tHe lOvEcHiLd Of DoOm EtErNaL aNd UlTrAkIlL
The love child of Doom Eternal is Shadow warrior 3. The lovechild of ULTRAKILL is REAVER.
Reaver shows promise. Shadow Warrior 3 has some of the best gameplay I’ve ever seen. Handily beating some of my all-time favourites. Yet why is it just shy of being up there with them?
Because I played it before. Doom Eternal. The active resource management, the movement. It all feels excitingly familiar and stupid fun. But familiar.
I love Shadow Eternal for active resource management, challenging you to push forward in combat.
I love ULTRAKILL for its stylish play and character that oozes from its pores.
Turbo Overkill has none of that. Well, a lot of it. But not exactly that. And that’s what makes it feel fresh, and special.
Do you constantly run up to the enemies' faces? Dead. Unload bullets freely? Completely out of ammo, good luck. It just toes the line between boring circle-strafing and punishing advanced mobility to feel smart and respectful of you as a player.
It's a game not about pinpoint accuracy, but rather demanding movement and quick thinking. Realize, it has a large amount of lock-on effects and area of effect damage. If the game were designed to overly reward precision the way it stands now, it would lose its style and unique feel. It’s rewarding not in exact accuracy, rather quick decision making and intentional movement in order to stay alive and exact pain.
It’s an unbelievably good game that kicked my ass and reminded me that I wasn’t playing Doom or Ultrakill. I was playing Turbo Overkill. A fine balancing act of smart aggression and intentional movement helps land this game uniquely in the fps staleple. With perhaps my favourite iteration of a rocket launcher in recent memory, every weapon feels punchy and the movement is blistering. Yet even with all these tools, you can’t just run in with what you think you know about these types of games and expect to breeze through. I played on the second hardest difficulty, and expect to be thoroughly tested with deaths often feeling like bullshit. And in a way they are, with brutal damage and punishing difficulty, yet when you do master the movement and combat loop, you’ll find yourself gliding effortlessly through the carnage. But there’s always that one mistep that’ll kill you.
That’s turbo overkill. It’s brilliant.
