Some time far, far in the future, the very last zombie game will be released and its developers will weep, for there will be no more conceivable worlds for undead hordes to conquer. Saber Interactive will have had a big hand in that, as World War Z and its recent The Walking Dead DLC have covered off both fast and slow moving zombies within an early 2000s setting, and now there’s John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando for an 80s inspired sci-fi romp.
Toxic Commando definitely sounds like an 80s movie, though maybe that’s just because I’ve got hazy memories of watching The Toxic Avenger a couple decades ago and ‘toxic’ has lodged itself in my brain. Even so, with John Carpenter’s involvement to help set some of the story and the score, alongside Fractal Edge Music, you’ve that Mandela Effect where you almost feel that this really is based on an 80s movie. I mean, when there’s a Killer Klowns from Outer Space game, anything’s possible…
Sometime in the near future, a science experiment has gone wrong, unleashing a huge monster from the Earth’s core, corrupting the environment with sticky black goo and turning people into zombies. Leon Dorsey, the scientist responsible, is determined to stop it, calling in a mercenary group at the start of the game to deliver a special kind of fuel cell he needs. Things go wrong, they get corrupted, and now have to fight for their lives to beat the Sludge God before they are turned. Basically, zombies have happened and you need to shoot them, so why not bring some friends along for the ride?
If you played World War Z, then you know some of what to expect from this game, but maybe not all. Yes, there’s the big set piece defensive moments where you set traps and turrets and have to mow down some huge hordes of zombies, but those are the capstone to a very different zombie shooter structure to WWZ. Instead of being linear missions, these are open world sandbox levels with side objectives and resource looting, and getting around will see you revving engines to get trucks and thoroughly unsuitable cars through the thick mud and sludge. That’s right, there’s some MudRunner/Roadcraft in your zombie shooter! Thankfully a pretty light riff on this idea, instead of an infuriating knee deep slog.
Our first foray into a co-op mission ended in failure and a little frustration. Having completed the smattering of open world objectives, reached the church and started the set piece horde defence against waves of enemies, we were relatively quickly brought low by the massed undead, our ammo running out and not being able to unlock the traps and emplaced weapons to make the difference. It turns out we’d approached the mission all wrong, failing to realise that the “optional” points of interest dotted around the world were actually the key to victory.
The key is ensuring that you find a bunch of Spare Parts as you make your way through the level. There’s always two that are highlighted on the map, but more can be found by scouting out the various other points of interest marked – the main objectives will make sure you cover a good bit of ground, and you’ll often pass near these POIs, so they’re minor detours. Each Spare Part kit found awards all four characters with a token to spend on everything from fully restoring a vehicle you let be destroyed, to weapon boxes for high-powered railguns and grenade launchers, and then all of the defences at the defensive mission finales, where you definitely want someone on a mounted turret, at the very least.
Roving around the levels is fairly fun, but it’s a very different tone to WWZ, simply because the best way to get around is using one of the various vehicles. Even a four-door sedan will get you around much quicker and is able to ram through zombies while your passengers are all blasting away – any AI buddies in your team are hilariously gun-happy – and if you get a larger military vehicles with mounted turret or retrofit trucks with flamethrower, why would you want to walk anywhere? The only things to be wary of are fuel consumption and ammo, with repairing the vehicles being a quick timing mini-game… unless they’ve been blown up and need to use up one of your Spare Parts.
The problem for Toxic Commando is that it really just doesn’t feel like a distinctive new game. That assortment of familiar gameplay ideas from Saber’s wider stable of games is solid enough and the guns all feel nice to shoot, but you see big horde set pieces and think of WWZ and Space Marine 2, you get your trucks bogged down in the mud and think of Roadcraft as you winch yourself through it, you battle through the gloomy open world environments and think of the creative cul de sac of modern Call of Duty zombies.
There’s nine missions in total, five of them bundled into a middle act and playable in any order, and it’s through this middle wedge that I really felt the design formula became most obvious. Yes, the biomes change, but the approach to a level never did: get a car or truck, drive to an objective or POI, jump out and shoot stuff, find some basic loot, and repeat. A couple missions had us stay within a protective bubble from a truck, or there was precious cargo to protect, and even a few curveball setpieces that tricked me into spending Spare Parts early, but there’s the familiar structure underneath.
The real question is whether you’ll stick it out for higher difficulty levels and grinding through the character and weapon unlocks. I got the main upgrades for a single class after playing through the campaign on Normal, so you can repeat that four times. There’s then a couple dozen weapons, each with granular attachments and mods to tweak things like mobility and range, but the real aim is to level them up to get a tier upgrade and boost the core damage. Instead of being purely based on weapon XP, this requires Sludgite, and even though you can earn around 15,000 Sludgite per mission, when many attachments cost over 10,000 and the tier boosts are 20,000, 30,000 and up, and multiply that per weapon? It’s a grind I don’t find particularly appealing. Do we really need multiplayer shooter stat tweaking in a horde shooter, anyway?
If you’ve paid for the special Blood Edition of the game (or been provided that edition for review), then you get a completely bananas grenade launcher rifle for a primary weapon, which just feels like a ridiculous cheat code of explosion spam. I don’t want them to nerf this gun. It made the levels I played with it so much more chill.
