I am still playing Doom clones because I have not enjoyed these games for a long time, until this week’s game. Doom is a fast-paced FPS but Turbo Overkill is leaps and bounds faster than Doom. This week I wonder how some gun fights concluded because I honestly blinked. This week is Turbo Overkill.

Turbo Overkill is a retro-inspired FPS from Trigger Happy Interactive and Apogee Entertainment. The game is on PC and was released in 1.0 in August 2023.

Players take the role of Johnny Turbo, a mercenary who is hired by Teratek to destroy a super AI named Syn which has escaped containment. Some things take a turn for the worst and the cyber city of Paradise and all its inhabitants have fallen under complete control of the AI, repurposing their flesh and bones for the AI’s own machinations. Time to nuke the city and save the world, I guess.

The time I spent with Turbo Overkill’s story has had me saying “What the hell?!” more often because the in-game cutscenes have no business being that edgy and outright cool. There are a bunch of secrets to seek out and collect which adds a lot of replayability if you are into that kind of stuff.

Think Doom and you have Turbo Overkill. You have an unreasonable inventory full of ridiculous weaponry, can move at the speed of light, and rack up a kill count that is absolutely nauseating.

Johnny’s arsenal is quite expensive with a handgun, shotguns, and a rocket launcher. Each weapon has a primary and secondary fire, which packs more of a punch and you are using the secondary fire A LOT for most guns during your playthrough. The handgun auto-targets, the shotgun shoots mini grenades, the rocket launcher combines up to four shots in one go and the minigun transforms into a flamethrower.

Each gun be upgraded along with a plethora of personal passive upgrades in the form of limb enhancements that change the game significantly. Chainsaw lasting longer, more ammo drops, armor, and health from kills is only a small list of passives that you can buy and collect throughout the game.

Fights usually begin upon entering an arena-sized room where enemies spawn in Serious Sam style. Do everything in your power to shred the bad guys to bits, whether it be with your agility and a gun or your chainsaw leg, there will most certainly be blood. Turbo Overkills gunplay is so fucking fast that large swaths of enemies can be completely annihilated in seconds. There are a bunch of enemy types and even bosses that Johnny will be introduced to and ultimately turn to blood soup and it is utterly jaw-dropping every single time.

The platforming sections feel really good and are designed well. There is a section where you have to fight while in the middle of a crowded highway. You literally have to platform from car to car while fighting bad guys. *CHEFS KISS

Everything, combat-wise, works so well together. It doesn’t ever feel like a chore to play, I was having loads of fun every session, but only in small bursts.

Turbo Overkill surprisingly looks good. It has that nice low polygon count reminiscent of PS2 titles, but it has all of the colors. Paradise has all the look of the cyber-punk city with HUGE neon signs advertising stupid shit and it is vertical, stretching all the way to the stars. Each section is beautiful in its own right with each level progressing through the inner workings of the city and in the second section, when the shit hits the literal fan, the city turns into a flesh-covered wasteland that is just as addicting to ogle at.

Turbo Overkill really is something special to look at.

Turbo Overkill’s soundtrack is some of the best. The industrial/ electronic music really gets the blood flowing and it meshes really well with the combat. There were times when I found myself really bobbing my head to the soundtrack because it was so good.

Turbo Overkill is an absolutely divine Doom clone when experienced in short sessions. The combat is the fastest I have ever played, the music is fire the whole time, and the guns and upgrade systems allow for a lot of different play styles. I had to play the game in about hour sessions because of the number of lights hitting the screen plus how fast the game was going, I was logging off with terrible a headache. I couldn’t complete the game within the time span that I give myself to play games each week (because of work and family issues), but I can say that the eight hours that I have played Turbo Overkill, it is a superb video game.