Turbo Overkill Critic Reviews

Absurd, unrelenting and endlessly creative, Turbo Overkill is a masterfully composed symphony of violence.

Rarely have I experienced such a thrilling rush of action and acrobatics, and if you're even remotely in the mood for that, don't miss Turbo Overkill.

By just about every single metric for evaluating a boomer shooter, Turbo Overkill excels and delivers in spades. I had a near limitless amount of agency to play as I want and still enjoy a boomer shooter experience without frills, gimmicks, and other artificial difficulty spikes. It oozes creativity while taking players on an exhilarating ride through a cyberpunk apocalypse. It’s the perfect blend of gore, seriousness, and silliness. Turbo Overkill is a literal spectacle of unfettered, high-octane boomer shooter gameplay. Call it a symphony of destruction, mayhem, gore, and violence. Call it bloody good fun. Call it whatever you want, really, so long as fun is somewhere in that mix. The world of Turbo Overkill is one worth exploring and desecrating with Johnny Turbo’s chainsaw leg.

With a name like Turbo Overkill, one is correct to assume that it is full of that cheesy madness, which is exactly what it delivers as it fully embraces the Boomer Shooter subgenre. Turbo Overkill is an encapsulation of absurdity, trying to push itself to the heights of stupendous fun through its creative weapons, augmentations and dumb, wild scenarios while offering plenty of mechanics and rapid gameplay to satisfy those old-school action lovers. With its superb throwback visuals, quality soundtrack, outlandish level design, and hyper-bloody action that never seems to let up, Turbo Overkill is a great recommendation for anyone looking for a quality and thrilling first-person shooter in 2023.

Turbo Overkill is full of non-stop madness, adrenaline, blood and gore. You can’t find anything like it, anywhere on the market.

Turbo Overkill is an action game that throws in pop-culture references at every step and draws heavily on the genre’s achievements but combines everything it borrows in a surprisingly creative way. And unlike many retro shooters that end after four hours, you can actually get your fill of this one.

Everything is frantic, fast-paced, and depicted with excessive amounts of graphical and auditory flair. If you enjoyed the fast and frantic pace of Doom Eternal, this game will scratch the very same FPS itch.

The nostalgic action ride will mainly be enjoyed by veterans, but every lover of the genre should give it a chance, because it is very addictive.

Turbo Overkill loses itself in its constant push for escalation. It’s often not as clever as it thinks it is, and there’s a real sense of quantity over quality. Packing in more mechanics is certainly a type of progress, but a better focus on fewer concepts probably would have elevated the game as a whole. As it is, it’s still a perfectly fun time, and I’d be completely willing to revisit it in a sequel, but it just doesn’t quite climb to the lofty top of the retro-inspired scrap heap.

A nice reference to classic first-person shooters. What adds to the similarity, besides the brisk bloody gameplay, is the game's visuals, which are a nice combination of 3D models and pixel graphics. The gameplay experience is complemented by the metallic music, which underlines the brutality of the game perfectly.

Turbo Overkill is action and style cranked up several notches higher than it has any right to be, with levels that really let your chainsaw leg sing with a brrr. But with its relentless pacing comes a frustration in how long it takes for Johnny to truly get going, while its constant barrage of baddies coalesce into a samey red noise that makes you desperate for a bit of creative downtime. Still, if you'd like to coat vents and ceilings with copious entrails over the course of, say, 15 hours, then Turbo Overkill could absolutely be for you. Just play it in bursts, otherwise you might burn out quickly.

Apogee’s latest feels like a celebrative orgy of game violence. You’ll slide chainsaw-leg first through clusters of enemies, plunge down and destroy foes like a homicidal Spider-Man, or just reduce them to a pulp with a robust arsenal of firearms. It’s in Early Access, so there is still some uncertainty about the kinds of creative carnage the third act will bring. But there’s already more than enough hyperkinetic, over-the-top action to warrant a go as Johnny Turbo.