Turbo Overkill Review Summary

While offering a variety of impactful weapons in a beautiful cyberpunk world with a strong start, repetitive gameplay, audio issues, and technical bugs hold it back.

Variety of impactful weapons: Reviewers highlight the diverse weapon arsenal, including a chainsaw leg, shotguns, UZI, ion cannon, and teleport snipers. Weapon modules like pistols with multi-headshot are spectacular.

Beautiful cyberpunk world: The game's stunning visuals and art style are repeatedly praised, with the cyberpunk city described as gorgeous and aesthetic. The 90s aesthetic adds charm.

Strong and fun start: Players note the game starts off strong with amazing introductory levels and fun combat, though some feel the experience may wane later.

Good overall quality: The game is generally well-made with solid production quality, high design polish, and challenging gameplay. Many find it worth the price.

Spacious maps for mobility: Maps are spacious, allowing for character's incredible speed and flying around. This enhances the fast-paced gameplay.

Repetitive and boring gameplay: The game becomes overly repetitive after the first few levels, with dragged-out sections, same enemy waves, and a feeling of wasted potential.

Audio issues and terrible sound design: Sound design is widely criticized, including broken audio after updates, missing weapon sounds, poor mixing, and annoying sound effects like the jump noise.

Technical bugs and crashes: Multiple reports of crashes, geometry issues, and game-breaking bugs like missing save files and broken doors, with some issues persisting after months.

Confusing level navigation: Levels are poorly designed with convoluted layouts, lack of objective markers, and backtracking, making it easy to get lost and waste time.

Unfair difficulty spikes: Difficulty is inconsistent with unfair boss attacks, bullet sponges, and frustratingly long fights that feel disrespectful to the player's time.

Platforming and movement mechanics: Multiple clusters mention platforming elements (Cluster 1), double jump (Cluster 10), wall jump (Cluster 11), chainsaw leg slide (Cluster 2), and fast movement (Cluster 13). These appear to be core movement mechanics that enhance gameplay.

Fast-paced boomer shooter style: Clusters describe the game as a fast-paced boomer shooter (Cluster 3, 15) with weapon switching and modules, similar to DOOM Eternal, Titanfall 2, and ULTRAKILL (Cluster 20). Emphasis on speed and button control (Cluster 21).

Chainsaw leg weapon mechanic: Chainsaw leg is highlighted as a key mechanic (Cluster 2) and a unique weapon (Cluster 14). This likely provides traversal and combat options.

Boss fights with multiple phases: Cluster 17 describes a final boss with three phases, then another boss, and a penultimate boss that changes tactics and arena. Cluster 19 adds details of continuously spawning adds, lasers, fog, rockets, fire, and a spinning laser wall.

First-person shooter perspective: The game is described as a first-person shooter (Cluster 6, 9) with platforming elements. This defines the core gameplay genre.

Low performance on Steam Deck: The game runs at 40-50fps on Steam Deck at the lowest resolution and cannot maintain 30fps at lowest quality, making it unsuitable for Deck Verified status.

Frequent random crashes: The game crashes randomly and frequently, often preventing progression or causing the entire computer to shut down.

Poor performance on older hardware: Users report that the game runs at only 40fps on low settings on older hardware, indicating optimization issues.

Rain causes stuttering due to water particles: A bug introduces significant stuttering during rain due to water particle effects, disrupting gameplay.

Strongly not recommended; alternatives offered: Multiple clusters explicitly state the game is not recommended and suggest playing superior alternatives like Ultrakill, Doom Eternal, or Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon instead. Clusters 1, 5, and 13 highlight this common sentiment.

Requested refunds due to dissatisfaction: Clusters 2, 3, 11, and others mention seeking or requesting a refund because the game did not meet expectations. This indicates many players found the game not worth the purchase.

Waste of time; not worth completing: Clusters 14, 15, and 17 label the game as a waste of time and not worth completing. This suggests the gameplay or content fails to hold interest.

Only consider on deep discount: Clusters 9, 12, and 16 suggest buying only at a discount or if you need a specific type of shooter. The game is considered overpriced for its quality.

Game is buggy and repetitive: Cluster 21 describes the game as buggy, repetitive, and a waste of time. Other clusters (e.g., 19) indicate it may never be fixed, reinforcing concerns about technical and gameplay quality.

Community fair range: $10.00 - $20.00.

Game completion: 20.0h.

Story completion: 15.0h.

Session length: 0.8h.

Turbo Overkill starts strong with satisfying movement and combat, but becomes repetitive and tedious after several hours, particularly in later episodes.

Reported time to anchor: 5m.

Friction: Mundane beginning; Limited mobility and abilities initially.

Boomer Shooter Purist: Methodical but fast; explores levels thoroughly, uses classic run-and-gun tactics, and seeks out secrets and nostalgia triggers. Motivation: Nostalgia for classic FPS games and the desire for a modern homage that captures the spirit of the golden age. Stance: buy.

Adrenaline Junkie: Constantly moving, aggressive, and high-speed; uses all movement tools (slide, grapple, wallrun, dash) to survive bullet hell and chain kills. Motivation: The adrenaline rush of relentless action, fluid movement, and chaotic combat that never lets up. Stance: buy.

Critical Veteran: Thorough and highly skilled, but becomes frustrated by repetitive encounters, difficulty spikes, and platforming demands in later episodes. Motivation: Desire for consistent quality and rewarding challenge throughout the entire campaign, not just the beginning. Stance: sale.

Both hardware cohorts report positive gameplay experiences, with minor frame drops noted in the high-VRAM group during specific scenarios.

Windows 12-15GB VRAM: positive. Players with 12-15GB VRAM generally enjoy smooth performance, though some report frame drops in certain areas like doorways.

Windows <8GB VRAM: positive. Players with less than 8GB VRAM report great optimization and solid performance.

Steam Deck: The game suffers from multiple severe technical issues on Steam Deck including poor performance, broken audio on stereo setups, non-functional controller support, and frequent crashes. These problems collectively make the experience unreliable and often unplayable, requiring significant tinkering or external workarounds that are not guaranteed to resolve the issues.

Linux and Proton: User reviews indicate the game performs well on Steam Deck (Linux) with no major Proton or Linux-specific issues. Occasional FPS drops are mentioned but are not tied to the Linux platform. No anti-cheat, launcher, or DRM conflicts reported. The game appears fully playable out of the box on Proton/SteamOS.