Turbo Overkill: Cyberpunkabilly. Man Is A Chainsaw To Man

Do you remember how in the 2010s everyone got interested by the pseudo-eighties with their neo-retrowave and neon from all the cracks? In this special article series titled Cyberpunkabilly, I want to bring back this feeling of gloomy kitschy coolness, so here we will look at some cultural products that continue to develop this aesthetic, contrary to the common trends. This will mainly apply to video games. The popularity of this aesthetic largely began with the Miami Hotline computer game, so now we’ll dive into the sweet jelly of high-speed virtual ultraviolence. Ladies and gentlemen, today I’m going to tell you about the Turbo Overkill videogame.

Johnny got a gun

The plot part is beautiful for its clichedness. There’s a lot of trouble in the Paradise metropolis, where it’s always raining and cars are flying across the sky, like in previously described Cloudpunk game. The self-aware artificial quasi-biological intelligence virus SYN exposes the masses of citizens to forced cybernatization, a la Quake 2/4. The scale of megalomania of this man-made deity extends all the way to the borders of the universe. And only Johnny with the talking surname Turbo, a brave cyborg killer with a chainsaw built right into a combat prosthetic leg, resurrected like Robocop, can destroy this nightmare.

No, apart from the plot, oddly enough, there is still a lot of plot, I don’t even want to spoil it. Probably, the trick is that at first you don’t expect anything, except maybe a parody. And then it was as if I had found a previously unknown Japanese cartoon from the eighties and nineties, like the Police of the Future or Ghost in the Shell, but much more underground. Everything is very cool and crazy.

And all this is served up by the characters on such a vigorous postmodern brew of the era of physical media. Sin, who looks at the player with a thousand eyes, reads out derogatory monologues in the spirit of Shodan from System Shock, the friendly consciousness of the combat flying car reminds of the “Knight of the Roads” with David Hasselhoff, and the boss’s sharp phrases automatically sound in Volodarsky’s voice in his head.

Johnny himself is devoid of cool phrases, but he is not devoid of emotion and character, which he vividly expresses with the language of well-known gestures, as well as with particularly dashing actions in cutscenes, which are here in the first person.

The fastest chainsaw in the solar system

Gameplay-wise, the game focuses on Doom Eternal, but at half the speed of the aforementioned Hotline Miami. You need to flutter like a butterfly, sting like a bee – using your combat prosthesis and other trunks. At the same time, the complexity curve here is much more pleasant than in the supposed source of inspiration. The game is not easy, but it just looks much more difficult than it is played. The same flights all over the map are much more gentle than in the same Doom, although there are more of them and they are faster. In general, there is a lot of vertical gameplay, but all this high-speed madness is so well balanced that it does not cause frustration. Unless people with lack of sense of direction are in trouble.

The juggling of trunks is also done filigreously. It’s not just their stunning design and originality: there are no useless guns, and the entire arsenal – from the initial pair of cyber revolvers (as we remember from Gibson, cowboys roamed cyberspace) to the orbital strike guidance system – will be appropriate to use, especially given the additional modes of fire, you will need to use depending on it depends on the type of opponents.

As for close combat, it’s even more interesting. As such, there is no weapon for him until the very end of the game, and at the same time, it is at the very beginning. It’s about a tackle followed by sawing through opponents. Some reviews of this game say that this is an absolutely universal weapon, making the rest of the arsenal not particularly necessary. And this is not the case.

Of course, it’s a very inspiring concept to be a living bullet, and it’s very effective, reminiscent of General Bison’s spam kickbacks from an eight-bit Streetfighter. There were a lot of scandals and intrigues at the console because of this technique during the golden childhood. But in this game, the chainsaw feels more universal than it actually is. It’s incredibly useful, but it doesn’t solve all situations, especially considering that Johnny spends a lot of time in the air. And yes, the final weapon is chainsaw arms. There are never many chainsaws, but I didn’t really understand the trick of the latter. Probably, the fact is that by this stage of the game too many strategies are already being developed to solve almost any combat situations.

There is also pumping with the help of implants, somewhat resembling a Bioshock. So you can work out your own style of this bloodthirsty disco. There’s more to this game than meets the eye. There are normal transport mechanics in the form of a combat motorcycle, referring to Akira, and in the form of a faithful flying iron horse. And it’s enough. In other words, this is not a single shooting segment or shooting at all, but a complete game mechanic. At some stages, Johnny’s arsenal is hacked and you need to manage with a single barrel, each time different. And then there are ults, in the form of obscene homing missiles straight out of your hand; time dilation; a cat hook that can be modified to set enemies on fire; a sniper rifle that teleports to the place of a dead enemy, literally tearing it apart; a plasma cannon capable of rejecting enemy attacks with a magnetic field… and even another chainsaw, during The other leg!

A complete Paradise

The same story applies to the audiovisual component of the game. It’s more than just low-poly graphics with modern lighting. Once again recalling the golden childhood with a joystick in hand, this game looks like Contra Hard Corps in 3D in our view at that time. That is, despite the fact that the graphics are made in a deliberately outdated style, they do not look old and do not even look nostalgic. And she just looks cool, without having to explain anything.

The auditory part matches the visual part, but I don’t want to single out the musical component from it. Everything is fine with the music, it fits the style perfectly, but it is not remembered separately. The sound of this game is memorable due to the excellent work of the voice actors. However, all this works in synergy, of course.

In the saturated indie shooter market, Turbo Overkill stands out for its incredible quality and variety. And, importantly, it can serve as an excellent entry point into all this neon aesthetics and make it relevant again, without regard to fashion or anything else. So initiate the neophytes, and see you in cyberspace, cowboys!