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Details
Publisher Focus Entertainment
Developer: Saber Interactive
Format PS5 (Reviewed), Xbox Series X/S, PC
Platform Swarm Engine
Release date 12 March 2026
John Carpenter is a film director who has been in the background of my life for decades, from childhood memories of The Thing to annual dips back into Big Trouble in Little China and The Fog. So a game, John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando, inspired by Carpenter, really can’t be turned down. From Metal Gear Solid to Still Wakes The Deep, Carpenter continues to inspire devs, but this one has his name on the box, so it really should be the full Carpenter experience, right?
Carpenter’s films thrive on throwing ordinary people into impossible situations, an oppressive dread creeping through empty spaces, and that low electronic synth pulse promising something awful just out of frame. So when a co-op shooter arrives bearing Carpenter’s name and leaning into that same synth-heavy fog-filled eerieness, I’m already halfway convinced.
Thankfully, John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando understands the assignment. Even when the game erupts into full zombie-splattering chaos, the tone still carries Carpenter’s fingerprints. A pulsing synth soundtrack hums beneath the action, the story centres on reluctant anti-heroes rather than soldiers, and a neat Cinema Ambience graphics mode subtly shifts the colour into Carpenter-style palettes.
Thick on atmosphere, thin on detail
Cinematics linking the horde shooting are an effective homage to Carpenter. The camera lingers just a little longer on empty roads, distant movement in the fog, or a hill slowly filling with shambling bodies before they reach you. It’s the sort of visual language Carpenter used throughout films like Escape from New York and The Fog, offering quiet tension before the inevitable chaos.
The setup is pure Carpenter pulp. A group of smugglers chasing their next payday stumble into a supernatural catastrophe linked to an entity known as the Sludge God. Nobody here is heroic. They bicker, mock each other, and treat the unfolding apocalypse like an inconvenience to the next big score. But that scrappy energy gives the missions personality. The dialogue has just enough bite that you actually want to hear what these characters say next, and that’s not something most co-op shooters manage.
That said, the story itself is fairly lean and performative. No matter how much I enjoy listening to this scrappy gang bicker and infight, the plot is here to service the grind. It sets up the next goal, the ferry quest, and swarm survival. There are a couple of moments where I think the story could veer into pure Carpenter, with characters splintering and fractures teased, but it goes nowhere.
At its core, though, Toxic Commando sits in the same blood pools of co-op horde shooters like Left 4 Dead, Warhammer 40,000: Darktide and developer Saber Interactive’s own World War Z. You’d think much of Carpenter-isms get lost in the chaos, the tension and quite paranoria, but Ghosts of Mars would like a word, and indeed, the game masterfully curates its big moments, the massive horde swarms are seen on the horizon and you just need to sit, watch and wait.
Toxic Commando goes off-road
On top of the familiar co-op shooter format, Toxic Commando adds a curious mechanic inspired by MudRunner. Large parts of each mission involve navigating muddy terrain in off-road vehicles and hauling equipment across hills, forests, and flooded farmland. Trucks bog down in the invading ‘Sludge’, engines struggle on inclines, and sometimes the only option is to break out the winch and slowly drag yourself free, zombies clinging to your truck, flung off and crunched under tyres.
At first, the mix of MudRunner and World War Z feels awkward. Vehicles chew through petrol, take damage easily and frequently get stuck in terrain that feels designed to swallow them whole (one moment, a literal hole, took me 15 minutes to escape from).
But once you fully understand how to use the winch, something clicks. Suddenly, new routes open up. You can haul trucks through impossible angles, pull vehicles out of ravines, or climb slopes that initially seemed impassable. It adds a genuine risk-reward layer to exploration, as the push to explore deeper into the map for better loot comes with the risk that you may not have the fuel or vehicle integrity to make it back.
Later in the story, the vehicle selection expands with faster trucks fitted with flamethrowers or machine guns, which finally lets the driving side of the game cut loose a little. But even then, it remains a strange fit. Sometimes clever, sometimes awkward, often slowing the pace to a literal crawl, and occasionally frustrating, but undeniably different from most horde shooters.
The Space Marine 2 influence
But Saber always holds its trump card, the massive zombie hordes that its impressive Swarm Engine can push around the map with ease. Previously seen in World War Z and later pushed even further in Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2, the Swarm Engine is still one of the most impressive enemy systems around and never fails to raise a smile.
Hundreds of zombies pour across the screen at once, climbing fences, spilling down hills and piling onto objectives in alarming numbers. What makes it work isn’t just scale but staging. The game often shows the swarm forming at a distance, movement in the fog, bodies gathering on the horizon, and then suddenly rushing towards you in a wave of clawing arms and nashing teeth.
Nearly every mission eventually ends in a defence scenario, protecting some vital device or objective from wave after wave of infected. It’s a familiar mission structure, hence the addition of the vehicle mechanics and focus on exploration that aims to make the journey to these choke points more involved.
To an extent, it works. Ditch the NPCs to play with other humans, and the missions develop a unique rhythm. Someone takes the wheel, others ride shotgun. There’s a genuine thrill to sitting in the passenger seat, watching zombies jump on the hood and crash the windows, blasting into a wall of zombies clinging to the side of the truck as it roars through the mud. These bouncing, drifting shootouts are a joy and unique to Toxic Commando, and in these moments, the game manages to pull me into feeling like I’m in a Carpenter movie, fighting for my virtual life.
A visual, toxic, treat
When the action slows, there’s a moment to appreciate the world Saber has made. Ash drifts through the air, and embers float across the screen, fog curls through forests and ruined farmland, while mud churns under tyres and boots alike. Visually, the game is stronger than expected.
The palette avoids the usual grey-brown apocalypse. Burning reds and oranges glow across the landscape, while electric blue fractures cut through corrupted ground and illuminate the mist and fog that tease a twist of ‘Sludge’ roots. Sparks illuminate abandoned farms and crumbling military installations now overtaken by grotesque organic growth, all demanding exploration. It’s a grim world, but a surprisingly vivid one.
Where the experience begins to falter is in the long term. Once the campaign ends, the endgame loop is fairly thin. Progress essentially means replaying the same nine story missions on greater difficulties while exploring maps to gather Sludgerite (the in-game levelling currency), earn kills and grind experience for weapons and character abilities.
And it really is a grind. After the first playthrough, which takes around 5 hours, you’ll barely have scratched the surface of the upgrade systems and weapon unlocks, so there’s plenty left to discover. But whether that’s appealing depends entirely on how much you enjoy chasing perfection – repeating missions, refining builds and mowing down the same massive hordes again and again. For some players, that loop will be satisfying, but for others it will feel like the game runs out of fresh ideas too quickly.
Toxic Commando swarms but stalls
John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando turns out to be a strange but often entertaining hybrid. The Carpenter influences, such as the original synth score, cinematic framing, and rough-edged anti-heroes, give it personality and lend the game a flavour most co-op shooters lack. The Swarm Engine still delivers spectacular zombie battles, and the world itself has an eerie visual richness.
The MudRunner-style vehicle systems are the real wildcard. Occasionally clever, but also often awkward, and sometimes incredibly frustrating, it can literally slow the action to a crawl at times, which isn’t the usual pacing for a zombie horde co-op shooter. But it can deliver those confined shootouts from the front seat, which feels entirely unique to Toxic Commando.
Underneath it all, though, the familiar horde-shooter loop remains intact. Missions stretch longer than expected, the endgame leans heavily on repetition, and the grind will test anyone without a strong taste for completionism. Still, when the trucks are sliding through mud, the synths are humming, and hundreds of zombies are spilling over a hill towards your position, Toxic Commando finds its rhythm and its own identity.
