Like Andy’s toys in Toy Story, we see a variety of toy soldiers come to life in a variety of sets, thanks to an exclusive Xbox LIVE Arcade title by the name of…Toy Soldiers. Who’d have guessed it, right? Now you can play with your toy soldiers without all that hassle of finding them somewhere in the long forgotten section of your childhood storage box. Unlike your physical toy soldiers, these virtual toy soldiers aren’t going to fall down so easily. Well, at least that’s what you want to try and prevent. In Toy Soldiers, you aim is to keep the enemy toy soldiers from getting to your toy box. A simple task it seems but defending the toy box will prove difficult later on if you haven’t put your strategy goggles on.
Starting out, you will be offered a tutorial, which doesn’t drag on for too long. So no worries here, you will be having fun in no time. It indicates on how to provide a good defence and that you must keep your count above 0. The more enemies that make it to your toy box, then the more likely you are going to fail, since the count will go down. Enemies come in waves and after each wave, they’ll be more sophisticated. You’ll usually come across a boss in some of the levels, too. Strategy is a key element to surviving through all the waves of the level. Careful placement and upgrades will be essential to your survival. Managing to not let a single unit get through will earn you a “General” rank, which will be something to aim for if you are interested in the achievements. However, this can easily be achieved on the “Casual” difficulty. There’s a good range of difficulty settings, making this appealing to newcomers of the genre and also offering a challenge for those who’ve played these types of games before.
Take to the skies...of your bedroom!
Succeeding will depend on your strategy. Typically, I like to ensure it becomes a real challenge to reach my toy box. So, I do so by placing down fences and taking control of my units early on. You can rotate your units before you place them, in order to have them aiming at a good point. Fences too can be rotated in order to make it a difficult task for the enemy. If you’re not careful with placement, enemies can often leak through gaps, which will frustrate you. At least if you’ve got a strong defence, it’s going to take them a good while to get there, since they’ll have to crawl under fences and avoid your defences. Taking out enemies earns you money, and you will use this to buy, repair and upgrade…all whilst the battle is taking place. Building combos will earn you more points and ensure a better ranking on the leader board. In the case of leader boards, the developers have split up each difficulty on each level. So, you can always compare to a friend and see what difficulty they managed to complete a level on.
Toy Soldiers doesn’t leave you too far above the action, which makes this rather welcoming. You can move the camera around with ease and get up close. This view can be changed to a classic birds-eye view, where you’ll be able to move around faster and then switch back to the closer view. The birds-eye view is useful for seeing where you can place down units. Some spots will be larger and some will be smaller. Certain units need larger spaces to be built on. There are several types of units that can be placed and more will be unlocked as you progress through the campaign, ensuring a varied play through. The Vickers Machine Gun I find to be very useful at enemies huddled together nearby. It’s rather easy to use, heck, the game points out that even your mother could use it! The Stokes is useful against vehicles, Red Star gases nearby enemies and the Schilt Flamethrower torches enemies (that’s hot!). So, there are a fair few ways of taking out enemies, although some things will only work when enemies are nearby and vice versa.
As you progress through waves, enemies change. For one instance, you will have enemies on horseback, where they’ll just jump over your fences and you will have to ensure a better strategy is prepared. There will also be vehicles and if you’ve not got the right things placed down, these are going to otherwise take a while to wipe out. Sometimes things can get a bit overwhelming when you are playing through a level for the first time, but once you’ve recognised the patterns, you’ll probably get through it on the next try. Staying on ground can work but taking off to to the skies will prove to be a satisfying experience. Yes, you can become a dog-fighter on some levels and take out enemies because, not only will they attempt to get in from the ground, but also from the air. You can shoot down enemies and also drop bombs on enemies and their barracks. It controls rather well and is a good change from being on the ground. In some cases, you may not always want to fly up, so later you will unlock the Pom-Pom unit that you can control from the ground and take out enemies above.
Your very own virtual vintage toy box.
A favourite thing in Toy Soldiers is actually controlling where your shots go. You usually just aim and tap RT to fire away but instead, if you hold down RT, you can actually control and lead your shots right into the middle of a dozen enemies. Doing this feels rather satisfying and I have found myself controlling my shots very often, purely because of this satisfaction I get. Although not 100% necessary, it is something that is worth doing and you are told about this during the tutorial and loading screens. When you are not controlling a unit, they’ll work for you and they’ll do a pretty good job at defending. You can’t just sit back, though. You have to monitor and ensure that units are in a stable condition, since often you will need to repair them. You definitely can’t sit back on “Elite” difficulty, since you are the only control!
Toy Soldiers is an appealing title, which will offer a fair amount of game play. Even after you’ve completed the campaign, you’ll unlock more hours of fun (Campaign+) and a “Survival” mode where the mayhem continues. Maybe those wanting a real challenge should try out the “Elite” difficulty mode. Units will not fire by themselves when you are away from them, you will have to take control of them and switch around to survive. Then you can take it further with the multiplayer – local and Xbox LIVE – and prove who is the best on the battlefield.
There are some nice minor touches with this title, such as the loading screens; you will get some insight on the controls and some trivia on WWI, which is by all means a lot better than a plain loading screen. Furthermore, Toy Soldiers has integration with Facebook. You can actually see battles taking place on the Facebook app. It wouldn’t surprise me if this trend continues in future titles. There are many more small touches to Toy Soldiers that I haven’t explained, which makes this game all the more interesting and a great value for money. Should you consider? Certainly. It’s stable and something you can experiment with in many ways. Loading times can be a slight bit too long at times, but once in a battle, you shouldn’t be too distracted.
Toy Soldiers is exclusive to Xbox LIVE Arcade and sets you back at 1200 Microsoft Points. It is one of a few titles to also give out avatar awards, which means more style without paying anything on the Avatar Marketplace.
Thanks to Microsoft for supplying a Reviewer Copy.
