Turbo Overkill Review

Turbo Overkill is pure, unfiltered madness, and I loved that about it. Johnny Turbo has a chainsaw where part of his leg ought to be, and the game has the good sense to build an attack around sliding it through enemies. The action is fast, loud and gloriously excessive. It is a ridiculous premise with a practical payoff, rather than a visual joke the shooting promptly forgets about.

The chainsaw leg is more than a joke: sliding sends Johnny through enemies with the blade, while dashes and wall-running keep movement central to combat. Later arenas make use of those abilities, giving the player more ways to cross gaps and stay mobile. The movement and weapons work together to make the action feel faster than a simple succession of shooting galleries.

Even the familiar weapons have a little extra personality. Johnny’s paired magnums can mark several enemies before releasing a homing volley, and other guns gain alternate fire modes through upgrades. Those choices give the player ways to deal with a crowd at different ranges while continuing to move. It is an arsenal that suits the game’s appetite for excess without relying on the chainsaw leg for every fight.

Upgrades expand those options as the campaign goes on. Vendors improve weapons and cybernetic abilities, so finding money has a use beyond a high score. A new function can change how a weapon handles a group or how Johnny crosses a space. The gradual expansion gives the campaign room to become more demanding without relying only on making enemies take more damage.

Its cyberpunk city of Paradise gives the action a lurid backdrop, with neon-lit spaces and enemies that suit the game’s exaggerated violence. The levels are not just arenas joined by corridors: the movement abilities give vertical spaces and gaps a purpose, and secrets offer a reason to look around between fights. The pace still leaves room for an inquisitive player to poke at the edges of a level.

The grappling hook eventually adds another way to reach a target or cross an arena. Combined with the slide, dashes and wall-running, it makes the space above and around a fight useful. That growing movement vocabulary is a big part of the appeal: a room is something to travel through while attacking, rather than a place to find one safe position and remain there.

I was much less interested when the story and cutscenes took over. The plot did not grab me, and there is quite a lot of it for a game whose strongest quality is letting me blast through the next encounter. Whenever a scene interrupted the action, I found myself waiting to get back to the movement and shooting. The story is not offensive or especially confusing; it simply never became the reason I was playing.

The interruptions stand out precisely because moving is so entertaining. After a cutscene, I wanted to start looking for the next gap to cross or group to slide through. The plot never became the reason I was playing, and explanations of Johnny’s world could not compete with the way his weapons expressed it. A chainsaw leg tells me plenty about Paradise before anyone has delivered a line of dialogue.

Aggression is easier to enjoy when movement remains useful between attacks. A slide can carry Johnny into a better position as well as through a target, while a dash can reopen space when an arena closes around him. That connection is what gives the speed substance. The controls are doing the work of a combat system, rather than merely making the next corridor pass more quickly.

The retro look helps make this excess readable. Chunky enemies and bright effects belong in the neon city, and the old-school identity extends to the pace and the appetite for secrets. It is not simply a familiar shooter with lower-resolution textures. The larger pleasure is learning to manage speed and an expanding arsenal at the same time, then finding a route through an encounter that keeps both working together.