Turbo Overkill Ultimate Edition Review – Guest Review By GamesGuru1

The following review for Turbo Overkill Ultimate Edition, is a guest review by GamesGuru1 aka Del. At Complete Xbox, we always welcome your views, and we love to share and promote them within the wider gaming community.

First Impressions

The type of games affectionately labelled ‘shoot-em-up’ is one of my favourite genres to play, growing up playing classics such GoldenEye on the N64 and even the original Doom, Quake and even Turok brings back fond memories of slaying hordes of enemies as a one-man army, whilst looking good and chewing bubble gum.

However, this particular genre is quite saturated nowadays. With so many FPS games going for po-faced, hard core, gritty realism, opting for real world settings and grounded reality. Which is fine, but sometimes you just want to keep it simple, switch off your brain and kick butt. This is where Turbo Overkill strives to be something else.

Plot

You play as the one and only Johnny Turbo, an augmented cyborg bounty hunter, who returns to him home city of Paradise only to find that the whole place has been enslaved by a AI gone rogue called Syn, who now has an army of similarly augmented mutant monstrosities at their command. Tasked with destroying the self-aware AI and saving the city, whilst making some cash in the process, Johnny has to not only contend with Syn’s army, but also rival bounty hunters eager to collect the same cash prize.

Gameplay Overview

The gameplay is quite straight forward, kill everything that gets in the way of you and your current objective, which is usually to kill everything anyway. The graphics are suitable 80s retro inspired, drenched in pixellated neon that brings back memories of gaming in arcades in that by gone decade. Controls feel slick and intuitive, sometimes too slick tho, with the ability to wall-run ah la Prince Of Persia and double jump like Jedi Survivor and of course dashing. The main, stand out mechanic you have at your disposal however is a feature called ‘Turbo Time’ which is a form of slow-mo you can activate.

Johnny also has a chainsaw leg (I kid ye not) called his ’CHEGG’, which you can slide and slice ‘n dice enemies. Traversal is smooth between running, jumping, the aforementioned dashing and wall running, not to mention sliding over car bonnets to blast an enemy in the back with a shotgun like a complete badass is as cool as it sounds and never gets old or using Johnny’s CHEGG to mow down a conveniently lined up row of mutants. You’re encouraged to mix things up, especially in the later stages as the enemies get tougher and the landscape becomes more varied.

If you’re a fan of old skool shooters like Doom and Quake you’ll be right at home with the gameplay loop of Turbo Overkill, however the enemy design quickly becomes generic as hordes of the same looking bad guy’s swarm you in a explosion of pixels.

Killing bad guys, earns you cash. Cash gives you the ability to shop at gun vendor machines scattered around the levels that remind me of Marcus Munitions from Borderlands and augment ‘splice’ vendors that has a definite Bioshock ‘circus of value’ influence are available to upgrade your guns with alterative fun modes and new perks for your arguments. Which isn’t a bad thing, cause the developers obviously took influences form some of the best character-driven FPS of recent gaming years. However, and this is my biggest personal gripe, when a game takes so many ideas from other games in the genre, to the point we’re everything reminds you of something else in another game, then the title loses so much of itself. I’m a firm believer in ‘imitation is the highest form of flattery’ but there’s too much of it in this game which I believe is detrimental to having it’s own identity.

The levels are littered with health and armour shards and full of highly destructible environments, such as monitors and even old skool arcade cabinets to destroy during the many gunfights. Collectables come in the form of old audio cassette tapes and as expected, there’s also secret hidden areas to discover were you’ll often find the colour coded keys required to unlock certain doors in the levels for progression and many collectables actually have in-game changing effects, such as difficulty modifiers to make the game more challenging. Bonus stages such as the hover car and bike levels add a welcome break from the usual ‘run ‘n gun’ majority of the game. Also, killing one of the bosses throughout the levels will grant you their own unique augment ability to use yourself, just like in Mega Man games.

Presentation

The game leans heavily into the 80s nostalgia vibe with it’s colourful visuals, retro inspired soundtrack and tries to make you feel like you’re in a futuristic city, dreamt up in the 1980s. Think FarCry: Blood Dragon with a similar wise-cracking, smart mouth, quipping anti-hero. But if you’re not a fan of day-glow, then the constant visual onslaught of neon colour and pixels is not for you. The graphics betray the Indie roots of the game, there’s no high quality VFX cutscenes to progress the story, but the voice over acting is solid and conveys objectives nicely, usually via your A.I. buddy ‘S.A.M.M.’

The audio soundtrack similarly gets you pumped to wade into the legions of enemies the game throws at you, with a lot of 80s themed music to cause carnage to. The soundtrack is also available to purchase separately digitally from them in game and comes included at no extra cost with the new ‘Ultimate Edition’ version.

Final Thoughts

Turbo Overkill is initially a highly enjoyable romp through neon lit stages, causing death and carnage in imaginative ways. Thinking up ways to kill enemies in different combinations, similar to Bulletstorm, another of my favourite FPS games, is refreshing and fun for a while. However, there’s not enough variety in objectives or levels really to keep you coming back for a second playthrough. You’ll probably want to see the campaign through to the end, but then you’ll probably never load up the title again after that.

For the reasonable price of £20.99 (£16.74 for the standard version) on the Xbox Store, it’s worth a look if you’re interested in a different take on shooters that doesn’t take itself too seriously! But as a PEGI 16 rated game, with it’s fair share of ‘ketchup’ and profanity, it’s content is obviously not aimed at younger gamers!

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