Current Events > Why the fuck is Overlanders on Switch just a $1 game?!

(+) Yeah! (+)

It's worth like $5, maybe. >_>

I've always been kind of interested in this game, but something about the perpetually low price and the "cutting edge current gen combat racer" vibes sent up major red flags. My SD card slot was broken up until earlier this year, so I didn't want to waste the storage space either. Like what the hell is so wrong with this game that it's going for a dollar on the Switch? How hard did they bodge it up for that to happen?

I finally bit the bullet and bought this game with Gold points. It has that "janky Switch port of an already janky console game that probably ran okay on PC" feel - like I'd never buy Descenders on Switch because even the Xbox One version of that game chugged and was a bit featureless, and I saw a friend play Wreckfest on PS5 last year and I wouldn't chance the Switch version because it looked like a pretty boxy and obtuse game even on next gen hardware.

Overlanders feels like one of those games, further downgraded for the Nintendo Switch of all consoles. It's got that vibe - jaggy graphics and a noticeable 30fps, trying to preserve graphical fidelity by keeping the graphics detailed and kinda fucking up the look of the game as well as the performance at the same time.

That being said? It's a fast racing game, and it seems to control pretty well. It looks pretty okay, and it feels okay to play right off the bat. It has the skeleton of a good game that shows as soon as you play it - I legitimately asked myself why it was selling for a dollar as I played the tutorial track.

And then you find out Overlanders has four vehicles, and you realise that the solid skeleton of a game you just experienced is basically going to be the entire game experience. Four vehicles with predetermined stats, and a bunch of skins for each of them. And on top of that, combat racing elements that appear in later tracks that will probably affect the game balance.

But it has a ton of races in the campaign mode. I played two of them, it was alright - I'm looking forward to playing the rest. But then after that? Multiplayer only, unless you wanna replay the earlier tracks. It's like air in a jar, but it's a pretty nice jar.

I want to emphasise that from what I played, it seems like a solid racing game with some graphical and performance hiccups, held back by a serious dearth of content. It has like an AAA menu presentation with none of the things that make up an AAA game menu. It has a really barebones vehicle select screen, and the course list is linear with the campaign difficulty. But it's surprisingly polished for what it is.

I think what throws me off is that when it's not on sale, it's $37.50. It's not worth that at all. But $1 is way too cheap as well. That's like Voxel Shot for Nintendo Switch prices. It's like those crummy-ass phone games that get ported with all the visual clutter still on the screen. And despite being a seriously lacking package, Overlanders is worth more than that. It actually looks and feels like a game.

Honestly? Buy it for a dollar and see what I mean. It's clear as to why it's a budget title, but it seems too solid to be going for a dollar. Not so solid that $37.50 is at all reasonable for it - if it debuted at $15, maybe I'd understand. But it's just in this weird fucking limbo where I don't understand what it was going for or why it's stooped quite as low as it has.