There are games that buy you at first because they have an identity. The kind of Left 4 Dead that caused half of my high school to drop for a year. And there are games that have all the ingredients for a good time, but manage to put them together so that in the end you get something that looks like the best kebab after going out, but when you take a bite you realize that they put falafel in you. Toxic Commando is just that.
Saber Interactive obviously knows how to make a horde shooter. That is not in doubt. People have already shown that they know how to deliver chaos, hordes of enemies and co-op shooting that can be really fun when everything falls into place. On paper, Toxic Commando has a recipe for success: team action, massive waves of zombies, weapons that have weight and vehicles that add extra dynamism. The problem is that the game manages to turn almost none of that into something really memorable.
You know what bothered me the most about this game? I bought a PS5 Pro to have the best console experience, but this game was stuttering. I once again felt like a penniless student who couldn't buy RAM. I can't even do that today with these prices.
And time to get to the biggest problem: the game has no personality.
Which is especially ironic, because he is clearly trying to have her. Everything seems like it wants to be wacky, pulp, a little trash, a little camp, a little "hey, look how cool and dirty and crazy we are". But this attempt at character ends not as charm, but as embarrassment. It's as if someone tried to combine B-movie aesthetics, generic zombie humor and "badass" dialogues, but without a single genuinely good idea to hold it together.
I love B-movies. I consider Arnie movies to be the pinnacle of cinematography, I live for those liners. But this is just so.. Bad. And that's pretty bad.
The very name John Carpenter's Toxic Commando sounds like the game is borrowing the authority of a bigger name to make it seem more important than it is. When I hear John Carpenter, I have expectations. And a lot of them.
And when you scratch a little under the surface, it's hard to feel any concrete Carpenter's hand at all. The soundtrack has that nice 80s horror feel to it, and that's really to be commended, but everything else feels like the last name on the cover is there to do the marketing heavy lifting. And really heavy lifting.
Visually, the game revolves around the motif of sludge, slime, rot and some kind of toxic dirt. The main antagonistic motif is literally a god of mud, which is a concept that could have been either totally disgustingly great or totally stupid. The game manages to be somewhere in between, but in a worse way. It doesn't look flashy enough to be special, and it's not absurd enough to be funny. The result is a world that is neither shocking nor recognizable, but just muddy and monotonous.
This is especially evident in the level design. Unlike the more linear approach that World War Z took to pacing, structure, and set-piece moments, Toxic Commando throws the player into larger open-ended maps that sound interesting in theory, but in practice often feel like a drag on the content. Missions have a central goal and incidental locations to explore, but it all quickly becomes one and the same. A lot of driving, a lot of mud, a lot of empty space and too few moments that stay in your head.
Worst of all, the tutorial, which is more linear and focused, actually makes a stronger impression than most of the rest of the game. Which is a pretty good indicator of where the game is headed. When a tutorial better demonstrates pace, flow and a sense of progress than most campaigns, then you have a problem.
It's not all black, although most of the game looks black. Driving is really fun. The vehicles are one of the best things in the game and you can feel that someone knew how to turn at least one part of the concept into something concrete. Management is solid, driving on the terrain has weight, and the very interaction with the environment through mud, getting stuck and pulling out gives the game something that at least slightly differentiates it from other shooters. The winch mechanic, as much as the game is in love with it, actually works. Tearing up obstacles, extracting vehicles and overcoming muddy climbs adds some tactical dimension to moving around the map.
Also, individual vehicles with specific functions can be fun. An ambulance that heals, a pickup with a flamethrower, heavy transporters with turrets and EMP... these are the moments when the game shows that it could have been much more than what it is. When you're in a rush, when zombies are everywhere, when the squad is shooting from the car, when half the screen is falling apart from the chaos, Toxic Commando really works for a while.
The action, when it starts, is good. Sometimes very good.
I played the first mission with the AI for a test, then with my friends and honestly I think I continued to play with the AI to go crazy with this game because it's just bad, and you don't have the same humor as when you're hanging out with the team.
Saber still knows how to show huge hordes and that should be acknowledged. Some of the final mission sequences and larger fights really have weight, and the dense waves of enemies can be impressive. Weapons are also hit quite well. They have power, feel and a clear progression through upgrades. Some weapons are a joy to use, and the revolver is almost ridiculously good. So good that at one point it becomes preferable to your main weapon. When the game just shoots and throws you into chaos, it can be a lot of fun.
But every time you think "okay, now it starts", the game stops itself.
The pace is strangely drawn out. A lot depends on how much you roam, how much you stop, how much you search for resources, how much time the team wastes, whether you need to refuel, how far the next relevant point is... and the game hardly creates a sense of urgency. You don't have the impression that anything is seriously pushing you forward. Because of this, missions can last longer than they should, but not because they are rich in content, but because they are diluted.
It is the kind of slowness that is not calm or atmospheric, but just kills momentum.
It doesn't help that the enemies, especially the special zombies, are surprisingly faceless. And that's a serious problem for a genre that lives on instant readability, panic, and recognizable threats. You have to recognize good special enemy units right away. By silhouette, by movement, by design, by instinct. Here, you often remember them more by their sound than by their appearance, which says a lot. Audio design actually saves the day more than visual design. Sound signals are clear and useful, but when the sound has to do the work that the visuals should do, then something is not right.
Classes are another disappointment. Instead of really changing the style of the game, they mostly boil down to one cooldown skill and a few lackluster upgrades. Everything is too basic, too lukewarm and too uninfluential to give you a sense of different playstyles. In a good co-op shooter, classes are the reason you keep coming back. Here they are more checkbox than identity.
And then we come to perhaps the most toxic part of the whole package: writing.
Dialogues are... ugh. The game clearly wants to be funny, but the humor rarely hits. It wants to be cool, but the characters sound like they were written by an algorithm trained solely on generic action trailers and lame Marvel one-liners. The team consists of a roughly serious character, a hard-working wise man, a serious woman and a hard-working wise woman. There is no depth, no chemistry, no charm. Just a bunch of forced lines that can't make you laugh, and they can't even draw you in emotionally.
It's the type of cringe that's not bad enough to be funny, but just bad enough to make you roll your eyes.
An additional minus goes to the story and the amount of cutscenes for the game, which should live on replayability. There's too much narrative for such a poor performance, and it's even worse when you have to watch it multiple times because someone in the team didn't skip. Things like that get tiresome quickly in co-op titles, and they get tiresome even faster here.
The game does not offer anything special in terms of unlocks either. It has some nice weapon skins, but overall there isn't enough content to hold interest long-term. Character cosmetics are often either boring or ugly, vehicles get filler customization, and currencies start piling up faster than you can find something you're really interested in. For a title that counts on replay value, that's not a good sign.
In the end, Toxic Commando is a game that constantly flirts with being good, but keeps falling back into mediocrity. He has a quality shot. There are good hordes. It has fun vehicles. There are some really strong action moments. But it doesn't have an identity, it doesn't have a memorable world, it doesn't have good characters, it doesn't have a clear enough rhythm and it doesn't have that "just one more round" energy that games like this need to be oxygen.
It's not a disaster. Nije ni totalni promašaj. It's just an incredibly forgettable game that tries too hard to be cool and fails to be special enough.
When the dust, sludge and cringe settles, you are left with a shooter that is functional, occasionally entertaining, but artistically and characterlessly empty.
Final rating: 3/5 stars.
Sample of the PlayStation 5 version provided for review purposes by distributor Colby
