It’s interesting going back and looking at Saber Interactive’s catalog of games and the variety of things they have made. Vehicle based games like the Mudrunner series, first person shooters like Insurgency: Sandstorm, third person shooters like the Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine games, co-op focused games like Painkiller, to even a VR Exploding Kittens game. They have really done a lot of styles and genre’s and I commend them for that even if they don’t always hit high. John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando is basically Saber taking all their knowledge of previous titles like World War Z, Mudrunners, and their other co-op focused games and mashing them together in what might be their most polished and interesting co-op game yet.

Toxic Commando is setup up like your typical 1980’s action movie which shouldn’t come as a surprise with John Carpenter helping advise and write the story. Four mercenaries are sent on a mission to delivery a very important chemical for a scientist running a highly dangerous experiment. Of course, nothing goes right, the heroes unleash an Eldritch monster called the Sludge God and it proceeds to start terraforming the land turning soil into sludge and creating zombie like creatures. Infected by the Sludge God’s offspring, the only way the mercenaries can survive is using a special device provided by the scientist that stops the infection temporarily. To save the world, and more importantly themselves, the newly named Toxic Commandos must destroy the Sludge God.

Nope, the Sludge God doesn’t look that scary… gulp.

The premise is over the top, the banter is silly, and the buddy action hits pretty well. The story itself kind of drags a bit, but that’s partly because of the mission structure itself. I found myself not really caring at all about the characters or the main goal since they do a poor job giving me a reason to care. Nevertheless, the premise itself sets up perfectly the culmination of all the work Saber has done in their other games. Turning the soil into sludge? Well hello Mudrunner’s driving and physics. Massive hordes of zombies? They have the swarm system from World War Z for that also. It really is a great, and still original, setup for a story. And while I wasn’t always engaged in the narrative, or even the characters, it still felt unique in its own way.

Toxic Commando is a four player co-op first person shooter where you’ll need to navigate a open map blasting through sludge zombies with guns, powers, and vehicles. Even if you’re playing by yourself, or only a couple of friends, you will always have four players on your team. You can fill the empty spots with real players using matchmaking or just use AI. There are four main class types you can choose from and they are independent from the characters themselves. So you don’t need to worry about being locked to a character you don’t like just because you want to be a certain class.

The medic class has a lot of branches that can’t even be used with some of the other main abilities other than Healing Aura. Luckily you can remove spent points.

Strike class is your DPS, being able to throw out fireballs from your hands. Medic is self explanatory, throw down a circle of healing to help out the squad. Defender is the tank, throw down a bubble shield that blocks projectiles and hurts enemies inside of it. Then there is the Operator who can summon a drone that will fire down at enemies from above. All of the classes have their own branching upgrade paths that alter and enhance the abilities, as well as a main path that will drastically change how the power will work. For example the Striker goes from being able to rapid shoot fire balls to sending out a massive explosive that will continue to bounce and create more explosions in the area. Medic can instant heal instead of gradually and set a specific healing area instead of just an area around the player.

While I do like having the abilities since it does help set itself apart from the other horde based zombie games. I couldn’t help but feel a bit let down by the lack of creativity here. The classes are all pretty standard with nothing really standing out or very unique to fit in with the setting specifically outside of Strike. Playing as anything else felt kind of boring, a bit unimaginative for such an over-the-top premise. None of the abilities for the other classes really felt engaging, sure they all play their part gameplay-wise, but it wasn’t exciting to play as them.

Makes sure you collect as many mechanical parts as you can. You’re going to need them for the end hordes.

Luckily, no matter what class you play as in Toxic Commando, the gunplay feels great and that is what’s most important in a hectic horde FPS game. There is a good amount of weapons you can select from to start your loadout, from AR’s, Snipers, Shotguns, and bolt action rifles. A couple of side arm pistols, and a nice selection of melee weapons like a katana, axe, bat, and crowbar. The guns can all be upgraded by using them, and as they upgrade attachments will unlock for purchase. New sites, barrels, magazines, stocks etc. to modify the weapons stats. There will be special weapons to pick up while exploring the maps, but these have limited ammo and can’t be refilled. Nor can you bring them back to the base to carry into the next level. So just use them while you got them.

Let’s get into the actual missions and levels now. Once you select your mission at the hub and you get your party together you’ll be thrown into an open world map. Each mission will start a bit different, but for the most part you will be dropped in with just your loadout, and no vehicle. You’ll need to map a plan of action to get a vehicle and hit some points of interest in order to get better gear, and hopefully find a car with a winch on it. Military trucks are the best find because they offer a gun on the back and a winch.

It is crucial to obtain a vehicle with a winch on it. Not only for blockades, but also for locked weapon boxes.

Vehicles become their own minigame in Toxic Commando because you’ll need to constantly repair them and keep them fueled. Not only that, but if you have a gun on the back you’ll need to find turret ammo boxes to refill the gun, normal ammo won’t do. You will also need to pay attention to mud spots and slippery hills as you will get stuck in deep mud and it take forever to work your way out of naturally. Having the winch elevates that problem because you can grapple onto something and pull yourself out of the mud or up a slipper hill. The winch also allows you to open up locked areas and container for better loot and mechanical parts.

Mechanical parts play a huge roll in the success of your mission since these are what you will use to unlock special crates, and activate defenses. Without the mechanical parts you won’t be able to withstand the final stand hordes, especially on harder difficulties. Prioritizing collecting these is the first thing to do when planning your routes for every mission. Mission structure is pretty vanilla here: you go to location, interact with objective, fight horde. Rinse and repeat a couple of times around the map until you land at your final objective where you’ll have your standoff.

I was really hoping the game was going to make a change with this level, but it was a one off. I wish there was more variety like Catch and Kill.

This is where you’ll fight massive waves of enemies and use your mechanical parts. Before beginning you can use your parts to fix up the mortar cannon, fix the turret, setup barbed wire traps as well as turning on electrical ground traps. Unlock weapon chests so you can use some of the special weapons or grenades. Pretty standard horde based defense action. This is also where you’ll see most of the swarm system be used. I was kind of let down that there weren’t more zombies out in the open world areas. There are sections where you’ll see them swarming around you, but you can’t interact with them. It’s odd, and made the open world combat feel a bit less impressive. Not that there aren’t plenty of enemies, but not as many I was expecting with the swarm system.

The only variance in mission design is that in couple levels you will need to drive a vehicle around that pushes out a protective dome that keeps the toxic air away from the players. This makes the players confined within an area which pushes tension. Then at some point you will need to remove the shield from the car and have on of the players carry it to a destination on foot. Besides that change, the general structure still remains the same. Collect parts, collect guns, activate objective, fight horde. It started to all run together and feel the same to the point I’m not sure I could even tell you the difference of the missions besides the final horde fight.

There are times where Toxic Commando can look good.

I was able to play on both my PC with an i7-12700kf, RTX 5070, and 32gb of DDR4 RAM as well as the Xbox Series X, and the performance is flawless on PC. Unfortunately, even on performance mode for console, it only locks it to 30fps, but from what I played it is a solid 30fps. I didn’t notice any dips or chugs which did make it feel much better to play despite it still only being 30fps. Quality mode is almost not worth it, the game isn’t that much of a looker anyway which is not worth the dip in frames during action.

I wouldn’t say Toxic Commando is ugly, it has its moments when you come across an open area and you see these large sludge tendrils slashing around the sky and a horde of zombie awaiting your approach that do look really striking. However, the Sludge God really did terraform everything because that’s what it all looks like, sludge. It’s just overall pretty drab, and I know that’s sort of its aesthetic, but it really makes every level feel like the same thing. Like I said above, I don’t think I could tell you the difference in the missions beside a very few key points in a couple of them. Even in the larger sludge monster designs they just don’t really standout besides the large tendrils. Much like the powers, it felt too safe in design for such a out there premise.

Sound design is pretty good from the weapons and vehicles to the zombie screams and gore splashes. Guns have a nice punchy sound to them adding to the intense combat, and the sound design for the vehicles are varied depending on what you’re driving. Soundtrack is a mix of 80’s synthwave/darksynth and it was also composed by John Carpenter as well. It’s decent, nothing spectacular, but it fits the style he was going for. Unfortunately, I wasn’t a big fan of the writing and voice acting. I know its supposed to be cheesy but the setup and delivery just didn’t land and left it more cringey than fun and cheeky.

Toxic Commando is a culmination of a lot of Saber’s hard work and I do love the blending of the genre’s into a single game. Mixing their experience with co-op shooters, horde shooters, and the adventure racing games was a brilliant idea. While I do wish they would have went a bit more on the powers for the classes and enemy designs, as well as go a bit crazy with the level design and art. This was definitely still a fun co-op experience that I hope they add some more content to later on. I’d love to see more original ideas from them that continue to blend their wide selection of game genre’s.

John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando is available now on Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, and PC.

Reviewed on PC with i7-12700kf, RTX 5070, and 32gb DDR5, and Xbox Series X.

A copy of John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando was provided by the publisher.