I just cracked open a fresh can of SURGE. The scent of BBQ-sauced chicken nuggets permeates the air. I’m staring at a computer screen that is just consumed with bloody parts and I have the most stupid grin on my face. This sounds a lot like any ol’ Saturday night for me in the late 90s, where I was bulletproof to bad food and spent my time with a LOT of ultraviolent arena-based shooters like Quake II and Unreal Tournament. But it isn’t.
It’s 2022, and I’m playing Turbo Overkill.
I stumbled across this visceral beast of an FPS at PAX East this year. I don’t think a single game in all my years of attending the Boston-based convention has ever screamed “PLAY ME NOW!” as loudly and aggressively as Turbo Overkill. I was equal parts ecstatic for discovering it, and also mad that a game that speaks so well to the core of my being had somehow managed to fly under my radar; why didn’t anyone tell me about this thing sooner?! After getting my hands on the demo on the show floor and more extensively at home via its recent Early Access release (thanks, Apogee Entertainment!), I can confidently say that this is THE MUST-HAVE twitch shooter of the year. You know it’s going to be good when the developer is called Trigger Happy Interactive. I mean, come on! These guys clearly know what they are doing. Whether I was blasting through hordes of enemies with all sorts of guns (which feature a primary and secondary mode of fire), or sliding through baddies at break-neck speed with my Chainsaw Leg, or ‘Knee-saw‘, as I affectionately refer to it, Turbo Overkill was a constant adrenaline rush that kept me on the edge of my seat.
Comparisons to games like Doom and Quake are bound to surround a game that is paying an homage to great shooters of the late 90s. While the similarities are bloody obvious, Turbo Overkill takes some inspiration from a few other surprising places. The aforementioned Knee-saw is activated automatically while sliding and can simultaneously dismember enemies while giving you a decent speed boost to get quickly get out of harms way. When that’s combined with the mobility of your character, you get this odd ‘Tony Hawk’s Murder-y Skater‘ sort of feeling, especially in some of the more vertical rooms. What surprised me most about all of this is how easily readable things are at such an insane pace. I never really had a hard time picking out and prioritizing enemies and I always felt very in control. A game like this lives or dies by how it handles and Turbo Overkill pays as much attention to its tight and responsive controls, as it does to its buckets of gore.
In terms of progression, endlessly slaying swaths of scummy villains nets you a a bit of cash to spend on ammo, gun upgrades, and augments at vending machines which are strewn throughout each level. These handy devices play some really fantastic elevator music which is a pleasant change of pace from an otherwise pulsing soundtrack; I actually chuckled a bit the first few times I popped into one. Once you make your purchases, augments must be equipped by locating a whole separate station. There is a lot of variety in these augments, and the ones I found made me feel like there are going to some really cool builds as the game continues development and gets out of Early Access. Two of my favorites were both Leg Augments: one gave me a small amount of armor every time I killed someone with my Knee-saw (I still cannot get over how fun this thing is), and the other did the same but gave me health instead of armor. I felt like a god, and it was amazing.
On the surface Turbo Overkill seems like another nostalgic throwback FPS that you might make you think, ‘you’ve played one, you’ve played all of ’em.’ But once you really dig in and get your hands (and legs) dirty, Turbo Overkill shows you just how bloody wrong you are. For those interested in strapping on a Knee-saw and going to town on a bunch of mutated freaks, Turbo Overkill is out now for Early Access on Steam. For you fence-sitters out there, there is also a demo available to try, so you have no excuses to give this one a go. You won’t regret it.
