John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando is old-school, for better or worse. Left 4 Dead may be dormant for now, and CoD Zombies is always going through its ups and downs, but Toxic Commando doesn’t seem to want to stray too far from its Xbox 360-era spray-and-pray roots, and that could make it contentious.
Toxic Commando adopts the formula of cooperative shooters of yore, setting players loose on a massive map and giving them objectives to complete while mowing down hordes of undead. As such, Toxic Commando doesn't seem particularly unique, though it is definitely effective.
I played Toxic Commando for about six hours, completing several of its opening missions, and despite a few hiccups, I walked away from the game feeling excited and satisfied. If Saber Interactive sticks the landing with the final product, then Toxic Commando could deliver something that countless gamers have been asking for for years: a fleshed-out co-op, campaign-based shooter that isn’t bogged down with live-service staples, battle passes, or egregious microtransactions.
Toxic Commando Is Unpretentious Fun
Campy and pulpy are the best adjectives to describe Toxic Commando. Players follow four main characters, all of whom have been infected by the same eldritch zombie plague as their multitudinous foes, though they keep their descent into zombiehood at bay thanks to the tools of an eccentric inventor. This central quartet is defined by a rather familiar kind of devil-may-care attitude, though this doesn’t exactly make them likable. They are decidedly abrasive and strange, without much charm, though this seems to be intentional. This self-aware obnoxiousness may be appealing to some, but it can be a bit grating.
But Toxic Commando isn’t really about the story—it’s about the carnage. Players embark on missions across different maps, which are populated with main objectives as well as optional ones. For instance, you may be tasked with heading to a rendezvous point to defend a structure, but you’ll be free to explore several other points of interest beforehand, collecting upgrade resources, vehicles, new weapons, and supplies that can be used for short-term advantages like setting up a barbed wire fence or repairing mounted turrets.
This means two things: that story missions have numerous distinct opportunities for progression and combat, and that there are important moments of emergent gameplay. For instance, I was once tasked with delivering a specific vehicle to a drop point, but it was damaged. I was deep in zombie territory at this point, but I had no choice but to leave the car behind and hoof it to a location where I could get the requisite repair materials. This forced me to change my gameflow and broader plan, ultimately leading to a completely different experience than I was expecting, in the best way.
One small blemish on Toxic Commando’s open-ended mission design is the game's overabundant dialog barks. Characters will constantly rush you towards the main objective, which can be annoying when you’re encouraged to explore at your own pace.
This variety is aided greatly by Toxic Commando’s terrific moment-to-moment gameplay; gunplay is solid and frenetic, and driving is weighty and surprisingly multifaceted. Different vehicles will have different abilities, which make them more or less suitable for particular tasks, and coming across the right car can make a real difference in a given gameplay session. And of course, running down zombies in a pickup truck is always satisfying.
There’s also long-term progression, unfolding via four class-specific skill trees, which can apply to any of the four playable characters, and help incentivize chasing XP through specific challenges or difficulty-related rewards. It’s hard to say just how well this progression model will hold up over the course of a full game; they aren’t bad, by any means, but the individual upgrades players can earn are rather pedestrian and uninteresting. Guncrafting is a similar story: it’s good, but again, there’s not much to say about it. It’s quite similar to what’s on offer in Call of Duty, being serviceable but straightforward.
Toxic Commando Still Has Some Wrinkles to Iron Out
All in all, Toxic Commando looks promising, but it’s also a bit rough. There are some miscellaneous oddities— it's confusing that a game as hectic and over the top as this has friendly fire, for instance—but the greatest concern is its technical performance. I played it on a PC with an RTX 4060 and an AMD Ryzen 7 5800x—not top of the line by any means, but a rig solid enough to run something like Cyberpunk 2077 at high settings, at 60 FPS or higher. Toxic Commando is no Cyberpunk 2077 in the looks department, and it ran terribly on my machine.
I couldn’t adjust most of the graphics settings in the preview build I played, but even with DLSS set to Ultra Performance, my FPS would regularly drop into the 20s and even lower. Though relatively rare, there were certainly a handful of moments where Toxic Commando became virtually unplayable, which doesn’t inspire a ton of confidence.
But assuming that Saber Interactive can smooth these issues out before Toxic Commando’s 2026 launch, it has every chance to be a great multiplayer outing. There are precious few good co-op shooters these days, so here’s hoping it can finish strong.
- Released
- March 12, 2026
- Developer(s)
- Saber Interactive
- Publisher(s)
- Focus Entertainment
- Engine
- Swarm Engine
- Multiplayer
- Online Co-Op
WHERE TO PLAY
In the near future, an experimental attempt to harness the power of the Earth’s core ends in a terrifying disaster: the release of the Sludge God. This eldritch abomination begins terraforming the area, turning soil to scum and the living… to undead monsters! However, the genius behind the experiment has a plan to make things right. All he needs is a team of competent, highly-trained mercenaries to get the job done. Unfortunately, those are all too expensive. Which is why he’s hired…
The Toxic Commandos!
Take control of one of the commandos, team up with your friends and send the Sludge God and its horde of things-that-should-never-be back to the underworld. Choose the class that matches your playstyle, pile into your favorite ride, and unload an array of gunfire, grenades, special abilities, and freaking katanas as you save the planet.
So if you’re the kind of person who likes:
• Buddy-movie vibes and the over-the-top humor, action, and horror of classic 80s cinema, inspired by the legendary John Carpenter…
• Teaming up with friends to face down hordes of monsters who want to eat your face…
• An explosive cocktail of visceral FPS action and apocalyptic environments…
• Upgrading your skills and testing new abilities against increasingly hardcore challenges…
• Saving the planet against impossible odds…
… then now’s your time to go commando!
- Genre(s)
- First-Person Shooter, Zombie, Action
- Platform(s)
- PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, PC
John Carpenter's Toxic Commando is set to release in 2026 for PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. The Best War Games was given a PC review code for this preview.