Ask any "boomer shooter" aficionado what their favourite modern examples of the genre are, and Trigger Happy Interactive's sublime Turbo Overkill will most likely make the top three, alongside Dusk and Ultrakill, if they want to be our actual pals.
Yep, this is a highly-regarded retro-style FPS and, once you've spent just a few minutes in the blood-soaked shoes of Johnny Turbo, it's not very hard to see why. And now, nearly two years after its full PC release, it's finally on Switch.
Turbo Overkill nails everything it sets out to achieve. It's slick as all hell in its slo-mo shooting, wall-running and chainsaw-knee-sliding (yes, we said "chainsaw-knee-sliding"). It draws a fantastic line in rain-soaked, cyberpunk broodiness, and it presents a whole menagerie of twisted meat-machine enemies to blast and batter into several billion brightly coloured bits under the gaze of giant neon signs. Relaxing!
Wanna blow a bunch of robot zombies into smithereens with lock-on bullets from your dual-wielded Magnums, go car-surfing across the tops of futuristic flying cars, or teleport inside a bad guy before exploding back out of them? Turbo Overkill has got you covered.
The goal is to kill unrepentantly and without pause, and Trigger Happy has nailed the combat-puzzle nature of what makes a great boomer shooter in its very first attempt. The game is tough-as-nails on harder settings (which can be dialled right down to nice and easy, too, if you'd prefer), and it rewards experimentation with its various abilities, presenting a stiff but totally fair challenge that it's possible to style your way through unscathed - if you work at it.
In Turbo Overkill, Trigger Happy has gone the extra mile in its narrative setup and world-building, giving us a hard-boiled future bounty hunter who's hellbent on using his metal-infused form to deliver justice on the streets of Paradise. With a shady rogue AI to take down in the form of Syn, and rival boss bounty hunters to fend off into the bargain, Johnny has a lot on his plate - never mind the psychological traumas of having a big bloody chainsaw for a leg. We get to help him take out the trash across three highly entertaining episodes of five levels apiece. That's about 20 hours of action if you stop to hoover up all secrets, or 12 at a clip.
When in action, Turbo Overkill is a match for almost anything we've played in this most overstuffed of genres. Johnny's "hero time" ability, lock-on rockets and unlockable alternate fire modes feel punchy and satisfying to play with. Eventually, you get a grappling hook which opens up cool new attack and traversal opportunities, and enemies explode into the most delightful showers of meat and coins as you murderize them. These are the things that make us happy.
Of course, we also need to work that big dirty chainsaw into proceedings for maximum style points, and Johnny can even augment this - and the rest of his limbs - with a slew of buffs and tricks. Augments can provide the aforementioned bullet-time, micro-missiles, grappling hook and triple jumps that help both in killing and in exploring for the colour-coded keys (hooray!) that you'll need to move forward, as well as for finding the game's hidden cassette tapes and other collectibles. Top tip: always be checking underwater for goodies!
Without hesitation, then, we'd thoroughly recommend you jump on this one if you have any interest in retro shooters whatsoever. Or at least we would if it weren't for a few caveats involving this Switch port that need to be highlighted; namely a drop to 30fps and a lack of gyro-aiming support.
Having played Turbo Overkill at 60fps already on another platform, it's a bit of a shame to have this understandable concession made, but it's one we can stomach here. The frame rate holds firm for the most part, and it's only when things get supremely heated, such as when you're torching your environs with the game's flamethrower, that you'll feel your console struggle.
The gyro, however, is something we really hope to see implemented soon. There are plentiful options to refine and adjust axis sensitivities, to invert aim, enable aim-assist and toy with dead zones, but that sweet gyro-movement really does help finesse shots and raise the experience to the next level. It is what it is right now, and a lot of these retro boomer shooter affairs have dropped gyro-aiming updates after their initial release, so fingers crossed it's something that the devs have in the works.
The good news regarding the controls right now is that, in the interim, the auto-aiming does do a great job of picking up the slack, and even with this turned off we managed to find a rhythm and get back into our old knee-sliding, slo-mo head-popping ways quite easily.
If you can handle the framerate drops and lack of gyro, we really can't recommend Turbo Overkill enough. It's slick, addictive, and clever in all the right ways, packed full of fun enemies, excellent level design, and fun voice-acting. And it even has decent arcade and endless horde modes thrown in for good measure.
Conclusion
Turbo Overkill is one of our favourite boomer shooters, modern or otherwise. Johnny Turbo's chainsaw-sliding, wall-running and grappling combine with slo-mo silliness to provide a whole lot of punchy murderizing that's a joy to get down and dirty with. Paradise is a glorious playground, a combat puzzle box packed full of amazingly explodey mutants, and the whole thing looks and sounds fantastic in both docked and handheld. If it wasn't for that 30fps cap and a current lack of gyro support, we'd call this the best boomer shooter on Switch so fast you'd think we'd just activated our very own version of Turbo Time.
Comments 60
This did not seem like a great port to me from the demo. It’s so low res and the frame rate is terrible. Hopefully it gets a Switch 2 update and maybe I’ll give it a look.
Well, let's see if the frame rate "concession", which has been necessary for many games to run better on the Switch is no longer needed on the Switch 2.
I know even the powerful consoles suffer when a game is all about graphics, but since the Switch has been the place where devs usually find a good balance between reasonable graphics and performance, I really hope we have a step up on the Switch 2
I’ve had a good time with the demo but nice to have a review of the full experience. I’ll buy the full game.
I found a minor issue. I died unexpectedly and the screen with the ‘back to title screen’ or ‘retry’ prompt appears instantly and there is no ‘are you sure’ follow-up. This led to me going back to the title screen accidentally and loosing my progress.
I haven’t tried the game since. Are checkpoint saves kept if you exit the level?
Thanks for the review, while I'm not particularly interested in this myself I'm glad to hear it's overall great also on Switch for those who are even though with those issues - fingers crossed gyro support will eventually be added through a patch and that performance will be better at the very least on Switch 2!
"Doom-like" is the genre, right?
i personally think the best 'boomer shooter' that is also available on Switch is Ion Fury, which is an incredible FPS game and huge on top. Will def be buying this though.
Like a lot of fps's on switch, even the better ports, higher difficulties are not really on the table due to framerate and control limitations (especially concerning joycons in handheld).
One of my favorite games of the year.
Absolutely spectacular
There's a demo. Try it out
@Smithicus I would argue for Dusk
@Smackosynthesis yeah, also solid with same great level design
@VHSGREMLIN on Switch or another platform?
The combination of wall-running, slow-motion shooting, and chainsaw-knee-sliding sounds exhilarating! It's great to see a boomer shooter innovating with such dynamic mechanics.
Seems like these should be called Gen X Shooters, as it was our Boomer parents yelling at us for playing these bloody FPSs on the family PC when they first came around, but Boomer Shooter does have a better ring to it.
@Glasso Switch so far. It’s groovy on PS5 as well.
@bimmy-lee I mean you’re right. True Baby Boomers were born in or around 1945 when everybody started families after World War 2.
I like ‘Doom-Like’ but I must admit Boomer Shooter sounds awesome and it is describing me gaming in the 1990’s.
@bimmy-lee yeah, this is a lot more accurate tbh
Not as good as Prodeus but for a few bucks it's an okay game.
@Smithicus @ibookboyuk - I thought a little bit more about it and I guess I did know some younger Boomers who were playing the early shooters, one of whom helped me dial in my old Acer to run DOOM & Duke. Being older than me, they had the expendable income to have nice computer rigs and hosted LAN parties. I guess “Boomer” just makes me think of my older Boomer parents who would be furious when they caught me playing Duke at 2:00 AM!
Boomer shooter does sound cool, and it rolls off the tongue better than Gen X Shooter. Maybe Slacker Shooter?
Boomer Shooter 🙄 Another name for a genre because people have limited vocabulary skills.
@Greenmanalishi Boomer Shooter has been a term since the 90s… 🤦🏼♂️
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Not many boomers played boomer shooters. Boomers were more likely to ban them than play them. But there’s a lot of booming going on in a boomer shooter. More action based and less cinematic than some modern shooters. Maybe Boomer Shooter took on a new meaning once the Great Zoomer Boomer war began.
@theberrage how many Boomer Shooters would a Boomer Shooter if a Boomer could Shooter?
Any relation to Johnny Turbo arcade?
@VHSGREMLIN assume they boom zoom through doom like a broom in the room of gloom… I’d say a licky boom boom down, give or take a boom
@theberrage Boom chika boom boom, will there be enough room?
Demo is really fun; seems like a fantastic game, but… not something I’d play on Switch. I mostly play handheld, and this is something that deserves a big screen, 60fps, and gyro.
Been playing on my PS5 Pro and yeah great fun. Really love the rise of boomer shooters this Gen.
@Hookshot-Username Boomer shooters are a thing and its a certain style of FPS from the 90's like Doom, Quake, Duke Nukem 3D and such. I'm not a fan of the name but it does make some sense when applied to video game years, "boomer" means old right? Well the 90's is pretty much the birth of the FPS genre so yeah "boomer shooter" is a name that kinda works as these types of games harken back to those types of shooters.
I don't like the term "Boomer shooter" and see the obvious confusion but is it not referring to the constant "boom boom" action of these shooters? As opposed to the more cinematic COD-style ones??
I'm surprised the game made it to Switch at all. The lack of gyro support is disappointing, and the 30fps is what I would expect. I'm on the fence as to whether I'll go with Switch (my primary console) or PS5. I'll wait and see if it gets a physical release on either.
The term 'boomer shooter' is inaccurate as the people that were playing shooters around that 1993 era were people born in the 1980s , born 30 years after boomers who were born in the 1950s. Perhaps 'Doom-like' shooter is a better term
@Smithicus the Contra code unlocks the frame rate in Ion Fury, also.
My problem with that game is the tiny enemies that fly and crawl all over the screen. It beaks the pace often enough that I put it down.
Dusk though. Now THAT'S a campaign!
@twenty90seven
The only reasonable explanation is that a few of the devs from back then might have been from that age range but it’s mostly just one of those phrases that becomes throughly beaten into the ground regardless of any logic behind it, didn’t help that that YouTubers even the actually more intelligent ones like Civvie 11 use it.
Reads like a really good time but unfortunately not for me. It'll just end up sitting in the backlog and the lack of gyro would kind of "put me off" picking it up over other backlog games, a smidgen.
Cheers for the review
@JJtheTexan I have it on both and if you have a PS5 it's a no-brainer for the 60fps and extra flashies
Gyro or it didn't happen.
I tried playing the demo, but the sensitivity settings aren't savings. I've tried multiple times, making sure to verify initially, and then when it asks when I back out. Would someone else try adjusting the sensitivity in the demo and seeing if it works?
It's so weird seeing people get hung up on the term "boomer shooter."
Dunno how to tell you this, folks, but to people under 25, "boomer" refers to anyone they consider old. You are old. These are old people games.
Seeing some odd criticisms of the Switch port here; I played the demo and the graphics looked crisp and the performance seemed rock solid. I'm not a boomer shooter guy but I was hopping and sliding about on medium difficulty feeling like master of the domain, at no point feeling as though I was playing some inferior version of something better. If these games are your thing and the Switch is your thing then you won't go wrong with this one.
@VHSGREMLIN No it wasn’t. Everywhere I have searched for it’s etymology says it’s used to describe shooters from the 90s. No one called them that in the 90s.
@Mando44646 kinda, but it can also describe quake-likes or duke-nukem-likes or half-life-1-likes, each of which play in slightly different ways so boomer shooter is just the umbrella term.
I’ve been playing this since its release on Switch. I love it!
The movement and traversal system once it clicks, is just superb. It’s a perfect blend of Doom Eternal and Titanfall. The guns are big and crunchy and the bullets are always flowing.
There’s a decent story with voice acting (Cyberpunk Revenge story with end of Days Doom like world building (/destroying?) on top).
The level design is mostly pretty great with huge arenas to battle gauntlets of enemies. Odd questionable level design here and there though but this is very few and far between. Levels can last between 20 to 50 minutes on first play through. Lots of secrets to find. There are some amazing action movie like set pieces that’ll blow your mind.
Controls are incredibly responsive in terms of traversal. Auto aim is your friend. But manual aiming is a bit naff, the game is sooo quick and would benefit from Gyro cus the stick aiming is too slow, and is over sensitive to tuning. No option to remap buttons either.
Performance is not bad, there are small frame dips on the really busy sections but does not detract from the fast gameplay and the 100s of enemies coming at you at once. Graphics are old school with modern touches.
In terms of value for money, this costs about 15/16 quid. Some insane amount content here for that price. A fully fleshed out campaign, arcade and survival modes. Five difficulties. I haven’t even mentioned the sublime techno soundtrack. The game is not perfect but has easily become my favourite game of the year so far.
TL:DR - This is Cyberpunk Eternal.
@Greenmanalishi I was a 90s kid. We said it all the time.
@bimmy-lee Hiya. 🖐😊 Now I’ve had time to think about it I think Gen X shooter sounds really awesome. But I totally understand why the article used boomer shooters.
If I'm going to pay for games, I would rather buy on switch for the handheld element. However I downloaded the demo on both switch, and an unnamed powerful console. I'm sorry to say this but the switch version is a sorry state. I could cope with the blurriness, but the lack of control over the character, due to frame rate, made this un-purchasable on switch. The control was fantastic on the other console.
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