Turbo Overkill |Early Access PC Review

Guns. Guts. Leg Chainsaws. Ready yourself with all three of these, and slide into the gorefest of a fight that is Turbo Overkill. While the cyberpunk fever hasn’t quite gripped me like it seems to have the majority of others out there, the world that Trigger Happy Interactive and Apogee unveiled in Turbo Overkill looked captivating. Couple that with gameplay that appeared to be a new take on the classic DOOM games, and color me every hue of interested. Like many others, I cut my teeth on PC gaming with DOOM, DOOM II, and Duke Nukem, and the nostalgia effect that echoes inside me for those games is heavy. So, I prepared my trigger finger and slid into Turbo Overkill knee first. Why knee first, do you ask?

LEG CHAINSAWS!

Turbo Overkill is a first-person shooter with a classic feel to the aesthetics, but with modernized gameplay. You find pretty early on that there are numerous weapons that you can find, upgrade, and use to destroy the cybernetic enemies in your way. Also, much like the franchise that appears to be Total Overkill’s inspiration, there is a chainsaw available to use if you wish to rip and tear your enemies to gory shreds.

Here, however, it’s not your run-of-the-mill chainsaw that you pick up in a back alley, or even a chainsaw grafted to your arm, but a leg chainsaw. Sounds crazy, right? Oh boy is it, and it’s incredible. A mechanic is employed here involving speed, sliding, and melee damage, and it is like nothing I’ve ever experienced before. When you slide, the chainsaw that is hidden in your leg is exposed, and damages enemies that you slide into. Furthermore, the faster you are going, the further you slide, and the more potential you have to rip through swarms and swarms of enemies all at once. More often than not, I found myself ditching my guns and sliding through room after room, and back again, and yet again, simply out of enjoyment for the gameplay.

Another fun asset in Turbo Overkill is the ability customization. Throughout the numerous levels, you will come across numerous vendor machines, similar to the depots in the Borderlands games. Here, though, you will find ones that allow you to purchase upgrades and secondary abilities for your weapons, while other ones will allow you to equip numerous add-ons to your character that you will find throughout your slaughterous journey. This really opens the gateway to customizing the gameplay to fit different playstyles, and I enjoyed experimenting with multiple combinations to find what felt most fun to me.

Deja Vu

You play the role of Johnny Turbo, a cyborg badass who arrives back at his home city of Paradise to find it has been overrun by a plethora of cyber-esque monstrosities. You very quickly learn that these monstrosities are being created and led by a rogue A.I. that calls itself Syn. For some reason, our hero Johnny is the only thing that stands between Syn and his dream of turning the entire planet into a cyber dystopia to match the city of Paradise. I feel like I’ve seen this somewhere before…

Turbo Overkill doesn’t go out of the way to drop any story arcs or plot twists that would leave you longing to see what happens next as you progress, but does it really need to? I mean, with a badass hero, bullets and missiles, monsters trying to rip you to pieces in a cyberpunk environment, who needs any kind of story to follow?

Neon Jungle

The scenery in Paradise as you attempt to save the city from Syn and his creations is dark, fluorescent chaos. Either Johnny Turbo only works at night, or the city itself is in permanent twilight. The only sources of illumination to help show your surroundings are the constant neon signage and decor. Occasionally you will enter rooms that feel straight out of the eighties, decked in neon-glow gridlines set upon an orangish-pink backdrop. Somehow you start to feel that your surroundings aren’t natural… or are they? The music score matches the aesthetic and attitude superbly. Heavy metal guitar riffs scream into your ears as you mow down scores of synthetic abominations with every beat.

Final Verdict

Turbo Overkill is a classic gorefest of a game, splattered across the screen with break-neck speed. The guys at Trigger Happy Interactive did a marvelous job of bringing back the classic feel of the original FPS while keeping it relevant to today’s world with modern mechanics and gameplay. The whole thing is just plain fun. The only complaint I really have is the difficulty. I played through my experience in the easiest mode possible for the most part, and even then, there were times I really struggled to make it through some areas. But if you can muster the patience to break through the difficulty spikes, this is an experience I very highly recommend.

This review is based on an Early Access PC copy of Turbo Overkill provided by Stride PR for coverage purposes. As of the time of this writing, it is exclusive to this platform.