Chainsaw ♥♥♥♥, what a waste

A hesitant recommend. Probably more of a "mixed" review. This game had me at having a chainsaw leg, and there were alot of positives, but I will start off with the negatives, because this game had quite a few in my opinion, and I feel like these will be the most helpful to discuss.

The Bad:
Turbo Overkill is brutally difficult at certain points, and some sections are agonizingly long. A few of the boss battles will have multiple stages, and some rooms will have multiple rounds of spawning enemies. When you think you are done and free to leave the room, the game is like, "But wait, there's more!" It just makes the game very exhausting. I thought Doom Eternal was tiring, but it at least knew to not waste your time as much as this game. I even reached a point while playing this where I was skipping past entire areas of enemies because I didn't feel like wasting time or ammo.

Alot of the enemies take forever to kill, and many of them, in my opinion, were quite annoying to deal with. The drones only being able to be killed from above, the electric enemies, and the homing missile ones... The levels in general feel like they take forever to complete. In the last third of the game, it was taking me close to 30 minutes per level. It doesn't help that their layout can be confusing (there's no map), and the game only sometimes gives you waypoints. For someone like me that does not have much spare time, I didn't appreciate this.

The thing that made me almost stop playing the game is how I kept accidentally locking the game from progressing on the last level, so I had to complete the beginning of the level at least 3 times before resorting to mods because I lost my patience.

Other Negative points:
- the Destiny-like U.I. where you have to drag the cursor to select things in certain menus. Dear Game Developers: please stop doing this menu design. It's a time waster.
- Some of the audio logs are very long. Thankfully you can close them out if you don't feel like listening to them, but there were a few where I was like "Man, they're still talking?"
- No punctuation at the end of alot of subtitles for dialogue.
- Definitely is a bit too inspired by Doom, specifically Doom Eternal, especially the HUD with switching weapons, the sound of things being done recharging, as well as the level design in some ways. There are keys you have to collect to progress sometimes, and there's an alternate fire for every weapon.
>> On Doom, you have VEGA. On this game, you have SAMM (whose voice actor is not as pleasant to listen to).
>> Late in the game, like in Doom Eternal you also have to go inside of several "beasties" as I like to call them, which is a trope that I very much do not enjoy.
>> The game could have done more to differentiate itself as something new.

The Good:
"Wow, that's alot of bad," you might be saying, "Did you mean to leave this as a 'not recommended'?" (I look at how long my dislikes section is) Well... I do still like the game overall. I just won't play it again. Some things I like...

The chainsaw leg was very fun to use. Sliding around with it, having lots of floors that are conveniently slanted to use it. The speed at which you move without sliding feels good too, and I don't feel like I'm going too slow. One thing that Turbo Overkill didn't take from Doom is not having a BFG9000 equivalent. Instead you have the Ion Cannon, which feels very different, and is very fun to use.

I do like the story overall, I just wish there was more of it in the game, and that it was more in-depth. While Johnny has an interesting background that I wish was explored more, Maw was definitely the most intriguing character for me, and I am always drawn to arcs where the character becomes more insane . The cutscenes with action in them are very impressive in my opinion, and are very "creative" with their violence.

Some of the level designs are "eh", but the more cyberpunk-looking ones are very cool in my opinion. The music is hit or miss for me, but there's a few tracks that I like as well.

I guess in the end, this is a borderline recommend. If they do end up making a sequel for this, I will definitely consider trying it. I just won't be playing this again. Way too exhausting.

This game has a lot of "cool" features, but the core mechanic is not punchy at all. Shooting in this game feels plastic and uninspiring, which undermines everything else. What’s the point of a shotgun blast if you can just slide into enemies with a chainsaw leg and spam that instead, since it's more effective?