Play John Carpenter's Toxic Commandos at Vocari Hub

The next meeting will take place on March 21st at Vocari Hub. It starts at 1 PM and ends at 10 PM, but you don’t have to stay the whole time and you can come and go as you please. The featured game is John Carpenter’s Toxic Commandos which is a zombie first person shooter for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. I will provide at least four pizzas plus bottled water and cola for guests to eat during the party. Also keep in mind that you can play other games besides Toxic Commandos on the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Switch 2, or whatever else I have setup and installed on the eight or so monitors in the room. There will be another party on at Vocari Hub on April 4 as well if that’s more convenient for you.

The plot of the game has scientists drill to the center of the Earth in search of thermal energy and accidentally awaken a demon named Sludge and he curses the surrounding land with a zombie plague. A researcher Leon Dorsey hires a group of mercenaries called the Toxic Commandos to infiltrate the besieged area to rescue survivors and retrieve samples for studying. The team is comprised of Walter Irons, Cato Arman, Astrid Xu, and Ruby Pelicano. The Toxic Commandos are unlikely heroes similar to the Dirty Dozen or the Suicide Squad and make it clear in the dialogue that the situation is crazy and they would run away if they weren’t being paid to stay and fight.

I saw the trailer for Toxic Commandos years ago and thought it would be perfect to base a party around. Then I played the demo on Steam last week and it unfortunately gave me a bad first impression. On the Steam Deck for some reason it wouldn’t recognize the right trigger at all so I couldn’t shoot weapons or drive vehicles at all, even after restarting the game or trying different controller settings. So I had to march around the map and melee zombies or throw grenades to attack. I thought the game would be more like Left 4 Dead or Back 4 Blood but the terrain reminded me more of Far Cry 4, open wilderness and a few enemy camps to pillage scatted around at different elevations. The game does have four player co-op, but it’s online only and one player per system. I will buy Toxic Commandos on Two PlayStations and two Xboxs, but I’m not sure if we will be able to have a four player match since I’m currently having a lot of trouble renewing Xbox Live although the game does have crossplay.

One of the big features of the game is customizing your character. There are four characters and four classes, but the classes are not tied to the characters so you can switch them between levels or stick to a single one and fill out the skill tree. There’s one class focused on attack the Striker and another on defense the tank. There’s also a medic and an Operator that has an attack drone and gets driving perks. There are several types of vehicles in the game like pickup trucks, hummers and a ambulance. In the demo the maps seemed small enough that driving wasn’t necessary, but perhaps one of the other eight levels is much larger. Also I heard you can get stuck in the mud and you might run out of gas and either ditch the car or find some fuel and bring it back. Finding stronger weapons as loot in chests during a level is important, but if the drops are bad you can also level up your favorite gun to the point of prestige and then increase its rarity and firepower.