry, which can be numerous when trying to get high scores in the racing challenges), plus loading between city areas, which does noticeably break up the gameplay from being a seamless experience. However, the rewind function does help to limit reloads, allowing you to rewind at any time, or when you die, to replay those vital few seconds in a different way, meaning that you won't die too often. Your rewind icons are limited though, so don't think you're totally invincible! Also the city is hard to navigate, as the map is next to useless and trying to find challenges or missions in other districts can be very frustrating. Again, this is compensated for by the inclusion of an option to select the next story mission or side challenge at any time and go straight there without the hassle of driving to the location where it takes place. However, none of these minor issues amount to a significant problem.

Total Overdose is a tequila-fuelled, high octane, explosive game that combines frantic gunplay and stylish combo moves with a distinctive and perfectly realised Mexican theme to produce a very entertaining and funny experience. There are plenty of side missions and bonuses to prolong the action, although while it's all tremendous fun, the gameplay is a little shallow and when the novelty wears off, which it will sooner for some than for others, the appeal might fade. This makes Total Overdose perfect for playing in short blasts; it's a game to be prolonged and savoured, rather than rushed through all at once. Do it Mexican style, with plenty of siestas in between, senor!

Reviewed by Geoff Holland for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).