Plenty of Left 4 Dead-style co-op hoard shooters have come and gone throughout the years. This includes the quickly forgotten spiritual successor to the Left 4 Dead series, Back 4 Blood and Remedy’s recently released attempt, FBC Firebreak. Remember FBC Firebreak? Anyone? Anyone? That one might still find an audience after planned updates, but it’s facing an uphill struggle.
One of my favourite Left4Deadalikes (which probably isn’t a word but I’m making it one now) was Saber Interactive’s World War Z, thanks mainly to the sheer volume of zombies it throws at players during the span of a mission and the visual spectacles that its writhing piles of undead created. Saber followed that game up with another Left4Deadalike of sorts in Space Marine 2, and now it’s is back with John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando, a game that takes everything learned from those last two games, adds it to a semi-open world and then crams in a very unexpected but actually pretty cool idea from another game in its back catalogue; MudRunner.
Having the actual freedom to explore in a game type that normally involves fairly linear level structures feels really refreshing. In Toxic Commando’s tale of four infected mercenaries and their fight against the minions of a recently awakened Sludge God, you’re free to wander or drive around each map to your heart’s content before kicking off each level’s climactic firefight. Just like in Left 4 Dead, there are multiple acts here, each split into chapters but, instead of just going from point A to point B and occasionally having a few big battles at choke points along the way, Toxic Commando opens things up and allows you to plot your own path. Do you gamble coming into contact with multiple hordes of roamers in an attempt to hoover up every last bit of loot from the many points of interest on the map, or do you just make a beeline for the main missions but risk getting there with fewer tools and resources to defend yourself with?
Obviously most of your time will revolve around shooting various types of undead enemies, ones that loosely follow the established Left 4 Dead formula of explody one, grabby one, poisoney one etc etc, but there isn’t exactly a shortage of things to do between these firefights. There are giant flailing tentacles popping up all over the place that need to be shot before they squirm away again, there are small mini games for hacking and repairing equipment, little out of the way stash spots to discover, optional side missions to undertake, and much more.
One of the main activities you’ll be doing, though, is running down masses of squishy zombies with a car. Vehi-killing zombies in video games is always a joy and it feels especially great to do in Toxic Commando. Often there are hundreds of ghouls on screen at one time and grinding these clusters of creepers under your wheels as your teammates lean out of the windows to mow down the stragglers is pure 80s action movie excess. I loved these moments! There are multiple vehicles to find too, each with their own special abilities, like the ambulance that can give a healing effect or the self destructing police car that acts a bit like Left 4 Dead’s noise emitting pipe bombs.
The standout vehicle, in my opinion, has to be the HMV which, if you live in the UK, is an all terrain vehicle and not a struggling franchise of music stores that now sells plastic collectibles and expensive rucksacks. The HMV comes complete with a mounted machine gun and a winch, and this winch ties in neatly to the other big inspiration for Toxic Commando: MudRunner. You see, throughout the maps there are many pools of mud and sludge dotted around that will slow your progress as you struggle to spin your tyres through the blockage. All while scores of ghouls descend upon you. Shoot the winch at a nearby tree or piece of scenery, however, and you’ll be able to pull the HMV out of the mud trap, or up a steep, slippery hill and, hopefully, out of trouble. Plus the way the mud reacts and deforms according to the path your wheels take is lovely. It’s the best that mud has looked since… well, Mudrunner, I guess.
I’ve already touched on the hordes, and the fact that there’s lots of them, but I’m never not impressed when I’m confronted by the sight of thousands of bodies pouring over a piece of scenery and running, screaming, in my direction. Despite the open world nature of Toxic Commando’s levels, there are still plenty of moments like this to look forward to on each map, although if they’re part of a story mission you’re often given a little bit of prep time to shore up your defenses before they kick off.
You can defend these story areas in multiple ways too. Using special weapons like rail guns and grenade launchers for example, or mounted turrets and traps, but each of these will need a rare resource called Scrap to unlock. Scrap can only be found by exploring the map, hence the risk reward exploration I mentioned earlier, so if you don’t get any, those special weapons crates and those turrets will stay locked down. Each Toxic Commando also has a special power, and in the case of Walter, the character I played as, he shot big blue bolts of energy from his hands.
All of this ties into the very best bit about Toxic Commando and that’s – the explosions! These are best seen during those high body count, story mission battles where limbs and torsos go flying through the air in bloody arcs as you shoot a handily placed red barrel, thunk a grenade out of a launcher, or fire off a palm-sized piece of plasma into the middle of a writhing mass of mutants. It’s just utterly glorious carnage. The type of over the top, comic booky splattery gore that you’d see in something like The Boys, and I love it. Point, shoot, make the bad things ‘splode. It’s the signature ingredient that every good horde shooter needs and it’s something that Toxic Commando excels in.
It’s not all perfect though. One of the many reasons why John Carpenter movies are so beloved is due to the fact that they often have highly memorable lead characters (hello in particular to any played by Kurt Russell). Which is why it’s a bit of a shame that the Toxic Commandos themselves are a bit generic and bland, in both looks and personality. Sure they chatter away to each other during moments of downtime, just like Left 4 Dead’s characters, but the lines they utter border on the repetitive and annoying, rather than the meme worthy like Louis’ “grabbin’ pills!”. Seriously, Walter uttered the phrase “I’m liking this” at least once per minute during my hands on, which is definitely enough to aggravate to the point that I think I’ll be hearing it in my dreams tonight.
I’m also slightly worried about how grindy the upgrade and cosmetic mechanics seemed. There are three types of currency in Toxic Commando, all of which are unimaginatively just called ‘Currencies’ in the menus. These currencies are actually crystalline resources called sludgite, the most common of which you can gather up from weird tree things when you’re out and about on a mission. Higher tier sludgite currencies seem to be awarded for mission completions, especially when played on harder difficulty settings, but the amount you earn, versus the cost of a lot of the attachments and cosmetics makes unlocking things feel like more of a grind than it probably should.
I get that this is a design plan to encourage you to replay the campaigns on higher difficulties after you’ve completed them, a’la Helldivers 2, but when there’s so much customisation on offer across characters, weapons and vehicles, and when the cost of each purchase is so high, it feels like you’re going to be locked out of all of the really good stuff unless you dedicate some serious time to the game.
Oh and why on Earth is this game called John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando, when there are four Toxic Commandos in the game? Even if you play it solo, the game still throws in three AI controlled toxic commandos to play alongside you, which means there’s never, at any point in the game, a singular Toxic Commando. That name only makes sense then if the plural of Toxic Commando is also just Toxic Commando. You know, just like how one Nintendo Switch Joy-Con is called a Joy-Con but multiple Joy-Con are also just called Joy-Con. Argh this is making my brain hurt.
So yeah, only a couple of minus points really, in what felt like a super fun, gore-soaked co-op shooter. It’s not going to win any game of the year awards, unless there’s a new one for best zombie splatter in a video game, but it definitely feels like one of those games that’ll be really fun to burn through with some pals over the course of a few evenings. Whether you’d want to come back to it multiple times afterwards to grind for a nice scope and a fancy animated gun skin, well, that’s up to you. I don’t think I would, but I am absolutely looking forward to playing through the campaign once with a team of fellow Toxic Commando(s) when the game releases early next year.
