Turbo Overkill

Yeah, if you wanna go crazy in terms of action. In a retro look. control the symphony of action.

This game is so cool! It makes so much fun to play it!

Santa was good to me this year: A Blu-Ray with Quake 2, Warhammer 40K: Boltgun and Turbo Overkill was waiting under the tree. (I still have no idea how I could have been THAT good this year.) Quake 2 is legendary and Boltgun is just F-U-N. But Turbo Overkill is...something else. It moves faster than Doom Eternal could ever hope while offering combat that is both frantic on the edge of uncontrollable while being completely controllable - after a few hours it feels so natural that going back to a slower shooter feels like the controls have been crippled. Turbo Overkill looks amazing, sounds like sonic gold and moves like a lubed gold bar sliding down a luge pipe. Johnny Overkill is a 'street sweeper' (i.e. a corpo merc) sent to the world of Paradise to deal with a rogue AI called SYN. SYN has taken control of the planet's systems and is slowly infecting the populace. What begins as a cheap riff of System Shock's plot becomes something much more over the top and deep, incorporating elements of Robocop, Akira and Doom 2016/Eternal to make something much more than the sum of its parts. It's one of the best boomer shooter stories to come around in a long time. I've thought about how to describe the look and sound of this game. My best analogy is 'if Cyberpunk 2077 was made in 1996 and had Megadeth write the the soundtrack.' It's a neon-drenched, metal-infused wonder. Nothing I have said means squat if the game plays like scop. It doesn't. The guns hit hard and none of them are useless (even the starting pistols are useful in the endgame). The movement is frantic and the environments promote chaotic dashing, double-jumping and chainsaw sliding to get the job done. (Good thing Trigger Happy took notes from Doom Eternal.) I swear, when I chainsaw slid under a four-legged tank, killed a line of melee enemies, shotgun-jumped and put a salvo of rockets into the tank...'Yep, this is GOTY.' Stop reading - start playing what might just be 2023's GOTY.

Turbo Overkill is a really good retro-styled shooter with some character progression mechanics you'll see in other popular modern FPS games. - I really enjoyed the Implant Mechanic where you can customize and upgrade specific parts of your arsenal. It lets you dictate how you wanna play the game. - The enemy design and variety is fantastic. This is essential for making a really good shooter, and thankfully Turbo Overkill delivers here. There's tons of different enemies that'll use different tactics in tryin to kill ya, which makes each encounter interesting and fresh. - Weapon variety is great. A couple starting weapons become too weak later on, but most weapons are viable from start to finish. Plus you can even buy upgrades for all weapons, which is a nice touch. - Graphics are actually really good despite being a unity engine, retro-themed shooter (plus it's VERY stable. Zero crashes in ~20 hours). Just keep in mind that a mid-range graphics card from the past ~4 years is required to max all settings and maintain a stable framerate. Don't worry though, it's not crazy demanding. The GPU usage just sort of surprised me. - Also there are collectables and secrets to find which will unlock cheats and secret levels. Very fun addition that makes replaying the game fun. - If there's anything I could do without, it's the vehicle sections. Driving your bike or hover car wasn't too much fun for me. These parts of the game were pretty brief though, so it wasn't too annoying. All in all, Turbo Overkill delivers a fantastic retro shooter experience and is also surprisingly long. So even at the original asking price, Turbo Overkill is an easy recommendation by me because this game provides very good bang for your buck. Give this game a try, FPS fans won't regret it.

So is GOG getting the episode 2 update?