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Overview
What is John Carpenter's Toxic Commando?
Made in collaboration with legendary film director and known horror buff, John Carpenter, Toxic Commando is a co-op multiplayer horde shooter set in a future where humanity’s efforts to win the energy arms race result in the awakening of a creature called the "Sludge God".
Designed to evoke the thrill of horde shooters like Valve’s Left 4 Dead games, John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando pits four unlikely heroes against an endless tide of mind-controlled humans, sentient tendrils, and various mutated sludge monsters, as they piece together a plan to send the Sludge God back into the Earth’s core.
John Carpenter's Toxic Commando features:
⚫︎ 4 classes with unique playstyles and abilities
⚫︎ 30+ unique perks for each class
⚫︎ 20+ weapons across 8 different weapon types
⚫︎ Common undead hordes with 8+ elite units to encounter
⚫︎ 1 to 4-player online co-op multiplayer
⚫︎ Public and private matchmaking
For more gameplay details, read everything we know about John Carpenter's Toxic Commando gameplay and story.
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| $39.99 | |||||||
John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando Review: Too Awesome For Its Own Good
Carrying the Horde Shooter Torch
Horde shooters have a certain "Je ne sais quoi" about them that just draws me in, and I’m not alone in that corner. Left 4 Dead had the gaming world in a chokehold back in 2008, and its sequel, the creatively named Left 4 Dead 2, made the addicting loop all the more inescapable.
Back 4 Blood was a follow-up to this craze that went belly-up as soon as it hit the shelves. John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando, however, is the game you’re looking for if you’re chasing that horde-cleaving high, just expect to come down sooner rather than later, because it’s a short and narrow experience despite its depth.
It’s a campy, visceral, path of carnage that may be too awesome for its own good in the long run, but it’ll be a hell of a ride until then. Get your one-liners ready, commandos. Things are about to get toxic.
The Sludge God Awakens
Let’s begin this review by going through the game’s setting, because it’s quite the sight to behold and the experience to…well…experience.
Set in a world where a journey to Earth’s core revealed a roiling mass of flesh called the Sludge God, Toxic Commando follows four mercenaries-turned-heroes fighting to save humanity. The Sludge God’s influence has turned populations into mindless Undead, with some mutating into lethal harbingers of its awakening, while the land itself lies poisoned and ruined with mutated tendrils.
Enter Walter, Ruby, Cato, and Astrid: four capable mercs hired to deliver fuel to an insider trying to contain the Sludge God. Still, they screwed up the mission and ended up getting infected instead. Saved by Leon and given new powers borne from the Sludge God’s own flesh, the four are now equipped to carry out impossible missions throughout the infected land, and, eventually, send the Sludge God packing.
If the name slapped onto the title wasn’t enough of an undead giveaway, Toxic Commando’s setting, story, and overall design language came from the twisted mind of one John Carpenter, and it really shows.
If the pedigree of his horror filmography, including titles like Halloween and The Thing, is anything to go by, then Toxic Commando was fated to deliver something gross, over-the-top, and awesome from the get-go—and it sure did!
Rather than relying on standard zombies, Carpenter’s Sludge God mythos adds a Lovecraftian body-horror edge and a sleek sci-fi military sheen. The result is a distinct vibe with little borrowed from existing titles, which Toxic Commando uses to chart largely unexplored ground.
Wrecking Undead with Guns, Cars, and Everything in Between
Toxic Commando packs a dense mix of systems into a chaotic loop that feels like Left 4 Dead in a shinier engine, but with a much smaller sandbox. By that, I mean that everything looks better and has more moving parts, but has all been stuffed into a game that is, by my count, at least 5 levels too small. What you get is friction, like you’re likely to bump into the game’s ending soon, despite the detail and nuance indicating otherwise.
The game rests on pillars of exploration and combat. You roam a semi-open map, scavenge gear at points of interest, fight roaming hordes, then converge on a shifting final objective.
Vehicles intensify that pressure. Each has a specialized role, like the ambulance for healing or the police car for baiting hordes, and you usually find them mid-mission. On foot early, you scramble to survive. With a vehicle, mobility improves, but so does noise and danger.
Looting ties it together. Choosing which locations to hit first can decide success, with map pins and a compass helping teams coordinate when communication is limited. Even so, the pace stays reactive, reinforcing a system-heavy game squeezed into tight space.
It’s a very tight and synergistic system with only one notable loose end so far, and as we discuss the game’s class progression and combat variety next, you’ll come to realize that this quality extends to almost all of the game’s aspects.
Generous Class Progression with the Depth to Support It
Moving on to the game’s combat, it ties directly into the Toxic Commando’s progression system. Players choose from four classes—Strike, Medic, Operator, and Defender—each defining an offensive, healing, utility, or defensive role with its own ability tree and perks to unlock using skill points.
Metagame progression runs on an EXP system that rewards nearly every important action, from clearing hordes to supporting teammates or completing objectives. These usually come in blocks of 500 - 1000 EXP for a system that has level intervals by the thousands only, so it’s actually quite generous.
Regarding weapons, players use a shared arsenal of firearms, consumables, and melee weapons that aren’t class-locked, each with attachments and upgrades unlocked through their own leveling tracks.
It’s a dense stack of mechanics compared to L4D2’s minimal, level-based progression, but the system remains accessible because EXP gains are generous and upgrades are meaningful.
Some may consider it bloated; I prefer to call it rewarding, as every unlock provides a tangible advantage above numbers going up, like new sights for your guns. Some perks even alter abilities entirely, such as turning the Strike’s basic fireball into a wide spray of smaller projectiles.
The Dead are in the Details
Perhaps the strongest thing Toxic Commando has in its arsenal is its attention to detail. Akin to an artist’s irreplaceable touch to their own masterpiece, Toxic Commando has enough nuance and deliberate design choices woven through its DNA to make the game feel like "it just makes sense".
I feel that examples are in order. Let’s take the game’s vehicle mechanics, then. The bombast of exploding cars and vehicle-mounted mayhem is cool and all, but using a car in this mess should come with its own troubles as well. Getting stuck in the Sludge is a common situation parties will find themselves in, often with the looming threat of a pack of Undead close behind. This is normally cause to abandon the vehicle, but if it has a winch, getting back on the road is as simple as a few well-aimed winch pulls.
The loop then defines itself as explore, fight, explore, fight, last stand, with plenty of time to re-equip, plan, or sniff out more loot in between each one. Heck, you can drive right up to the final objective in some levels, then head back out to gather the loot you need to make that final stand count.
The dead are in the details here, and it’s clear that there was a vision for this game from the start. I find it hilarious that it manages to pack so much thoughtful design into the core of its gameplay, but can’t find the steam to run for more than a handful of levels. At least the gameplay has benefited greatly from this nuanced approach, though it isn’t the only facet of its make that does so.
Gotta Love that 80’s Sci-fi Horror Camp
Toxic Commando’s story and dialogue all show this vision quite clearly as well, because the campiness of the game’s protagonists (or at least one of them) is off the charts. The design inspirations for the game’s big bad, their underlings, and the themes they represent are almost peak 80’s horror sci-fi, to the point that you might be able to figure out Carpenter had a hand in this, even if he didn’t add his name to the title.
Let’s go through the campiness checklist, shall we? One-liners out the wazoo and the requisite groans from other characters in response? Check. Unknowable enemy with esoteric origins, with body horror as its main mode of infection? Double check. Guns-blazing action with sci-fi mumbo jumbo to boot? Triple check.
The game practically asks to be a movie (which I wouldn’t mind), and the way it’s been written supports the campiness to a whole new level by making everyone sarcastic, quippy, and having just the right one-liner for every situation.
That’s not to say that it’s jokes, though, because the body horror of the Sludge God comes through effectively through the grotesque designs of the Undead, particularly the special infected.
I will concede that it does all become too much to handle at times. Such is the nature of "camp" as a concept. With all this so-bad-its-good energy, one forgets the bad part of the phrase, and you’ll find yourself overstimulated by the constant plot contrivances and witty dialogue before long.
It’s fun to experience in moderation, as with all things from the 80’s.
Too Few Levels to Contain All This Fun
Now we finally address what I’ve been saying about Toxic Commando this entire review. Consider this a criticism borne from love and appreciation for the game, but Toxic Commando is way too short and way too small. Yes, you can replay levels across multiple difficulties, as different classes, and through different paths across the same map. Yes, the weapon and enemy variety is exceptional enough to keep the game fresh for more than a few hours. I’m talking about the maps and missions, of which there are no more than 10, including the tutorial mission.
Imagine my surprise when I played the tutorial mission and the PlayStation 5 homescreen said I was 11% through the entire game. Two missions later, and I was at 33%. Keep in mind, these only took me an hour at most to finish, combined. I wish there were more missions, more story, and more Toxic Commando, but there simply isn’t, at least at the moment.
Don’t get me wrong, the game has depth, it just doesn’t have scope. What few missions Toxic Commando lets you experience are all mastercrafted to be the most exhilarating, zombie-slaying experience you can have in its unique open world; there just aren’t that many of them. It’s a very limiting existence that stifles what would otherwise be an excellent new horror shooter in all respects. Instead, it’s only excellent in some.
Is John Carpenter's Toxic Commando Worth It?
Costs More on Console, But Worth Every Penny
John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando comes in at a workable $49.99. That price will be multiplied by how many of your crew want to play simultaneously, made even more expensive by any subscription fees if you’re playing on a console like I was, but that remains a completely acceptable price for the game’s quality.
It’s by Saber Interactive, which by no means makes it anything but a AAA title, so I really can’t complain about a price that’s giving retro vibes to go with its story. If your group can’t afford all the copies with the console tax, you can always opt for online co-op instead, so there’s no way for you to lose.
FAQ
How Do I Enable Bots in John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando?
Players can enable bots in John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando by having unfilled slots in their party. Toxic Commando always maintains a 4-player party, so if parties don’t have enough players to fill each slot, bots will replace any character not flagged as a player’s preferred character.
Can You Have Duplicate Classes in the Same Party in John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando?
Yes. Parties are not limited to one of each class, and players from the same party can choose to be the same class despite not having the same character. Each player will still have their own progression on that particular class active, however.
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