John Carpenter's Toxic Commando is 80s inspired splatter friendslop - Review

John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando fills a niche that its developers (the same ones behind Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2) had only partially filled with their previous project: a splatter-filled friendslop game.

Friendslops are cooperative games (usually for groups of 3 to 6 friends) designed to be hilarious, create absurd cooperative situations, and require little concentration. Toxic Commando achieves all this with the tacky atmosphere of an '80s action movie and mountains of splatter and gore.

The story is simple: a multinational corporation has dug too deep and awakened a giant monster that turns people into zombies. Your goal, through a series of missions, is to destroy it with the help of the mad scientist who lives in the quarantine zone where the "Sludge God" has been locked up.

The four protagonists have been mutated (but not transformed) by exposure to the monster and now have special powers that, coincidentally, coincide with four cooperative shooter classes: the medic, the engineer, the tank, and the damage-dealing hero.

An engineer is needed because a large portion of the game is spent aboard a series of vehicles, each with special abilities, with which to navigate the maps across their optional and main objectives, which, upon completion, guarantee a mission success. Players can choose (among others) between the all-purpose Humvee, the healing ambulance, a quasi-tank, and a truck specialized in mowing down zombies.

The offroading component of Toxic Commando was the game's most pleasant surprise, given how it integrated winching (the off-road "sport" in which the goal is to get out of swamps using a winch) and the mechanics associated with different types of terrain into the gameplay.

The engine that manages the swarms of zombies that attack the players is also very well done because it's the same one from from Space Marine 2. The hordes seem endless, explode in creative ways, and pose a very real threat even on the lowest difficulty levels.

The atmosphere of John Carpenter's horror oeuvre (The Thing, The Fog, and Big Trouble in Little China) is felt both in the setting and in the soundtrack, the title track of which was co-produced by the son of the legends, Cody Carpenter, along with his father. There's a lot of bombastic attitude, and the game boasts about it at every opportunity.

The main problem with Toxic Commando is that beneath this over-the-top, splattering, and arrogant veneer, the game's skeleton feels very familiar. The mission objectives, the combat flow, the progression mechanics, and even the narrative have nothing new to offer.

That said, if you're part of a group of friends who idolized Call of Duty zombies in its heyday and have thoroughly enjoyed playing games like Peak and RV There Yet (the two absolute titans of friendslop), then Toxic Commando might have two or three evenings of fun in store for you.

The game isn't meant to be played alone, given its flaws, but it offers explosive vulgarity and splatter to anyone who seeks it. Sabre Interactive's signature is everywhere, and the game does well what it sets out to do. Don't ask for anything more, or you'll be extremely disappointed.

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Riccardo "Tropic" Lichene