Previews
[Hands-On Preview] The Fast-Paced Cyberpunk-Styled ‘Turbo Overkill’ is a Violent, Pulsating Throwback Shooter
It doesn’t take long for Trigger Happy Interactive’s Turbo Overkill to start showing off, and in fairness, it has every reason to do so. A throwback first-person shooter set in the future where its protagonist, the suitably 90s man/machine hybrid known as Johhny Turbo, zips up, down, and around its neon-drenched Paradise city like an oiled pebble going down a slide. Turbo slays augmented goons with two barrels of smoking justice and a slice of his chainsaw leg just as easily as one might write their signature.
Johnny Turbo returns home to the city of Paradise and discovers its population under the digital thumb of a rogue A.I. called Syn. Not only does Syn have the public enslaved, but it also decided to deploy an army of biomechanical baddies for good measure. Armed with his own nifty set of augments, Johnny sets out to take down Syn and its minions, battle bounty hunters, save Paradise, and earn a hefty cash reward in the process.
I must admit, I’m an easy mark for flashy, over-the-top shooters, but that doesn’t mean I’d be incapable of cynicism and criticism toward Turbo Overkill if it was relying solely on being flashy and over-the-top. There’s got to be some meat on its tech-infused bones if it is to keep the pace and not end up huffing and puffing on the sidelines in the long term.
Fittingly for a game with a cyberpunk aesthetic, Turbo Overkill welds modern tricks onto its more traditional first-person frame. There are chunks of Quake, Doom, Duke Nukem, Titanfall, Bulletstorm, and Vanquish here, among other influences, and the challenge of stapling those chunks together and creating a passable whole is a tricky one. Obviously, no modern game can pretend it’s born of a wholly original idea, but the risk of loudly declaring what ideas and styles you’ve plucked parts of your game from are inciting direct comparisons.
What helps Turbo Overkill, in this regard, is that the parts that are chosen largely work together seamlessly, and with the game’s lightning pace, there’s barely a nanosecond to think about such things in the moment. Johnny has one a hell of a toolset to begin with, and it only improves with progression. The aforementioned chainsaw leg adds some extra kick to erm… kicking foes, but his arm-mounted rockets, wall-running prowess, and slow-mo ‘Hero Time’ power heat up the spice levels further still.
It’s in the combination of Johnny’s abilities and weaponry that Turbo Overkill finds its ultraviolent rhythm. The flow of platforming, parkour, and combat takes a little getting used to at the start, but soon it clicks and that almost trance-like ‘zone’ I used to get in during Quake games suddenly materialized. To an observer, it must look almost effortless as Johnny leaps across boats docked in a dreary harbor, thundering along rain-soaked streets, slide-tackling foes chainsaw leg-first, and gibbing enemies to the beat of a crunchy electro-rock soundtrack. The word that kept coming to mind was ‘pulsating’. Turbo Overkill doesn’t just use Late 90s/Early 2000s FPS nostalgia for the sake of a hook, it utilizes the exact feeling of how it plays at its best. A snarling, slick chimera of my favorite old-school shooters in new packaging.
It’d go nowhere without a good set of weapons though, and even in the preview stages of Turbo Overkill, there’s a tasty arsenal to try out. Johnny’s dual magnums are the starting weapons, and while they’re perfectly fine for punching holes into cybernetic chests normally, there’s an alt-fire that tracks and targets enemies to deliver more lethal, insta-gibbing shots. This alt-fire ethos continues throughout. There’s a shotgun that has a plasma blast, another that has a grenade launcher, the Uzi can switch between focused fire and dual-wield, and a minigun that doubles as a flamethrower. There’s a satisfying punch to these weapons, accentuated further by the glorious spray of blood and gore as enemies explode.
Johnny may fly through Paradise at a canter, but it’s still hard to ignore the scuzzy neon beauty of the city along the way. The throwback art and level design are complemented by dazzling lighting that dances off the otherwise grim, rainswept cityscape, and a distinct visual flavor to the world and its freaky inhabitants. The Cyberpunk/Blade Runner aesthetic is fast becoming overused in video games, but when it’s deeply entrenched in a game’s design on multiple levels like it is here, then it becomes a lot easier to remember how good it can feel.
So far, Turbo Overkill is doing exactly what it needs to by making me want more of its blood and neon bullet ballet. It could certainly do with a little tweak here and there to keep the speed, but make falling into bodies of water less of a pace-spoiling experience, but otherwise, it’s already shaping up to be a delicious slice of frenetic old-school shooting joy.
Turbo Overkill preview code for PC provided by the publisher.
Turbo Overkill is due for release in 2022 on all major platforms.
The gaming world owes so much to David Lynch. “Twin Peaks” alone has inspired the premise and setting of so many games, from Deadly Premonition to Alan Wake, and its dreamlike tone is one that’s perfect for an interactive medium.
Silver Pines, the upcoming title from Swedish-based indie developer Wych Elm, is the latest in the lineage of Lynchian games, this time presenting survival-horror-style gameplay from a 2D perspective. While I’m not traditionally as hot on 2D games, after spending time with the demo, available now on Steam, I can’t wait to see more of this intriguing new world.
It starts out simple. After a brief, narrated dream sequence, you wake up in an empty diner in the small American town of Silver Pines. There’s a quick tutorial sequence that teaches you the game’s mechanics as you escape from the diner, followed by a phone call that sets up the premise of the game. You play Red Walker, a private investigator on the hunt for a missing musician named Eddie Velvet. It’s an elegant bit of exposition that’s delivered with a slightly dreamlike vibe, setting the tone for what’s to come.
As you begin to explore the titular town, you find it eerily abandoned, thanks to an evacuation order that’s caused the majority of the residents to take the ferry out of here. Empty streets and vacant buildings bring to mind Silent Hill, which is a great start in my book. There’s something really unique and special about small town horror like this, and Silver Pines is able to capture it immediately without feeling too much like a tribute act.
Navigating the Unique 2D World of Silver Pines
One of the things that impressed me immediately was how easy I found it to navigate the 2D space. Much like the indie classic Lone Survivor, you have a map that represents the space, and you turn down streets and hallways by pressing up or down at certain openings in the background to “turn” on the map. It seems like it should be incredibly difficult to follow directional shifts like this, but it becomes immediately intuitive, especially with the addition of diegetic signage that guides you without feeling out of place and handholdy.
I usually associate 2D games with more dynamic jumping and movement mechanics, but Silver Pines keeps things grounded, managing to find ways of creating navigation challenges without resorting to platforming tests that would feel out of place in a narrative like this. The map is particularly excellent in this game, as you can use a camera to add photos to it to help remind you what’s there. I love it when main characters mark up maps with locations of puzzles or items, and putting that power in the player’s hands was an interesting mechanical wrinkle that felt helpful and unique.
The other thing that gripped me from the start was the art style, which uses a slight cel-shading technique for the character models that makes them look hand-drawn. They really pop when compared to the backgrounds, which have a slightly different, but complementary, style to them. Wych Elm also shows off a masterful understanding of lighting, creating a shadowy look that’s never too dark to understand what’s going on.
The way the various layers of background and foreground give a parallax effect as you walk adds so much depth to every moment, making the imagery feel more dynamic. This game is treading familiar ground, with abandoned hotels and empty small town streets, but the unique look sets it apart enough to justify it among its peers.
Puzzles Balance Logic and Surrealism
Aside from just navigating the spaces, you’ll need to solve a variety of puzzles in order to progress. Many of them are just finding keys to open doors or figuring out which item is helpful in which situation, like an adventure game, but there were a few in the hour-long demo that gave me a level of satisfaction in actually figuring something out. Like the best survival horror games, the puzzles are an equal bit grounded in reality and slightly surreal, adding to the tone of the game. One of them gave me a Silent Hill vibe with its logic, asking me to win a BB gun shooting range mini game to get a pool key (which also teaches you how to use weapons).
While the game isn’t crawling with enemies, there are more threats scattered throughout the levels than I expected. Early on, you get a blade to defend yourself, which also acts as a key to cut through doorways blocked by cloth, and it’s just the right balance of effective and clumsy. There’s a surprisingly useful dodge that lets you slip past enemies. With the right timing, it’s not too difficult to survive one-on-one encounters, but it’s also not so easy that you can go on autopilot. Once multiple enemies get into the mix, it starts feeling more desperate, forcing you to make smart use of your stamina and weapon durability to survive.
A pistol gets introduced late in the demo, and that also felt surprisingly punchy, but its power was balanced smartly by limited ammo. One of my favorite gameplay elements of survival horror is ammo management, and it seems like Silver Pines is going to make that a core part of its combat experience, asking you to think carefully about which enemies are worth your precious bullets. This is further complicated by the fact that your gun can also be used to shoot padlocks to access previously locked areas, making it an even more valuable resource.
Enemy Design is the Demo’s Biggest Question Mark
Ammo and tape will be crucial to the continued use of your gun and knife, respectively, and there’s a quick little minigame for reloading and repairing that adds some tension to encounters. In addition to scavenging for resources, there was a vending machine I ran across where I could spend money to buy ammo or health kits. Be careful, though, the money is what you use to save at the payphone save points, so you don’t want to spend it all. It’s a clever variant on the classic Resident Evil-style ink ribbon system that makes your resource for saving a more abundant currency, but one that is used for more than just saving.
There were a couple of mementos that I ran across while exploring, and these can be equipped to provide specific character modifiers. I’m not entirely sold on the system yet, as there weren’t enough in the demo to really be able to craft a meaningful build, but with the surprisingly fun combat I’ve seen so far, I’m hoping that they will allow you to shape your playstyle in a way that’s tuned to how you like it. Any new wrinkles on combat are welcome, as it will need to find ways to keep fresh if it wants to stay compelling throughout.
As much as I think the combat is responsive and interesting, I think the enemies might be the weakest part of the game’s identity. This could also be a symptom of just seeing the early game, but so far, they are a bit more indistinct than I’d like, consisting mostly of shadowy people and bugs that didn’t have much going on. There was a boss fight that had a bit more of a menacing design, but I don’t know enough about the full shape of the narrative yet to see if the enemy design is in sync with the tone it’s trying to achieve. Right now, they just feel a bit generic, but I’m hoping things improve as it goes on, because they are pretty fun to fight for a survival horror game.
A Strong First Impression
Back to the opening thoughts about Lynch, the part that has me most interested in this game is the narrative. It’s simple so far, but there have been some surprisingly effective surrealist sequences that make me think this story is going to be something that will sink its hooks into me. One of the coolest moments of the demo involved turning off a light switch and being transported into an entirely different space, one dripping with dreamlike vibes. Even the choice to have the person you’re searching for be a musician adds a nice bit of texture to the narrative, putting a thematic focus on the game’s music in an important sequence involving a performance.
The cutscenes shift to a distinct painterly style, making them stand out without having to animate them, and it’s all brought to life with great voice acting. There’s even a little show you can watch in bits on TVs you pass, feeling a bit like a nod to Alan Wake II’s “Night Springs”.
I’m going to be honest, watching the initial trailer for Silver Pines had me feeling a bit sceptical. Not everyone can nail that Lynchian vibe, and when you try for that tone and miss, it can leave you with a narrative that’s either confusing or pretentious. Based on my hour with Silver Pines, I’d say they are on the right track, ready to deliver a surrealist narrative that draws from its inspirations while still carving out its own identity.
No word on the release date yet, outside of a vague 2026 timeframe, but I’ll be there day one to check it out.
Silver Pines is scheduled to release on the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, Nintendo Switch, and PC via Steam.
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