After playing John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando, I was left doubting my knowledge of the legendary filmmaker’s back catalogue. Was there a zombie-filled Toxic Commando from the mid-80s that he had created? Was this zombie shooter from Saber a licensed reimagining or spiritual sequel? Well, no. While this game is inspired by the tone of some of John Carpenter’s filmography, and a title that’s probably reminding me of Toxic Avenger, this is an original creation. John does love blowing up zombies, though… so it’s a good thing that he’ll get to do just that while playing the game branded with his own name!
The world has been consumed by an outbreak of zombie with glowing eyes, and some chap named Leon is trying to fight back against this. The only problem is he needs some supplies and he can’t get them himself, so why not cook up a way that people on the brink of infection themselves can head out and do this for him? Just slap some glowy blue things on their chest to stall the infection’s progression, and they’ll be good to go!
Of course, we know what a Saber Interactive zombie game entails, and that’s some giant hordes of zombies, but the most tangible difference between World War Z and Toxic Commando is that you’re presented with more open mission areas, instead of linear levels.
After selecting from a handful of classes and character builds, loadouts and all the usual co-op shooter things, we dropped into an overcast, heavily wooded region to do a bit of Leon’s bidding. The first job was finding and neutralising two hotspots marked on the map, and there’s plenty of options available for you to do so. You can naturally just hoof it on foot, but vehicles are also a great option, whether that’s a basic sedan with half the squad hanging out of its windows blasting away at zombies, or a heavily armoured hummer with a mounted machine gun on top to use.
It feels like a little bit of MudRunner and RoadCraft has been fed into the game here, albeit in a light and friendly fashion. The hummer is relatively slow, but weaving through the world’s dangers has a slow and methodical feel to it. You also have a tow cable that can be attached to certain fixed points to pull the car up, or to pull open hidden resource caches.
There’s more than just basic zombies to worry about, though they do pack a decent punch when a few of them manage to close the distance to you. A handful of special infected can make an appearance, including some familiar archetypes, but there’s also these mysterious red tendrils that burrow through the earth, block of some paths as they sprout, and can also shoot at you if given the chance.
Reaching a hot spot means fighting to clear the region and completing a mini objective. This could be filling up a generator with gas to activate some kind of gizmo, or blasting away at weak points on some kind of hard shell, eventually revealing a spiky node that you need to approach and rip apart.
With the nodes broken, our search was narrowed to a church in the region, St Goddard’s, but it’s clearly massively in distress as a huge horde of zombies is coming right down on it. Thankfully a massive energy blast is able to buy its defenders some time, but then you have to place defences, man turrets and tackle a fresh wave of zombies coming from all directions.
This is where the World War Z of it all really comes to the fore. You have just a handful of Spare Parts resource points to put towards defences, though you can find more by exploring the map more fully and finding secret caches. At the same time, there’s resource points dotted around that let you spend this same precious resource to open up some class-specific crates or get you new weapons.
It’s four player co-op, so it absolutely makes sense that there’s four classes, loosely in the vein of a Battlefield. The Medic is pretty self explanatory, while the Operator is great for fixing up things, Strike all about damage dealing, and the Defender is able to put down shields for allies. We didn’t really delve too deeply into these archetypes in the single level we played, but there will be the ability to advance and upgrade each of these, alongside weapons and customisable vehicles, to push down different player builds.
Back to the task at hand and the waves come en masse from three directions, one at a time. Instead of arming electric traps and putting up barriers, I’ve gone further ahead to hop onto a mounted machine gun, splitting my attention between blasting away at the ridge line and checking other flanks for any sneaky surprises that the game might be trying to spring on us – and there were a few! It’s still genuinely impressive to see the vast hordes of zombies just flowing over a cliff, down a hill, pilling up and over a fence and then rushing forward, and it’s obvious why this has become a staple of Saber’s games over the past few years – this and trucks with tow cables!
This game is clearly another love letter to the co-op zombie shooter, taking Saber’s established technologies and wrapping it up in a new setting that’s infused with grungey 80s action movie schlock. You get to blast tons of zombies, though, and that’s probably just what John Carpenter ordered.
