Almost a year ago, a few of the Respawn Station crew went to an expo where John Carpenter was doing a panel. We decided to sit in and, while everyone asked the director/composer about his legendary filmography, I stepped up to the plate and asked him about Toxic Commando. The game was announced a few years ago, and we hadn’t seen much since, so we figured the guy whose name is on the game might have an idea. To our surprise, John Carpenter said that his contribution to the game was him sticking his hand out, and them (presumably Focus Entertainment) putting a check in it. He went on to say that he wasn’t even sure if the studio that was making it was still open.
A couple of months later, the same Respawn Station crew flew across the Atlantic Ocean to Germany to attend our first Gamescom. We were seated in a sea of gamers for the opening night live when the Focus Entertainment logo appeared on screen. I can’t speak for certain, but if you heard an exclamatory shock in the crowd that night, it might have been us. The game was real, and it was coming out in March of 2026. The next day, we got to get our hands on the game on the show floor. Three of us hopped into a co-op match, and after only a few minutes, we were surprised again, this time at how much fun we had. All of that preamble is to say that John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando was a special game to us even before the release date. I will try my best to keep the discussion level-headed in this review, but keep that context in mind going forward.
John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando is a first-person survival shooter designed around co-op play. It’s clear that Saber and Focus have taken their incredible horde tech from World War Z and the vehicle traversal mechanics of MudRunner and combined it with the co-op action formula of Left 4 Dead. On paper, this is a great combination, and, in execution, it’s just as compelling. Though I will warn anyone who is expecting an interesting story to mind the gap. Even if you’ve read the three-issue prequel comic run (like we did), there’s not much here to dig into. But that’s also not really the point. There are cutscenes at the start and end of each level that evoke the old cinematic aesthetics of John Carpenter’s films and do a fine job at keeping you in the loop on what’s going on. Even if you don’t always care.
After a brief tutorial mission that gets you familiar with the game’s looting, shooting, and driving mechanics, you and your Toxic Commandos arrive at Leon’s Base. This is the HUB area for the game, where players can party up with friends or strangers, customise loadouts and characters, and find random secrets. From the base, you queue up for a level of your choice. You can hop in solo with bots, join up with friends, find a random party, or start solo with the option to have real players replace the bots when a connection is found. It’s all fairly straightforward and meant to get you into the action quickly. You can choose the level of difficulty, and the game also dynamically tunes the swarm size based on how many real players are in a session.
Before you get into the action, you have to select your Toxic Commando and a class. There are four commandos: Walter Irons, Ruby Pelicano, Cato Arman, and Astrid Xu. They are finely voiced, though the writing leaves a lot to be desired. You can chalk it up to being inspired by action protagonists of decades past, but there’s no emotional stakes to speak of, and the jokes rarely land as intended. There are also four classes: Strike, which is the damage dealer, Medic, which is the healer, Operator, which is the support, and Defender, which is the tank. Commandos are not tied directly to classes, so you can mix and match as you please. Each commando has a few customization options for looks, and each class has a skill tree that offers significant stat bumps to base abilities. Keeping up with the skill tree between levels is essential to surviving the hordes.
It’s once you’ve loaded into a level that Toxic Commando sets itself apart from the L4Ds and B4Bs of the genre. Due to the addition of vehicles, maps are large and can be explored at your leisure. Points of interest are vaguely marked, and going to them might be out of the way, but it will result in being better prepared for the inevitable onslaught of zombies that you’ll fight off at the end of each level. Because of this, the time to beat a given level can vary from 30 minutes to well over an hour. Other than ammo and weapons, there are three key things you can loot in a level: spare parts, sludgeite, and residium. On Hard difficulty, you can loot the premium currency too. Spare parts can be used to unlock special weapon and ammo boxes found around the map, or can be saved to unlock turrets, mortars, and other tools in the final showdown. Sludgeite and residium are both used back at base to purchase weapon upgrades and change character and vehicle skins.
None of the customization options are that significant, and truth be told, the Commando skins are rather disappointing. For vehicles, it’s best to simply change the paint job once to your favorite color and forget about it. Thankfully, weapon upgrades, in the way of purchasing attachments or increasing rarity, do impact the gunplay. There’s even a handy firing range, with its own mini-game, to test new loadouts. One point of criticism I have with Toxic Commando‘s design is that I never felt incentivized to use a different weapon. I found one early on that worked, and since you can only have one loadout at a time, I just stuck with it. Along with the primary and secondary weapons, you can also choose a melee weapon and tactical equipment. The aforementioned special weapon boxes in levels can let you pick up a heavy weapon. These railguns and grenade launchers come with limited ammo, but can make all the difference in the heat of combat.
That’s really where Toxic Commando shines. When you’re partied up with friends, and a road trip in a pickup truck you found on the side of the road turns into a fight for your life against a horde of zombies. One person is manning the flamethrower in the back while another is running around collecting sludgeite with not a care in the world. Then one of the big enemies with ridiculous names shows up (like Gooner or Wacker), and everyone starts yelling as they try to concentrate fire on the new target. These tense situations contrast nicely with the silly, casual moments. You know that if everyone goes down, the game will be over, but there’s still enough wiggle room to let you fuck around. Even if you end up finding out as a result.
It can’t be understated how significant vehicles are to the gameplay. You don’t always start out with one, and navigating the map without wheels is both dangerous and a slog. There are six unique vehicles, from an HMV to an ambulance, and they all have their own features. The HMV, for example, can plow through zombies due to its armor and is equipped with a mini-gun. Meanwhile, the ambulance is harder to drive, particularly up muddy slopes, but it has the ability to heal the commandos and comes with a replenishing health pick-up on the side. Some vehicles are also equipped with winches, which help traverse tough terrain and are required to access conveniently marked loot areas. I’d go as far as saying having a vehicle is key to survival in Toxic Commando and, as such, it’s in your best interest to maintain a vehicle as long as you can by refueling and repairing it.
On a technical level, the game looks and feels good. Gunplay is punchy, and the shooting is satisfying. Graphically, the game isn’t anything to write home about, with a lot of mud, sludge, and tentacles muddying up the visual palette. (Pun intended.) That being said, much like in World War Z and Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2, seeing a swarm approach is a sight to behold, and the fact that the game does it without the framerate tanking is always impressive. Guns also sound decent, and the environmental sound design is solid all around. The highlight in the audio department, though, is the music. It’s not persistent, but when it kicks in, it fuels the frenzy perfectly and elicits the 80s vibe that John Carpenter’s name might suggest. Carpenter himself produced the title track for the game in collaboration with his son, Cody Carpenter, though most of the soundtrack is seemingly composed by Daniel Davies, Fractal Edge Music (Mathieu Hallouin, Tim Stoney, Raphaël Joffres), and Saber Interactive (Nikita Valamin, Mikhail Kotov).
It should be no surprise that I liked John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando, even if the name at the front of the game doesn’t seem entirely warranted. When playing by yourself (with bots or strangers without mics), it can be a decent survival shooter, but the game is at its best when playing with friends. It’s a simple gameplay loop matched with fun shooting mechanics and the magic of the Swarm engine. The balance of tense standoffs and chaotic shenanigans is what makes the game memorable, despite the story leaving a lot to be desired. I’m not sure if there’s enough reason to keep players returning to the game after beating it, but for $40, it’s well worth the price of admission. John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando is available now on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Steam and Epic Game Store. A review code was provided by the publisher.
