Contemplating it was revealed to the world with a trailer that featured 4 zombie-blasting troopers singing alongside to Bon Jovi’s “You Give Love a Unhealthy Identify”, I anticipated John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando to be a lot funnier than it’s. Impressed in equal measure by the supernatural horror and buddy motion films of the Nineteen Eighties, it’s massive and dumb and goofy… but by no means as batshit bananas as you’d anticipate for a sport that’s fairly actually about preventing an entity known as the Sludge God. However whereas it is probably not that humorous, it’s enjoyable. You will have already forgotten about that 2023 reveal trailer, however after enjoying three hours of its co-op missions, I don’t assume Toxic Commando goes to fade into the background due to its surprisingly stable Left 4 Dead-alike antics.
Whereas it’s offered akin to a narrative marketing campaign shooter with cutscenes, plot factors, and a lore-dropping man-in-the-chair vaguely modelled after John Carpenter himself, Toxic Commando is clearly designed to be an everyday vacation spot for a group of 4 mates who can run by its missions on repeat. Every expedition takes place on a reasonably-sized open map, dotted with a handful of elective goals and loot caches alongside the hunt’s primary targets. With no ticking timer or shrinking circle, you may take your time to gather the whole lot, scour each point-of-interest, and customarily fiddle along with your buddies earlier than pushing onwards to the mission’s finale. It’s surprisingly leisurely… at the least till the horde applies the stress.
Developed by Saber Interactive, Toxic Commando is constructed on the studio’s now-signature horde expertise that renders a whole bunch of sprinting zombies concurrently, permitting for enemies to clamber up partitions like a reverse waterfall of rotting flesh. In some ways, Toxic Commando seems like a successor to the sport the place this tech originated, World Battle Z, and even options near-identical mechanics – throughout frequent hold-the-line defence goals, you mow down incoming enemies with the identical array of emplaced machineguns, mortars, and electrified grids. It’s simply that this time it’s all rendered with a gloriously gross horror aesthetic. Who needs zombies to appear to be people after they can appear to be lamp-eyed freaks from the demise dimension?
These freaks burst and break after they’re launched to the new lead distributed by a really wholesome arsenal. They’re all primarily based on real-world weapons (other than the wildly highly effective rail gun, which scatters foes like bowling pins) and divided up into your common teams of shotguns, SMGs, sniper rifles, and different codecs not starting with “S”. Saving them from feeling completely bizarre is how they fireplace with the exaggerated bravado of an ultra-violent b-movie – all sputtering muzzles, vast bullet unfold, and explosive impacts. Legs are severed, ribcages torn open, and brains pinwheel out of busted skulls. It’s all as squelchy and sinewey as you’d hope from a sport related to the director of The Factor.
Your selection of loadout defines the fight expertise rather more than the 4 character courses, which really feel like minor augmentations to plain FPS motion relatively than essential battlefield roles. Every is outlined by a single particular skill – the Operator makes use of a drone that routinely bombards enemies for a number of seconds, the Strike can unleash a barrage of vitality blasts, the Medic has an area-of-effect heal, and the Defender can put up a damage-absorbing barrier. A minimum of throughout my hours of play, these talents got here in useful throughout a pinch however did little to direct how I performed. Maybe filling out the talent tree will give every class stronger definition, however proper now it looks like the common taking pictures is the principle occasion.
Mowing down loads (loads) of zombies is the crux of Toxic Commando’s goals. Typically that’ll contain the genre-trademark particular contaminated that largely work precisely as Left 4 Dead dictated (sticky ones that seize you, tanky ones that cost at you, gross ones that spit at you.) Elsewhere you’ll must unload a belts-worth of ammunition right into a tangled mess of tentacles, or use demolition prices to blow some sort of progress to smithereens. It’s largely by-the-numbers co-op shooter fare, however throughout the few missions I’ve performed there’s the odd one which shines brighter. One quest sees the map coated by a Fortnite-ish, life-sapping storm, and the one approach to navigate between the shielded pockets of security is to drive an ambulance that may trickle heal these sitting inside it. It’s a very coherent meshing of surroundings, state of affairs, and gear design.
No matter if the mission requires one or not, automobiles are as important to Toxic Commando as its zombies and weapons. The spaced-out goals and open nature of the maps imply you’ll want some wheels to successfully cowl floor, particularly as that floor is so usually virtually carpeted by the undead. Automobiles just like the armoured Maverick are good for each safety and doubling as a battering ram – you’ll simply want to sometimes cope with the zombies who clamber aboard like significantly diseased monkeys on the safari.
All automobiles have a particular skill, such because the ambulance’s therapeutic aura or the Thunder pick-up’s flamethrower, however it’s the winch hooked up to all however the household sedans that actually makes a distinction. Basically a grapple hook that may be fired into quite a lot of anchor factors, it may be used to tear gates off their hinges, bust open treasure containers, and pull your automobile up slippy inclines. See, the Sludge God, in his infinite sticky knowledge, has coated every map in nice massive stretches of gloop, and so with out a MudRunner-lite method you’ll be spinning tires and going nowhere.
John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando photographs
There’s admittedly little or no new or experimental in Toxic Commando, however what’s right here is genuinely good enjoyable. It’s a extra open take on Left 4 Dead’s horde-filled adventures, fuelled by the identical “arcane evil” really feel that’s made Name of Responsibility’s zombie mode really feel so aesthetically stable. There are some points that threaten that enjoyable, although. Each mission I performed felt prefer it had had the wind kicked out of it by the ultimate stretch due to dwindling sources. Well being kits are in brief provide, ammunition can get a bit of tough, and spare components – a foreign money that unlocks particular weapons and defensive constructions – can solely be present in a restricted variety of loot caches. By the top of a mission it could really feel like the percentages are actually towards you, and whereas I recognize the necessity to ratchet pressure and create a problem spike within the last goal, in a sport the place zombies arrive by the truckful, restocking ammo solely to search out you’ve been given a single journal does really feel a bit unbalanced. I used to be having much more enjoyable in the course of the earlier minutes, when bullets had been plentiful and the blood spilled like wine, so I’m undecided if the circulation and tone actually mesh with the present useful resource ranges.
The extra regarding factor, although, is development. All weapons have particular person XP bars, and should be levelled as much as specific milestones to unlock completely different modifications. Once you unlock a mod, you then must spend a foreign money to really match it to the weapon, and each prices a number of thousand. I can’t assist however have a look at your complete armoury and envision the a whole bunch and a whole bunch of hours I’d must sink into Toxic Commando to realize a decently functioning, various loadout. It’s the type of system that funnels you into selecting a single favorite, relatively than encouraging you to continuously change between missions. This, mixed with a trio of various currencies and palette-swap character skins, has me a bit of suspicious that the sludge of live-service has tainted one thing I’ve in any other case had a fairly good blast with. However these grindy woes will also be present in Saber’s Warhammer 40,000: Area Marine 2, and so they didn’t cease it from being one among my favorite video games of 2024.
That’s to not say I’m anticipating John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando to have wherever close to the identical impression Area Marine had. However, supplied the total sport has a stable vary of missions that genuinely show replayable, I do assume the robust taking pictures and entertaining enemies have a good sufficient probability to safe it a house amongst friendship teams who’d fortunately re-watch gloopy ‘80s horror time and again till the VHS wears out. Whether or not they’ll ever unlock the attachments they need for his or her favorite weapons… effectively, we’ll have to attend to search out out.
Matt Purslow is IGN’s Government Editor of Options.