John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando (2026) ☣️🧟♂️
Semi-open zombie chaos with satisfying gunplay… but bring a good internet connection.
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🎬 Let’s start by showing y’all the trailers shall we?
Warning ⚠️, this game is extremely gory, blood everywhere. But thats bot a surprise, its a zombie game.
Also I know right? Ugh another zombie game? Also another zombie game made by Saber Interactive? But also wait John Carpenter name is on this? Wait huh? Thats interesting, well glad y’all said that. Today we will be taking a look at this game and see if its good or not.
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🧟 Non-Spoiler Plot Overview
Humanity once again proves it never learns anything.
Some brilliant scientist decides to drill down into the Earth’s core to see what’s down there. Because apparently curiosity still kills more than cats. Instead of discovering something useful, they unleash an eldritch sludge infection that spreads across the world.
The ground becomes covered in black, corrupted goo, people turn into zombies, and the world is basically toast.
The government then decides the best solution is to send in a squad of expendable mercenaries known as the Toxic Commandos.
Naturally, when the team arrives they get infected too. Luckily a scientist rigs them with special tech that prevents them from fully turning.
So now you’re basically fighting zombies while slowly dying anyway.
Great job humanity.
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🧍 Character Rundown
The game focuses on a team of four commandos you play as in co-op missions. They fit the classic squad roles:
Strike – damage focused
Medic – healing support
Operator – tactical utility
Defender – shields and defensive abilities
Personality-wise, the characters are honestly a bit generic, but they do have some fun banter.
My favorite exchange happens early when a scientist insists the zombies should be called “Homo Mortis.”
One of the characters responds with:
> “If it looks like a zombie and rots like a zombie… then it’s a zombie.”
Yeah… I’m with them on that one.
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⏱️ Pacing / Mission Flow
This is not a fast-paced zombie game like Left 4 Dead.
Each mission takes place in a semi-open world map, and the pacing is slower because you’re encouraged to explore.
Each of the 9 missions includes:
main objectives
side objectives
crystal collectibles
weapon upgrade materials
environmental traps
massive zombie hordes
If you rush the objectives a mission can take around 20 minutes.
If you explore everything and collect crystals like I did… a single mission can easily take 45 minutes to an hour.
So yeah, the pacing is definitely slower and more methodical.
This game looks like a mix between WWZ, Back 4 Blood, and a game called MudRunner.
Where Back 4 Blood has big masses of flesh and organs on the floor, this game has big masses of black sludge. Kinda like tar, but with some red.
Also the zombies designs look somewhat similar to Back 4 Blood, similar. Not fully copied. Plus a mix of the aliens from The Thing, which makes sense since John Carpenter helped on this game.
Vehicles can get stuck in mud. Then you better hope u have a vehicle that has rope in it to attach to a branch or the floor to pull you out.
🚗 Vehicles & Their Abilities
One of the things that really helps Toxic Commando stand out from other zombie shooters is the vehicles. They’re not just transportation — they’re actually part of the combat and mission strategy.
Unlike most horde shooters where you’re stuck running everywhere on foot, the maps here are large enough that vehicles become essential. Your team can drive across the map while other players shoot from the windows or mounted weapons.
Each vehicle also has its own special ability, which adds variety to how missions play out.
🚓 Police Car
The police car works almost like a mobile trap. You can lure zombies toward it and set it up as explosive bait. When the swarm gathers around the vehicle, it can be detonated to wipe out a huge chunk of the horde.
It’s incredibly useful when you’re getting overwhelmed.
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🚑 Ambulance
The ambulance functions as a support vehicle. Instead of focusing on destruction, it helps keep your squad alive by restoring health or stabilizing teammates during fights.
It’s especially helpful during long missions where ammo and healing supplies are limited.
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🚙 Armored Trucks
The armored trucks are the heavy hitters. Some of them are equipped with mounted weapons like machine guns or flamethrowers, turning the vehicle into a mobile zombie-clearing machine.
When a huge swarm appears, these vehicles can mow through zombies in a way that feels incredibly satisfying.
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🪝 Winch System
Another unique mechanic is the winch system.
If your vehicle gets stuck in mud, ravines, or rough terrain, you can attach a cable to nearby objects and pull the vehicle free. This adds a layer of strategy to exploration because the environment itself can become a challenge.
Sometimes it feels like driving a zombie apocalypse version of MudRunner, which is honestly pretty cool.
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Final Thoughts on Vehicles
The vehicles in Toxic Commando aren’t just a gimmick — they genuinely change how the game plays. They add mobility, strategy, and chaos to fights, especially when your whole squad is firing from the windows while plowing through a massive zombie horde.
It’s one of the biggest features that separates this game from other zombie shooters.
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👍 Pros
🔫 Fantastic Gunplay
The gunplay is easily one of the game’s biggest strengths.
The weapons have real oomph when you fire them. Shots feel powerful, the recoil feels good, and the impact feedback when zombies explode into blood is incredibly satisfying.
This is the kind of shooting where you feel every bullet.
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🩸 Gorgeous Visual Style
This game looks fantastic. The locations mainly consists of nature, but with some specific buildings, so the map looks vacant.
The zombie infection spreads as black sludge with glowing red veins, and when you shoot zombies the blood sprays bright red against those dark bodies.
The contrast makes combat look great and helps you clearly see your hits during huge hordes.
I honestly prefer this style over the gross flesh piles from Back 4 Blood.
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🚗 Vehicles Add Something New
One of the coolest mechanics in the game is the use of vehicles.
You can drive trucks through zombie swarms while teammates shoot from the back, repair vehicles during missions, and even use them for explosive traps.
It adds a nice change of pace compared to the usual “run down a hallway shooting zombies” gameplay.
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🔧 Deep Customization
The weapon progression system is excellent.
As you use weapons you unlock:
scopes
barrels
extensions
augments
You can also customize colors for:
guns
vehicle parts
You can even color individual parts of the gun, meaning if you really want to you can create a rainbow monstrosity.
Which I personally consider a crime against good taste… but the option is there.
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🧟 Good Variety of Special Zombies
The game includes several special infected that keep combat interesting:
Exploders that detonate
Hazmat zombies that buff nearby enemies
Huge brutes similar to the Tank from Left 4 Dead
Grab enemies that pin you
Charging monsters similar to the Bull in World War Z
These enemies force you to prioritize targets instead of just spraying bullets everywhere.
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👎 Cons
🌐 Always-Online Requirement
This is my biggest complaint.
The game is online-only.
Even if you play solo with bots, you still need a stable internet connection.
That means if the servers ever go down, the game could become completely unplayable.
The character designs are just so meh, the issue is the game was going for a generic futuristic style for the characters, so what you end up getting is tons of Grey outfits.
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🛋️ No Couch Co-Op
For a 4-player zombie game, the lack of couch co-op is honestly disappointing.
Games like Left 4 Dead showed how fun local co-op zombie games can be, and it’s a shame that option isn’t here.
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🐌 Slower Mission Pacing
Because of the semi-open maps and collectibles, missions can run long.
If you explore everything, some levels can take close to an hour.
This isn’t necessarily bad, but players expecting fast arcade-style runs might find the pacing slow.
My least favorite objective in gaming has got to be protect an object and prevent it from gettinf damaged, i can enter do it without it gettinf damaged. And there’s many those in this game, oh wonderful.
Also if I didnt adress this if u die in level, you lose all the things you collected, so you have to have to replay the entire level. All over again. Oh wonderful.
The main characters are very forgettable. Hell the plot is very paper thin and just kind of boring, zero of substance.
Also, since all the levels are just outside in the forest, it makes every chapter, just feel exactly the same.You don’t really get anything to distinguish each map except for one or two buildings.
Also, if you want to get the purple crystal currency that allows you to purchase cosmetics, you have to play on difficulty. Normal or higher. You can’t play on difficulty story for some reason story just gives you the orange crystals which allow you to upgrade guns, so if you suck at a higher difficulty, well, you’re out of luck.
The scale doesn’t really have any replay value, you will visit once and be like well, I finished that.
Now it does sound like I’ve been dunking on this game. A lot, it is true. But I still had a fun time kinda.
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🧠 Final Thoughts
I’ll be honest.
I thought I was getting tired of zombie games.
Then World War Z kept getting updates and new content, and now Toxic Commando comes along and reminds me why I love this genre.
The gunplay is satisfying, the visuals look great, the vehicles add new gameplay variety, and the semi-open levels make the missions feel less linear than other horde shooters.
Yes, the story is thin and the game being online-only is frustrating.
But when you’re mowing down massive hordes with great weapons and watching zombies explode in clouds of blood…
It’s hard not to have fun.
Will i play this game as much as I do WWZ and Left 4 Dead? Probably not, but I’ll definitely continue to come back to this game.
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⭐ Rating
8 / 10
A fantastic zombie shooter with great gunplay, strong visuals, and lots of customization.
Just make sure you’ve got a stable internet connection, because this one lives entirely online.
📝 Update
Now that some time has passed, I actually don’t enjoy this game nearly as much as I did when I first reviewed it. Looking back, I think I got caught up in how satisfying the gunplay and zombie gore were, because those aspects are genuinely excellent. But once that initial excitement wore off, I realized I almost never found myself wanting to come back to it.
A big reason is the mission structure. Most levels take anywhere from 30 to 40 minutes, and if you’re someone who just wants to jump into a quick zombie game for twenty minutes, this really isn’t that kind of experience. The semi-open maps also start to blend together after a while since so much of the game takes place in forests with only the occasional building to help each mission stand out.
The story and characters also don’t leave much of an impression. They’re serviceable enough to move you from one mission to the next, but there really isn’t anything memorable about them, which doesn’t help give you a reason to replay the campaign. Add in objectives where you’re constantly protecting equipment, losing all your collected resources if you fail a mission, and the always-online requirement, and it slowly chipped away at my desire to keep playing.
I still think the gunplay is fantastic, the vehicles are a fun addition, and the customization is excellent. I don’t regret playing it, and I still think it’s a solid zombie shooter. But unlike World War Z or Left 4 Dead, this just isn’t a game I find myself returning to very often, and that’s probably the biggest criticism I can give it.
Getting Stuck In The Mud Kills The Pacing
Another issue I have with the game is the pacing, especially whenever you are driving around the maps. There are sections where if you drive into deep mud your vehicle will basically get stuck, forcing you to stop what you’re doing, aim a cable at a tree further up the hill, grapple onto it, slowly yank the vehicle out of the mud, disconnect the cable, and then finally continue on your way. At first I thought this was a pretty interesting mechanic and it does make the vehicles feel like they have some actual weight to them, but after a while it just became annoying. You’re playing a zombie game where you are mowing down massive hordes, driving around at high speeds and constantly moving from one objective to another, so suddenly having everything come to a complete stop because your vehicle got stuck in some mud completely kills the momentum. It doesn’t help that the missions can already take close to an hour depending on how you play, so having these sections constantly slowing you down just makes the levels feel even longer. I like the idea of the mechanic, but I don’t think it works particularly well with the type of fast paced zombie game this is trying to be.
Losing Your Crystals When You Die
Something else I really don’t like is how the game handles the crystals you collect throughout the missions, which are used as currency for cosmetics. You can spend a good amount of time exploring a level and collecting a bunch of these crystals, but if you die before completing the mission, you don’t get to keep any of them. They’re gone and if you want them back you have to replay the mission and collect them all over again. Considering some of these missions can take almost an hour, this makes dying near the end incredibly frustrating because you basically just lost all of the currency you spent that entire mission collecting. On top of that, if you want certain types of crystal currency, you have to play the game on its hardest difficulty. I understand wanting to reward players for taking on harder difficulties, but between losing your crystals when you die and having specific currency locked behind the hardest mode, it starts feeling less rewarding and more like the game is making you jump through hoops just to unlock cosmetics. For a game that’s supposed to be about jumping in, killing a ridiculous amount of zombies and having fun, I don’t really understand why the progression needs to be this punishing.
If i’m giving this a new braiding, i’m gonna give it a a 4/10, sorry not sorry
Anyways hope y’all enjoy today’s review and heres the trailer for the next game this year im excited for, what can it possibly be of? Is it a difficult game? An RPG? No its freaking Thomas The Tank Engine, say what now?
Yeah who thought in 2026 we’d be getting a Thomas The Tank Emgine game? I sure as hell didnt, this was nowhere on my bingo card, anyways till then, it releases tomorrow the 17th.
