John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando Review — Bullet Sludge

John Carpenter has teamed up with Saber Interactive to bring you John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando, a sludge- and guts-filled horde shooter with some unapologetically campy characters. Building upon the foundation of Saber’s past forays into the genre, I think John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando will make a good first impression on players, but perhaps it lacks some serious staying power.

If you’re not familiar with John Carpenter, then congratulations; you’ve successfully made me feel old. A prolific name in horror filmmaking, Carpenter is responsible for the Halloween franchise, 1982’s The Thing, and the genre-defining action classic Escape From New York. There probably couldn’t have been a better person to review this game than me, because I’m a big fan of essentially everything in John Carpenter’s catalog, as well as the horde shooter genre and body horror in general.

To clarify for those unfamiliar, a horde shooter is what I personally refer to as the genre popularized by Left 4 Dead. Four players, armed with various firearms, some grenades, and some kind of healing element, venture through often linearly designed levels, shooting through massive hordes of zombie- or zombie-adjacent enemies, with occasional special variants joining the fight to make things more interesting.

A major way in which the game separates itself from others in the genre is through its level design. John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando features a more open-world approach to its eight playable levels, with all but the tutorial mission allowing you to navigate a vast open space beyond the path to your objective. This is done to collect extra defensive materials for the final horde at the end of each level, or to collect currencies used to upgrade your character and firearms.

To accommodate for this extra space, the game also has drivable vehicles. They add a fun mix-up to the usual formula, and the map compensates for your extra mobility with mud and difficult terrain that allows the hordes of zombies to climb on and swarm your vehicle if you aren’t careful.

Even with these changes, the levels in John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando can be a little bit repetitive, as is the norm for this genre. Each level has its own objective and plot, but they all end the same way, with you collecting at a location and defending it from an especially large horde attack. What really drives you to play back-to-back missions is the story and characters of the game, with some pretty decent cutscenes at the start and end of each mission pushing along the narrative of you taking the fight to the Sludge God.

The game is very character-driven, and said characters have dialogue that varies drastically between charmingly cheesy and outright cringe-inducing. You can tell that the game doesn’t want to take itself too seriously and that the characters themselves are meant to be sort of nonchalant action protagonists. Some have more personality than others, and again, the abundance of dialogue can range from funny to annoying depending on how much you can tolerate the campiness.

I was left with a genuine question after my playthrough: If this is a John Carpenter property, where are the mullets? Seriously, the game would be vastly improved if some of the characters looked more like ’80s action protagonists instead of the way they’re currently portrayed. Give me Snake Plissken and R.J. MacReady, and the corny dialogue suddenly becomes way cooler than it actually is.

I would also say that I was rather surprised by the lack of Carpenter-style body horror in John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando. Don’t get me wrong; mutated human bodies taking on grotesque forms are very much present in the game, but they simply don’t take forms that I find all that impressive or unique. Some of the special infected are fun, especially those that scream with some remarkable voice acting as they charge at you, but overall I would say the sludgy, goopy, tendril-mass aesthetic is something I’ve seen in quite a few other horror-adjacent games, especially shooters. It didn’t feel all that original or inspired even with its most impressive examples.

What also isn’t all that impressive, but is perfectly serviceable, is the shooting. The gun animations feel fine, and weapon variety is enough for different players to have their own unique loadouts, but you won’t often feel compelled to swap out from your favorite gun, especially when you’ve put a lot of time into leveling it up and increasing its tier.

Much more interesting than the shooting mechanics are the various classes of the game, which each have their own unique abilities that can be enhanced into some pretty cool mutated versions of what they once were. For example, my chosen class started with a unique lightning blast attack that eventually mutated into an area-of-effect mortar strike that could wipe hordes in an instant.

John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando looks gorgeous, is pretty fun to play with solid gunplay and unique class identities, and has a story that is admittedly really engaging your first time around. Beyond that, I don’t know if the game has too much replayability, with nothing more than difficulty increases and weapon-part grinding to keep you playing once you’ve completed all eight of the game’s playable missions. The enemy variety is neat, though a little bit generic for the genre, and the characters are fun but not interesting enough to really invest yourself in.

Overall, I can see the game doing well, and you can get a nice single playthrough out of it, but I personally don’t think it has enough to get me to come back for more. If it’s caught your interest, I doubt you’d be disappointed if you gave it a try, especially if playing with friends.

Try Hard Guides was provided a Steam code for this PC review of John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles on our Game Reviews page! John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando is available on Steam, Xbox, and PlayStation.