Over the years, a wide range of Left 4 Dead-inspired co-op horde shooters have come and gone. That list includes the quickly overlooked spiritual follow-up to the Left 4 Dead series, Back 4 Blood, along with Remedy’s fresh release, FBC Firebreak. Remember FBC Firebreak? Anyone? Even if future patches might pull more people in, the game is currently facing a pretty steep hurdle.
One of my favorite Left 4 Dead-like titles (even though “Left 4 Dead-like” probably isn’t an official label, I’m using it anyway) was Saber Interactive’s World War Z. I leaned toward it mainly because it floods missions with an enormous number of zombies, and the visuals really sell the chaotic energy of those writhing undead swarms. Saber then built on that formula with another Left 4 Dead-inspired entry in Space Marine 2, and now it’s back with John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando—bringing together what it learned from earlier releases, expanding it into a semi-open setting, and borrowing an unexpectedly compelling concept from yet another project: MudRunner.
Getting to move freely in a genre that often sticks to fairly straight-line layouts is genuinely refreshing. In Toxic Commando, you play as four infected mercenaries pushing back against the minions of a Sludge God that’s just recently stirred awake, and you’re able to roam—or drive—through each map at your own pace before starting the action-packed firefight of the chapter. Just like in Left 4 Dead, the game is structured around different acts, with each act broken into chapters. But while it doesn’t simply ask you to move from point A to point B with occasional big fights at choke points, Toxic Commando gives you room to decide how you’ll play. Will you hunt down multiple hordes of roamers to grab every last piece of loot from the map’s various points of interest, or will you rush the main objectives—accepting that you may arrive with fewer tools and resources to hold the line?
It’s clear that a lot of your time will be spent fighting the many varieties of undead, loosely tied to the familiar Left 4 Dead lineup of explosive types, grabby types, poisonous types, and so on. Still, between those firefights, there’s plenty to do. Huge flailing tentacles show up and need to be shot before they pull back again, there are small hacking and repair mini-games, hidden stash locations to dig up, optional side tasks to pursue, and much more.
That said, one of the big things you’ll be doing is mowing through crowds of soft-bodied zombies with a vehicle. Running over enemies is always satisfying in games, and Toxic Commando makes it feel particularly good. You’ll frequently see hundreds of ghouls on screen at once, and smashing through those clusters while your teammates lean out of the windows to take care of stragglers delivers pure, high-octane 80s action movie energy. I loved those moments. There are multiple vehicles to find, and each one brings its own benefits—like the ambulance, which can help you heal, or the self-destructing police car that functions in a way similar to Left 4 Dead’s noise-emitting pipe bombs.
In my opinion, the most impressive vehicle is the HMV. If you’re in the UK, it’s an all-terrain vehicle rather than that sad chain of music shops that now moves plastic collectibles and pricey backpacks. The HMV includes a mounted machine gun and a winch, and that winch directly connects to another key influence behind Toxic Commando: MudRunner. The maps are peppered with patches of mud and sludge that slow you down as you try to keep your tires from spinning out. Meanwhile, hordes of ghouls come crashing in toward you. But if you shoot the winch at a nearby tree or piece of scenery, you can yank the HMV free from a mud trap—or haul it up a steep, slippery slope—ideally getting you out of danger. And the way the mud shifts and reshapes itself based on the route your wheels carve through it is gorgeous. It’s the best-looking mud I’ve seen since… well, MudRunner, I guess.
I already mentioned the hordes and the fact that there are plenty of them, but I’m still blown away whenever I’m staring at thousands of bodies surging over a stretch of scenery and sprinting, yelling, straight toward me. Even with Toxic Commando’s open-world style of levels giving you lots of room to explore, you can still expect plenty of scenes like that across every map. If it’s tied to a narrative mission, though, you’re often given some time up front to set up and reinforce your position before the assault begins.
You can also protect these mission areas in a range of ways. For instance, you can lean on special weapons such as rail guns and grenade launchers, or set up mounted turrets and traps. The catch is that everything here depends on a rare unlockable currency called Scrap. Since Scrap is only obtainable through exploration, the earlier risk-and-reward tradeoff really matters. Skip it, and those special weapon crates and turrets will stay locked away. Each character in Toxic Commando also comes with a distinct ability—at least for Walter, the character I played—he blasts large blue energy bolts from his hands.
All of this builds toward the most satisfying part of Toxic Commando: the explosions. They’re especially jaw-dropping during the high-body-count story mission fights, where limbs and torsos fly through the air in bloody arcs as you shoot a conveniently placed red barrel, toss a grenade from a launcher, or fire a palm-sized burst of plasma into a writhing mass of mutants. It’s a truly glorious spectacle. Think the kind of over-the-top, comic-book-style gore you’d see in something like The Boys—and I’m a big fan. Point, fire, and watch the enemies “splode.” It’s the key ingredient every strong horde shooter needs, and it’s an area where Toxic Commando really shines.
That said, it’s not all smooth sailing. One reason many people hold John Carpenter films in such high regard is the way they introduce distinct, memorable main characters (a clear reference, especially, to performances by Kurt Russell). With that in mind, it’s a bit disappointing that the Toxic Commandos themselves feel fairly stock and lack real personality, both visually and in how they carry themselves. Even though they trade jokes during quieter moments, much like the characters in Left 4 Dead, their banter often slips into familiar, overused lines that quickly grow dull—missing the punch and memorability of someone like Louis with “grabbin’ pills!”. For example, during my playthrough, Walter kept repeating “I’m liking this” at least once every minute, which is more than enough to make me annoyed to the point where I may still be hearing it in my dreams later tonight.
I’m also uneasy about how heavy the upgrade and cosmetic systems seem to be. Toxic Commando uses three separate currencies, all labeled rather plainly as ‘Currencies’ in the menus. Behind the scenes, these resources are crystalline materials called sludgite, with the most basic type found by collecting from odd, tree-like creatures while you’re on missions. You can generally earn higher-tier sludgite for completing objectives, especially on harder difficulty settings; however, the gap between what you receive and the cost of many upgrades and cosmetics makes the whole unlocking process feel more drawn-out than it should.
I get that this is meant to push players to revisit campaigns on more challenging settings after they’ve finished them—similar in spirit to Helldivers 2. Still, with so much customization across characters, weapons, and vehicles, and with the price of each unlock stacking up so quickly, it can start to feel like you’ll miss the most exciting content unless you’re willing to spend a lot of time with the game.
And seriously, why is the title John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando when the game actually features four Toxic Commandos? Even if you play solo, you still have three AI-controlled Toxic Commandos acting as companions, so you’re never truly just one Toxic Commando on your own. The name only really holds up if the singular and plural are both “Toxic Commando.” It’s the same logic as calling a single Nintendo Switch Joy-Con a Joy-Con, even though multiple of them can still be referred to the same way. Ugh—this is starting to give me a headache.
So yes, there are only a handful of issues in what already looks like an incredibly fun, gory co-op shooter. It probably won’t snag any Game of the Year trophies—unless someone adds a new award for best zombie splatter in video games—but it definitely seems like the kind of title you’ll enjoy with friends over a few evenings. Whether you want to keep coming back to grind for a satisfying scope or a sleek animated weapon skin is ultimately up to you. Personally, I don’t expect I’ll do much of that, though I’m genuinely looking forward to running through the campaign once with a group of fellow Toxic Commando(s) when the game launches early next year.