Toxic Commando Review

Many developers have been chasing the Left 4 Dead formula for some time now, and I don’t think anyone has come close to nailing what made that game such a big success. Mainly, the biggest mistake is always wanting to go bigger and larger, rather than embracing the simplicity that made Left 4 Dead a success, which is the big problem that John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando also has. While some ideas play off, there’s a deluge of extra fluff here just to make the game feel larger, and it ruins what it has going for it.

You can play the game with three friends, or three AI partners, or a mix of the above. There’s also the ability to jump into friends’ games, or random online games if you’d like. Either way, you’ll be heading into a mission that plays out on a semi-open map, differentiating it from the aforementioned inspiration behind it. As you make your way across these maps, heading for usually one or a couple of objective points, you’ll need to gather up some resources on the way, and a lot of this means finding a car or two to hit the road with.

Vehicles are a big part of John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando, and it’s a welcome addition, especially with the size of each level. Walking across them, as I made the mistake of the first time I played, can take a lot of time, and make it even more frustrating upon death, knowing you’ve got to re-do the whole thing. You’ll be able to find an assortment of different vehicles, and some offer some extra perks like the ambulance giving off a healing effect, as well as housing some medical supplies you can take. But you’ll most likely be looking for and hunting for a vehicle with a wench, as this plays a big part in getting into containers and other areas that house much-needed resources to aid you on the journey. In some levels, the wench also allows you to move up, down and around specific areas you wouldn’t be able to access without the use of the wench.

The vehicles add an element of discovery and exploration that isn’t usually seen in the genre; however, it’s something of a double-edged sword. Left 4 Dead and its best imitators feature levels that are usually short enough that dying and needing to attempt them doesn’t feel like a huge hassle. With John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando, you will feel the weight of dying on your shoulders, with the pain of sometimes having to make your way across much larger levels and potentially having to look for a specific vehicle to progress to the same stage you had made it to beforehand.

The characters here are all perfectly fine 80s stereotypes, and their corny dialogue, paired with a nonsensical, McGuffin-focused story, is perfectly suited to the vibe and feel the game is chasing. None of the characters stood out apart from each other; however, this meant I didn’t really care who I played as, and I grew zero attachment to any of them. There is an element of each playing into a different role or a DPS, healer, etc., but I never found playing your role necessary, at least on normal difficulty. I never bothered exploring the harder difficulty options, but I would imagine that’s where planning and proper use of this stuff would be needed.

There’s a decent mix of the types of guns you’d expect here, and they all felt decent. Still, I found the addition of a bunch of customisation options for the guns, paired with skins, to be an odd decision, and just part of that feeling of overbloating what should have been something simpler. There are also character trees for each here that can be built out slightly differently to have each of the toxic commandos’ powers be used differently, either in more defensive or offensive actions, depending on how you go about it. Again, it’s just another feature that feels fluffed up and takes away from the simplicity of the genre that can make the best of these games succeed.

(Review code provided to Explosion Network.
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