Toxic Commando

There are games that grab you from the start because they have an identity. Like Left 4 Dead, which caused half of my high school to almost fail a year. And then there are games that have all the ingredients for a good time, but they manage to put them together in a way that in the end you get something that looks like the best kebab after a night out, but when you take a bite, you realize they served you falafel. Toxic Commando is just that.

Saber Interactive clearly knows how to make a horde shooter. That's not in question. People have already shown they can deliver chaos, a mass of enemies, and co-op shooting that can be really fun when everything falls into place. On paper, Toxic Commando has the recipe for success: team action, huge waves of zombies, weapons that have weight, and vehicles that add extra dynamics. The problem is that the game fails to turn almost any of that into something truly memorable.

You know what really bothered me the most about this game? I bought a PS5 Pro to have the best experience on the console, but this game was lagging unreasonably. I felt like a student again with no money in my pocket who can't buy RAM. Well, I can't even do that today with these prices.

And it's time to get to the biggest problem: the game has no personality.

Which is particularly ironic, because it clearly tries to have one. Everything feels like it wants to be quirky, pulp, a bit trashy, a bit campy, a bit “hey, look how cool and dirty and crazy we are.” But that attempt at character doesn't end up as charm, but rather 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 all together.

I love B-movies. I consider Arnie films the pinnacle of cinematography, I live for those one-liners. But this is just... Bad. And quite bad at that.

The very title 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 the surface a bit, it's hard to feel any concrete Carpenter touch at all. The soundtrack has that pleasant 80s horror vibe, and that really deserves praise, but everything else feels like the surname on the cover is there to do the marketing heavy lifting. And I mean really heavy lifting.

Visually, the game revolves around the motifs of sludge, decay, rot, and some kind of toxic dirt. The main antagonistic motif is literally the 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 striking enough to be special, nor is it absurd enough to be fun. 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 used for pacing, structure, and set-piece moments, Toxic Commando throws the player into larger open maps that sound interesting in theory, but in practice often feel like content stretching. Missions have a central goal and side locations to explore, but all of that quickly becomes the same. Lots of driving, lots of mud, lots of empty space, and too few moments that stick in your mind.

The worst part is that the tutorial, which is more linear and focused, actually leaves a stronger impression than most of the rest of the game. Which is quite a nice indicator of where the game missed the mark. When your tutorial demonstrates pacing, flow, and a sense of progress better than most of the campaign, then you have a problem.

Not everything is bleak, even though most of the game looks bleak. Driving is really fun. The vehicles are one of the better aspects of the game, and you can feel that someone at least managed to turn one part of the concept into something concrete. The handling is solid, driving over terrain has weight, and the interaction with the environment through mud, getting stuck, and pulling out gives the game something that at least slightly distinguishes it from other shooters. The winch mechanic, as much as the game is in love with it, actually works. Yanking obstacles, pulling vehicles, and overcoming muddy inclines adds a tactical dimension to moving around the map.

Similarly, individual vehicles with specific functions can be cool. An ambulance that heals, a pickup with a flamethrower, heavy transports with turrets and EMP... these are the moments when the game shows it could have been much more than what it is. When you're in a chase, when zombies are everywhere, when the team is shooting from the car, when half the screen is falling apart from chaos, Toxic Commando really works for a moment.

The action is good when it kicks off. Sometimes even very good.

I played the first mission with AI for testing, then with friends, and honestly, I think I continued playing with AI just to go crazy with this game because it's simply bad, and you don't have the same humor as when you're with a team.

Saber still knows how to showcase huge hordes, and that must be acknowledged. Some mission end sequences and larger battles really carry weight, and the dense waves of enemies can be impressive. The weapons are also quite well done. They have power, a sense of impact, and clear progression through upgrades. Some weapons are just a joy to use, and the revolver is almost ridiculously good. So good that at one point it becomes more appealing than your main weapon. When the game just shoots and throws you into chaos, it can be very fun.

But every time you think, “okay, now it’s starting,” the game itself hits the brakes.

The pace is strangely stretched. A lot depends on how much you wander, how much you stop, how much you search for resources, how much the team wastes time, whether you need to refuel, how far the next relevant point is… and the game hardly creates a sense of urgency in the process. You don’t feel like anything is seriously pushing you forward. Because of this, missions can take longer than they should, but not because they are rich in content, rather because they get diluted.

It’s that kind of slowness that isn’t 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 thrives on immediate readability, panic, and recognizable threats. Good special enemy units should be recognizable right away. By silhouette, by movement, by design, by instinct. Here, you often remember them more by sound than by appearance, which says a lot. The audio design actually saves the day more than the visual design. The sound cues are clear and useful, but when sound has to do the job that visuals should also be doing, then something is off.

Classes are another disappointment. Instead of really changing the play style, they mostly boil down to one cooldown skill and a few pale upgrades. Everything is too basic, too lukewarm, and too little impactful to give you a sense of different playstyles. In a good co-op shooter, classes are the reason you come back. Here, they are more of a checkbox than an identity.

And then we come to perhaps the most toxic part of the whole package: the writing.

The dialogues are… uff. 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 worse Marvel one-liners. The team consists of roughly a serious character, an annoying wisecracker, a serious woman, and an annoying wisecracker. There’s no depth, no chemistry, no charm. Just a bunch of forced lines that can’t make you laugh, nor can they draw you in emotionally.

It’s that kind of cringe that isn’t bad enough to be entertaining, but just bad enough to make you roll your eyes.

An additional downside is the story and the amount of cutscenes for a game that should thrive on replayability. There is too much narrative for such a weak execution, and it’s even worse when you have to watch it multiple times because someone on the team didn’t skip. Such things quickly become tedious in co-op titles, and here they become tedious even faster.

The game doesn’t offer anything special in terms of unlocks either. There are a few nice weapon skins, but generally, there isn’t enough content to maintain long-term interest. Character cosmetics are often either boring or ugly, vehicles receive filler customization, and currencies start piling up faster than you find something that really interests you. For a title that relies on replay value, that’s not a good sign.

In the end, Toxic Commando is a game that constantly flirts with being good but stubbornly returns to mediocrity. It has quality shooting. It has good hordes. It has fun vehicles. It has a few really strong action moments. But it lacks identity, a memorable world, good characters, a sufficiently clear rhythm, and that “just one more round” energy that such games need to breathe.

It’s not a disaster. It’s not a total miss either. It’s just an incredibly forgettable game that tries too hard to be cool and succeeds too little in being special.

When the dust, muck, and cringe settle, you’re left with a shooter that is functional, occasionally fun, but artistically and character-wise empty.

Final rating: 3/5 stars.

A copy of the PlayStation 5 version for review purposes was provided by the distributor Colby