John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando is about as subtle in its Left 4 Dead and Back 4 Blood inspirations as Solid Snake’s imitation of Escape From New York’s Snake Plissken. That’s no bad thing, given that belligerent co-op zombie first-person shooters are some of the best fun you can have with a few buddies. As we’ve seen with Back 4 Blood though, it can be a somewhat arduous process to replicate Left 4 Dead’s enduring legacy.

Saber Interactive have turned their mutated hands at bringing the zombie hordes back into the limelight. The promise of intense gore, earthquake-inducing hordes and an emphasis on vehicle and shooting mechanics translate into a solid pitch. However, can the developers stick the landing and deliver the thrill of shredding flesh eaters within a hailstorm of bullets and bombs?

Here’s The Thing

I’ll cut to the chase – if you and three bloodthirsty friends are champing at the bit for a new co-op shooter, John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando will sort you out nicely. Nine campaign missions with four difficulties to overcome. Four classes and numerous weapons to level up and master. Cosmetics galore (earned through in-game currency, no less) and all the bells and whistles like cross-play, AI bots and matchmaking arrive at launch.

For set-piece heavy and bombastic titles like these, it can be common to have numerous technical issues, bugs and framerate drops that’d have you reaching for painkillers to numb that headache. Not so here. Aside from the occasional hiccup, it runs smooth as silk. More pertinently to me, the game is actually well balanced, from the start.

Unlike Back 4 Blood’s ridiculously overtuned scenarios, Toxic Commando has a great balance in its difficulties as you gun down hordes of monsters and look awesome doing so. If that’s all you needed to hear, you can rest assured you’ll have a good time with this game. It certainly isn’t perfect and won’t be tearing the champion’s crown from Left 4 Dead anytime soon, but foundationally, it’s on sturdy ground.

Go Commando For Halloween

Now, let’s wade head-first into the toxic sludge of the game’s elements. We’ll start with the story, which will be short, but unfortunately not sweet. I didn’t like anything about John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando’s writing or dialogue. Now, this is likely going to vary a lot per person, as some other players we came across very much appreciated the quippy writing and MCU-style constant joker-ing (yes, I know that’s not a word).

The four Commandos are as vapid as the mist that permeates The Fog and verbalise as much of value as Michael Myers, despite speaking so much more. Everything is a “shitburger” joke or jibe with no real setup or payoff, and it quickly became grating. I found it better to just tune out any of the spoken lines and focus on the shooting, which is where the game excels.

Each mission has an intro and outro cutscene with a small course of exposition dialogue from Leon, your group’s handler. The gist I managed to get was that an all powerful entity is majorly peeved and is spreading corruption and sludge throughout the land. Level objectives are your squad helping a small resistance develop the means to destroy the God-like being and restore the world to normality (whatever that looks like). It… exists. I appreciate that an attempt was made to give context, but I found it more appealing to just pretend it’s an excuse to shoot the hell out of a lot of zombies.

Village of The Homo Mortis

Story hang ups aside, the real draw of John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando is the pop of your rifle as it melts infected heads. On this front, I have no notes. Gunplay is punchy, with a visceral feedback loop of limbs exploding in dire straits as you dole out magazines of pain. Even special infected variants have a satisfying, crunchy “ping” effect when their weakpoints are decimated and they’re slung to the ground.

It’s really good combat. There isn’t a massive selection of weapons, but there is extensive customisation potential for each one as you level them up through use. The basic hordes are little threat, which ties into the power fantasy as you mow them down with reckless abandon. Meanwhile, the special infected, which come in the expected varieties (e.g grabber, tank, sniper variants) will deal some serious damage if you’re not acutely aware to their presence.

Toxic Commando does have a couple of new tricks up its sleeve. The corruption or “sludge” around the map will infect you over time, dealing damage if you’re not careful. Moreover, certain tentacle enemies will erupt out of the sludge and either stab or mine explosive you, both of which are not ideal, to say the least. They do a hefty chunk of damage and are just right ********, which keeps things interesting. My only real complaint was the lack of a dodge or quickstep option. Even if it was on a cooldown, it would just allow a bit more escapability from the endless mobs you face.

Prince of Toxic-ness

Each campaign mission quickly falls into a settled routine. You start in a corner of the map, with a few points of interest and your objective marked. We found an order established early on of: get vehicle with winch (perfect using the winch early, trust me), hit every point of interest for spare parts (more on that shortly) and the XP-boosting orbs, smash the objectives and head for the bombastic final defence sequence.

This is somewhat of a double-edged machete, in that familiarity breeds comfort. It was, in some sense, nice to have clear structure and sense of how the game works. No faffing around or dealing with overcomplicated mechanics, for example, it’s just you and the hordes of bloodthirsty beasts to slay. However, on the flip side, Toxic Commando plays out relatively similarly from mission one to mission nine, aside from some slight variations to maps or objectives.

One might have you needing a specific vehicle that keeps a protective dome active within a radius that your squad has to stick to for a time, while another may involve optionally collecting more traps to make your final task easier, or more difficult if you choose not to. They’re flavour text rather than dramatic changes in the fundamental formula, making the campaign rather predictable. Predictability can be both boon or curse, depending on how you like your games. Personally, I was fond of it, and the balance of the game felt better for it, especially compared to say Back 4 Blood.

They (Don’t) Live

Once you’ve gotten through any particular mission, you’ll face an earth-shattering horde in a grandiose last stand. These are the highlights of the game, every single time. Those accrued spare parts are used for unlocking mortars and turrets, erecting barricades or defences, and unlocking special weapons or crates. The army of the undead descend, and you and your squad unleash enough bullets to destroy a small country.

Epic doesn’t even quite cover it. Every play session revolved around getting through the level to hit the encore of utter madness. Are they the most challenging scenarios? Probably not, minus a couple of late-game ones. However, they bring the house down, with World War Z style crowds flowing their way over walls, special infected running rampant and a desperate deluge of mortars, grenades and heavy machine gun fire. When we speak of video games being distilled fun, this is what we mean.

On normal difficulty, you’ll face little in the way of real challenge, aside from carelessness or rushing into multiple hordes at once. Even with the bots instead of friends at your side, you’ll be dandy. On hard and above however, you’ll quickly F around and find out. There’s a well executed difficulty gradient that balances as you level up your class and weapons to meet the demands of Hard or Very Hard. The bots could probably just about get you through Hard at a push, but you’ll be far better served with a coordinated team.

Toxic Body Bags

A big question that plagues any online cooperative experience is how well it holds up under scrutiny. John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando is, for the most part, remarkably sturdy. Unlike the shambling corpses falling apart under the pressure of relentless gunfire, the game’s engine holds strong, even with hundreds or thousands of undead piling into your general direction.

We experienced a couple of problems, including a voice chat glitch where we couldn’t hear each other for an entire play session. Additionally, a couple of level objectives had visual issues, for example with the traps not registering properly on the vehicle, and amusingly hanging on for dear life while moving, despite visually not actually being on the vehicle? We didn’t encounter anything progress breaking, and the developers have already identified a number of issues they plan to patch out.

While Toxic Commando won’t be at the top of anyone’s lists for “best looking of all time”, the levels are well thought out, with interesting biomes of swamps, buildings, overridden sludge hives and the like that are engaging to slay undead in. Bodies are sent flying with destructive glee, fire envelops all around it in a satisfying haze and guns rumble with a guttural pizazz. Considering the price point, this is one of the more well-rounded and stable online shooters I’ve encountered at launch.

Commandos of Mars

Like I mentioned from the drop; if you and your usual cohort of co-op buddies are in need of a fix, John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando will most definitely provide a cure for the itch. It’s priced very reasonably considering its content offering, feature complete options and alarmingly impressive horde physics. Even as a solo player, the game is very viable for at least 2/4 difficulties, potentially even 3. Though truth be told, it loses a significant chunk of that fun factor when accompanied by AI and not joke-peddling friends.

The narrative is as solid as the 4th entry of the Halloween movies and experienced players of the co-op zombie horde genre may find it all too familiar all too quickly. Even so, with the fun diversification of the four available classes and a plethora of cosmetics to unlock, there’s enough crammed into this zombie husk to make for a meaty encounter.

Will it be manifesting into a beast akin to Left 4 Dead? Most assuredly not. But, I believe it has a much better foundation for longer term success than Back 4 Blood, and may even find a niche following much like World War Z. At the very least, I reckon you’ll find yourself short a breath or two as you begin launching mortar rounds into a tidal wave of thousands of zombies cascading on your position like moths to a bonfire.

John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando is available on March 12th on PlayStation 5 (review platform), Xbox Series X|S and PC.

Developer: Saber Interactive
Publisher: Focus Entertainment

Disclaimer: In order to complete this review, we were provided with a promotional copy of the game. For our full review policy, please go here.

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