It doesn’t take long for Trigger Happy Interactive’s Turbo Overkill to start showing off, and in fairness, it has every reason to do so. A throwback first-person shooter set in the future where its protagonist, the suitably 90s man/machine hybrid known as Johhny Turbo, zips up, down, and around its neon-drenched Paradise city like an oiled pebble going down a slide. Turbo slays augmented goons with two barrels of smoking justice and a slice of his chainsaw leg just as easily as one might write their signature.
Johnny Turbo returns home to the city of Paradise and discovers its population under the digital thumb of a rogue A.I. called Syn. Not only does Syn have the public enslaved, but it also decided to deploy an army of biomechanical baddies for good measure. Armed with his own nifty set of augments, Johnny sets out to take down Syn and its minions, battle bounty hunters, save Paradise, and earn a hefty cash reward in the process.
I must admit, I’m an easy mark for flashy, over-the-top shooters, but that doesn’t mean I’d be incapable of cynicism and criticism toward Turbo Overkill if it was relying solely on being flashy and over-the-top. There’s got to be some meat on its tech-infused bones if it is to keep the pace and not end up huffing and puffing on the sidelines in the long term.
Fittingly for a game with a cyberpunk aesthetic, Turbo Overkill welds modern tricks onto its more traditional first-person frame. There are chunks of Quake, Doom, Duke Nukem, Titanfall, Bulletstorm, and Vanquish here, among other influences, and the challenge of stapling those chunks together and creating a passable whole is a tricky one. Obviously, no modern game can pretend it’s born of a wholly original idea, but the risk of loudly declaring what ideas and styles you’ve plucked parts of your game from are inciting direct comparisons.
What helps Turbo Overkill, in this regard, is that the parts that are chosen largely work together seamlessly, and with the game’s lightning pace, there’s barely a nanosecond to think about such things in the moment. Johnny has one a hell of a toolset to begin with, and it only improves with progression. The aforementioned chainsaw leg adds some extra kick to erm… kicking foes, but his arm-mounted rockets, wall-running prowess, and slow-mo ‘Hero Time’ power heat up the spice levels further still.
It’s in the combination of Johnny’s abilities and weaponry that Turbo Overkill finds its ultraviolent rhythm. The flow of platforming, parkour, and combat takes a little getting used to at the start, but soon it clicks and that almost trance-like ‘zone’ I used to get in during Quake games suddenly materialized. To an observer, it must look almost effortless as Johnny leaps across boats docked in a dreary harbor, thundering along rain-soaked streets, slide-tackling foes chainsaw leg-first, and gibbing enemies to the beat of a crunchy electro-rock soundtrack. The word that kept coming to mind was ‘pulsating’. Turbo Overkill doesn’t just use Late 90s/Early 2000s FPS nostalgia for the sake of a hook, it utilizes the exact feeling of how it plays at its best. A snarling, slick chimera of my favorite old-school shooters in new packaging.
It’d go nowhere without a good set of weapons though, and even in the preview stages of Turbo Overkill, there’s a tasty arsenal to try out. Johnny’s dual magnums are the starting weapons, and while they’re perfectly fine for punching holes into cybernetic chests normally, there’s an alt-fire that tracks and targets enemies to deliver more lethal, insta-gibbing shots. This alt-fire ethos continues throughout. There’s a shotgun that has a plasma blast, another that has a grenade launcher, the Uzi can switch between focused fire and dual-wield, and a minigun that doubles as a flamethrower. There’s a satisfying punch to these weapons, accentuated further by the glorious spray of blood and gore as enemies explode.
Johnny may fly through Paradise at a canter, but it’s still hard to ignore the scuzzy neon beauty of the city along the way. The throwback art and level design are complemented by dazzling lighting that dances off the otherwise grim, rainswept cityscape, and a distinct visual flavor to the world and its freaky inhabitants. The Cyberpunk/Blade Runner aesthetic is fast becoming overused in video games, but when it’s deeply entrenched in a game’s design on multiple levels like it is here, then it becomes a lot easier to remember how good it can feel.
So far, Turbo Overkill is doing exactly what it needs to by making me want more of its blood and neon bullet ballet. It could certainly do with a little tweak here and there to keep the speed, but make falling into bodies of water less of a pace-spoiling experience, but otherwise, it’s already shaping up to be a delicious slice of frenetic old-school shooting joy.
Turbo Overkill preview code for PC provided by the publisher.
Turbo Overkill is due for release in 2022 on all major platforms.