John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando Review – Style Over Substance in This Zombie Horde Shooter

John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando has been a game that I’ve been looking forward to ever since it was first announced at Summer Game Fest in 2023. Throughout the years, Saber Interactive has mastered the art of throwing endless hordes of monsters at you, all while ensuring you’re able to somehow stand your ground. As a love letter to the 80’s, it has a lot of style but often falls short on substance.

Granted, I wasn’t expecting too much when it came to story beats in John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando, but what was delivered in the final product felt very rushed and underdeveloped. The majority of why the world is the way it is comes from the opening cinematic when you load into the game, and everything else is poorly sprinkled in, making the story often feel like an afterthought. As the name of the game implies, you play as a member of the Toxic Commandos, who are hired guns.

At the start of the game, Toxic Commandos are tasked with obtaining an important item that they know little about. As soon as things really take off, they lose it, and everyone becomes infected with the zombie virus. Before fully turning, a man named Leon rescues them, and through some sci-fi nonsense, they obtain a series of supernatural-like powers. The sad part is that John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando has a strong foundation for telling a really fun story. But a lot of it falls short as soon as you get through the opening act of the game.

Even though the game is trying to pay homage to 80s films with corny writing, many of the jokes simply don’t land as intended. This was especially true whenever any of the Commandos tried to joke with one another, because it felt like grade school humor for the sake of it. All the playable characters often feel sallow and lack much personality. While playing through the story, it was extremely difficult for me to care for any of them, even more so when it started to look a bit grim.

Once the game fully opens up, there are a lot of different things you can do. One of the most important of those is the game’s class system. As you level up and progress through the game, you’ll be able to unlock more skills to further upgrade one of four classes. These consist of Strike (damage), Medic, Operator, and Defender. All of them bring something unique to the table, and it’s often in your best interest to have a wide range of classes while playing rather than a squad of all Medics or Strikes.

The class system isn’t the only thing that you can upgrade as you play. As you may have expected, there’s a wide range of guns for you to pick from. They all fall into a few main categories: Assault Rifles, Heavy, Shotguns, Melee, Pistols, Snipers, and Equipment. Finding the right one may vary based on personal preferences, but I found a lot of the gunplay to feel more or less the same. Because of that, I didn’t feel the need to explore it all and ultimately used only a fraction of what was provided.

John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando Has Repetitive Missions and Empty Maps

While playing the game, each level is extremely similar to the others. You’ll load into a semi-open world map and have a main goal: reach the X location. Even though you can rush straight towards the main objective, you’re often encouraged to roam around the map and explore other POIs. This is where the car comes into play. Just like the guns, there is a wide range of cars you can drive, each doing different things. While driving, you have to be mindful of its fuel, health, and ammo (if it has a gun). I found this enjoyable because it added an extra layer of complexity that the game really needed. But the downside was that if the car exploded for whatever reason, traveling became extremely daunting, not in an enjoyable way.

Because you run the risk of dying a lot faster thanks to the hordes of zombies that you’ll run into along the way. Each time I found myself driving/running through an open area, I couldn’t help but feel that much of it was empty. Sure, there were a bunch of zombies everywhere I went, but a lot of them lacked personality. It’s not like the game doesn’t try to add some. There are a lot of variant zombies/monsters that you’ll run into along the way. But the sad part is they all blend together and have a hard time standing out from the crowd because you see them so often. There weren’t a lot of areas that really looked different from others, and if you saw one building, you’ve kind of seen them all.

The same can be said for how each final mission ends, too. Because once you reach the end of each level, each task is the same. Build up your defenses and prepare for the horde that’s coming your way. Even though this may be fun at first, it quickly becomes stale. That’s because the game almost turns into a tower defense, where most of the zombies will ignore you and attack whatever it is you’re trying to keep in one piece. By the time I reached the end of the story, I felt as if I was just going through the motions a lot of the time.

Reaching the end of the game also proved to be a challenge all on its own, too. To play John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando, you have to be connected to the internet at all times. If you’re not, you’ll simply be discounted or thrown into the main menu. This was an issue that I ran into multiple times while playing the game. It should be noted that I played with a stable connection, but the game still kicked me out of every other level I played. Since the game has no checkpoints or a way to save your progress mid-level, I was forced to start all over from the beginning more times than I’d like to admit.

Without giving too many story beats away, I was getting excited towards the tail end of the game. Because it started to look like it was learning from its lesson, and added much of the variety the game desperately needed. But sadly, that wasn’t the case at all. As soon as I completed the final level, I was honestly shocked by how abruptly it ended. Which, oddly enough, felt on-theme with my overall experience with the game.