Turbo Overkill

Turbo Overkill was provided by Apogee Entertainment for review. Thank you!

I have said this many times, but one of the best genres to play on the Steam Deck is boomer-shooters. DOOM, DUSK, ULTRAKILL, Quake 2, these games exemplify the fast-paced shooting that feels incredible to hold in your hands. The action, environments, and fluidity from the weapon switching and how you maneuver around the world to attack your foes all work together to create an addicting experience. Turbo Overkill, with its 1.0 release, stands with these games as one of the best boomer-shooters I have ever played.

The game starts off with our hero, Johnny, returning to his hometown of Paradise to find that everyone has been possessed by a rogue AI named Syn. With the help of an arsenal of weapons and a chainsaw leg, Johnny must take down the AI before other bounty hunters do and secure the prize money from this bounty. Even though the focus is more on the gameplay with this genre, the story is quite solid, but the gunplay is just phenomenal.

Each gun you have feels unique and balanced, making each one feel worthy of swapping to with alternate modes that add to each gun wonderfully. From gun swapping to chainsaw leg sliding, every part of the control system feels smooth and responsive. Pair this with the fantastic level design, a beautiful cyberpunk world, ways to augment your abilities, and the tight control system, and you have one of the best boomer-shooters ever made. I love the way you interact with the world and the verticality to it. I also can't get enough of how fun it is to line up 15/20 enemies and just chainsaw slide right through them, then regain all my armor thanks to an augment that gives some back whenever I do chainsaw damage.

There's so much more I can go into, including the collectibles, endless mode, epic boss fights, and mod support to make and download custom maps, but I seriously think that you should just be playing Turbo Overkill. It's an incredible experience that will challenge you, but not overdo it. If you are a fan of boomer-shooters or FPS games, this will be an essential on your list, but on the Steam Deck, there are some possible issues that could stop some of the enjoyment.

Turbo Overkill - Steam Deck Performance

While Turbo Overkill is an incredible game, playing this on the Steam Deck is not the best experience. Boomer-shooters are best at higher framerates to get them feeling as smooth as possible, but for Turbo Overkill, that is almost impossible to do. Without any changes, the game will regularly dip below 40, which didn't feel anywhere near stable.

On top of that, changing some settings down too low either turned off effects completely or had a weird effect on the visuals. For example, turning Fog to low added a weird brown fogging in the bottom of the screen in some areas, but medium or high got rid of this.

There are also a couple of weird visual glitches like the menu being cropped or some augment descriptions flashing instead of showing clearly when hovering over them in the shop.

So, with those in mind, I ended up creating two different builds for the game: a Quality Build and a 40 FPS Build.

Recommended Build

Starting off with my recommended, I ended up deciding the quality build was the best way to go. Not only did the game look significantly better with this build, which was almost completely at max settings, but because the framerate is locked to 30 FPS, the framerate is much more stable as well. And because of the 30 FPS lock, the battery stays down quite a bit too with the most I have seen it go up to being around 18W - 19W.

40 FPS Build

Outside of 30, getting a stable 40 proved to be a lot harder. In some bosses, large areas, or where there was a lot of enemies, the framerate could dip down significantly. So I went right in to make some changes. There is a lot we can turn off to help, but it will drop the quality of the game significantly. For this build, and to preserve as much quality as possible, I actually decided to drop resolution down through SteamOS, forcing it to 800x500 and upscaling with FSR. Due to the pixelation of the game, this didn't take away much quality and helped performance a lot.

But even with these changes, there are still some drops. They aren't nearly as bad as they were before, but they are still noticeable in some of the areas mentioned above. Regardless, it does work and if you are looking for something more smooth, this will be the way to go without sacrificing visual quality too much.

Turbo Overkill does support 16:10 resolutions and has full controller and cloud save support. I did notice that some menus do clip a little regardless of resolution, which is a bit annoying, but not a deal breaker.

Conclusion

Turbo Overkill is one of my favorite boomer-shooters I have ever played. From the level design to the gunplay, the game spares no expense at creating a fine-tuned, balanced, challenging, and addicting experience that you will keep coming back to for more. It is a bit hard to run on the Steam Deck, which is a shame considering how incredible the game is, and I wish it could run at higher framerates, but with how good it is and 30 FPS being stable, I am quite pleased with how it feels on the Deck.

Our review is based on the PC version of this game.

If you enjoyed this review, be sure to check out the rest of the content on SteamDeckHQ! We have a wide variety game reviews and news that are sure to help your gaming experience. Whether you're looking for news, tips and tutorials, game settings and reviews, or just want to stay up-to-date on the latest trends, we've got your back!