Turbo Overkill

Okay, I just finished this, and it's so close to being a masterpiece for me, easy top 3. Which is not a word I throw around. It takes all the best elements of modern shooters, throws them into a blender with a lot of classic shooter DNA (though this is NOT a boomer shooter to be clear), and you get a delicious gore smoothie out of it. Gunplay is phenomenal. The available arsenal has good variety and every weapon feels good, but without having Doom Eternal's issue of having a specific weapon to use for each enemy, and if you don't follow that then you run out of ammo and die. You can use weapons as you feel it's the right time to use them. The enemies have weaknesses, but there are frequently things challenging your ability to exploit them. You'll have first, second, and third favorites for each enemy type. The chainsaw leg(s) deserve their own mention. This is what differentiates the combat in this game the most. I would say probably 70% of my kills were with the chainsaw slide just because it was so much fun to use. Enemy variety is great. I.. really don't have much else to say. At a guess, there's somewhere around 25 different enemy types, which keeps things moving and gives you a lot of aspects to consider in battle when it comes to prioritizing targets and switching up strategy. Plus a fair few bosses which are challenging. The speed is crazy. By far the fastest paced game I think I've ever played, and I loved it for that. Go look online, and you'll see a bunch of requests to actually slow it down, because it's fast enough to give some people trouble adapting. That could be positive or negative depending on your preferences. I wouldn't have thought I'd be into something this fast, but god am I. The story is exactly what a boomer shooter inspired modern shooter needs. It's a reason to kill thousands of enemies. That's not to say it's bad, quite the contrary, but rather that it understands what you're here for. It gives you objectives and then gets out of your way unless you take the time to find the lore kiosks. Cutscenes are all relatively brief and all skippable. It's a genuinely enjoyable story that feels like it respects your time. The length is just about perfect. Within the first 8 hours or so, I got progressively more sad that it was going to be over soon. There was a good bit of "Surely now it'll be over soon. Oh wow, nope, we're still going." BUT, it doesn't overstay its welcome. It lands in precisely the right spot for me. Long enough I'd had my fill after a playthrough, short enough I didn't get burned out. Now for the meh stuff: I don't dislike ALL the vehicle sections like some people, but the car segment just sucked. This game thrives on its speed (we'll come back to that), and this just slowed it down for seemingly no real reason. The bike section brings that speed back but in vehicle section form, and it's not overly long so it was fun, but not as much as the rest of the game. The mech slowed things right down again, but turned it into pure power fantasy where you're just melting even powerful enemies who made you sweat until then, and also wasn't too long, so it was also enjoyable.. but again, not as much fun as the rest. Feels like they could've kept the best idea of these three vehicle sections and otherwise spent the rest of that time making the rest of the game even better. Maw WAY overstayed his welcome as a boss. The first fight was maybe the hardest in the game, and came in multiple phases with no health pickups, so it was more frustrating than anything. The second fight, if you can call it that (but I'm going to), is just him appearing as a mini-boss in standard arenas off and on for a few hours of the game. The third fight, yet another multiple phase fight, but even more phases. They try to switch it up, but the fact is that it doesn't feel good to kill a boss, then kill it again, and again, and again. Overall: I wholeheartedly recommend this to FPS fans.