John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando is great B-movie fun

World War Z and MudRunner developer Saber Interactive combines those two very diverse gameplay styles into one with their latest: John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando, a surprisingly fun new entry in the cooperative zombie-killing genre that also includes a lot of mud and muck to drive through. Toxic Commando can be clunky and chaotic, and it certainly doesn’t have the elegance of peers like Left 4 Dead, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the game thus far, even when playing solo.

To be clear, John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando should not be played solo. While the game’s AI-controlled teammates are serviceable in a pinch, this is a game that should be played with friends and the occasional rando to get the most out of it. Toxic Commando is at its best when played with a group that has a sense of discovery and experimentation. A thirst for mowing down hundreds of undead also helps.

Toxic Commando sends four mercenaries into an exclusion zone that has been taken over by an ancient being known as the Sludge God. In the search for unlimited power deep within the Earth, humanity awakens the Sludge God, unleashing an infection that mutates residents into a variety of monstrous forms, from easily slayed zombies to hulking tanks. The heavily armed mercs, also now infected by sludge, face a ticking clock as they try to subdue the god.

The commandos of Toxic Commando don’t seem particularly bright, based on their actions and dialogue. Thus, the solution to virtually everything in the game is to shoot it, blow it up, or run it over with a big truck. Missions in the game generally require walking or driving somewhere, finding a thing or guarding a thing as hundreds of zombies swarm your location.

Toxic Commando’s playable characters have a huge variety of guns and explosives to pull this all off. With four playable and upgradeable classes, they also have super powers that can be used in the battle against the Sludge God’s forces. The Strike class, for example, can throw an explosive fireball that does massive AOE damage. The Medic can magically heal nearby teammates (and damage enemies that enter the sphere of health), while the Defender deploys a dome-shaped barrier that blocks ranged attacks from enemies, and damages the zombies entering it. The Operator brings a flying drone to the fight for extra firepower. All feel like they’re meant to be mixed and matched to deal with the threat of the moment, and I foresee plenty of beautifully broken team builds in the game’s future.

Each commando class has a massive skill tree full of perks and enhancements to unlock. Saber thankfully makes experimentation easy, letting players assign and reassign skill points as they’re earned. I initially started with the Strike class, unlocking new and deadlier ways to throw my fireball, before flirting with the Medic class to keep my fellow commandos alive. There’s an intriguing amount of depth and buildcrafting opportunities here, something that I hope to experiment with more as I spend more time with the game.

Missions in Toxic Commando drop the squad into a semi-open world with a clear objective. But there are plenty of distractions to keep things interesting. While I initially beelined objectives, driving from point A to point B — to blow up a node or acquire a cop car — then to point C to battle a swarm, I realized I was missing out on what makes missions much more interesting: spare parts.

Image: Saber Interactive/Focus Entertainment

Throughout Toxic Commando’s levels, there are plenty of broken down machines and locked stashes, all of which require spare parts to use. In an early mission, you’re tasked with guarding a church from a flood of zombies, which you’re certainly capable of doing as a team of four heavily armed mercenaries. The church is also outfitted with a bunch of booby traps and turrets, none of which work without being repaired. So, the smarter play (especially on tougher difficulty levels) is to explore maps, find parts, assemble your defenses, and let the machines contribute to the carnage.

Saber encourages exploration and experimentation with Toxic Commando’s map design. There are plenty of side challenges to undertake to maximize your time in the field, as well as plenty of resources and currencies to collect to kit out your commando.

Then there are the vehicles. The Toxic Commando team can find an array of cars and trucks in the field, some of which have mounted turrets or EMP devices that can easily clear out a swarm. In the game’s tutorial, you can get a taste of what a Humvee can do; it comes with a winch that can pull you out of the mud and open up locked pathways. It’s also durable. You can mow down dozens of zombies without fear of your super truck catching on fire. (If it does, throw some of those handy spare parts at it.)

Saber has a little fun and adds additional utility to vehicles. A police car siren can lure a swarm of zombies to its location, making for an easy trap, while an ambulance can heal you and your teammates as you drive. But, tapping into the developer’s experience with MudRunner and SnowRunner, you may sometimes get stuck in the mire, lending a little danger to vehicle travel.

Toxic Commando doesn’t do much to earn its John Carpenter branding. The filmmaker barely contributed anything to the game’s story, according to Saber Interactive (and snarky comments from Carpenter, who said this was just a paycheck), but he did provide some music for the game with his son, Cody. Toxic Commando has a bit of a nihilistic, gross-out bent to it, not unlike Carpenter’s Apocalypse Trilogy: The Thing, Prince of Darkness, and In the Mouth of Madness. The dialogue and characterization, however, feel a bit more akin to They Live and Ghosts of Mars — not exactly Shakespeare.

But that’s probably why John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando feels so good. It’s a thinking-caps-off kind of game, a gory playground in which to hang out with friends and slaughter the poor unfortunate infected who got caught by the Sludge God’s sludge. Toxic Commando is messy in the way the best B-movies (and B-games) are: earnestly punching above their weight.

John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando launches March 12 on PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X.