Review: Toy Soldiers XboxLive Arcade

Toy Soldiers
Genre: Xbox LIVE Arcade
Release Date: 03/03/2010
Developer: Signal Studios
Publisher: Microsoft Games Studios
　

Toy Soldiers, no not Martika's '80s hit of the same name, Toy Soldiers the Xbox Live Arcade, game from Signal Studios is a tower defense style game that features battle scenarios from WW1 on seemingly small battlefields that have bedroom or living room backdrops.


While playing Toy Soldiers you'll be kept busy during play whilst you arrange your gun emplacements, mortars, gas units, artillery guns etc. and you're free to jump in and take over control of any of your sides units such as tanks, planes and sniper towers, This all helps make Toy Soldiers an engaging game for all ages with a bit of humor thrown into the characters behavior, all for just 1200 Microsoft points which is a steal for a game of this quality that also offers a competitive multiplayer mode as well as two decent-sized campaigns.


The idea behind Toy Soldiers is simply to protect your toy box by not letting any enemy units into it, this sounds easy but you'll soon change your mind as the swarms of enemy units approach your Toy Boxes entrance, You can of course counter enemy attacks by placing units such as a Gatling gun or a mortar team that can fire up to 3 successive rounds at your chosen destination in their path, or you can get the big guns out and blast the enemy at a distance, this is an enemy that has quite a big armory and each wave that the enemy throws at you could consist of cavalry units, tanks, armored cars bi-planes, helicopter'esque units, bomber planes and big Boss's such as TSAR tanks..


To obtain a victory you need to have let no more than 20 enemies into your toy box, these enemies all present a different challenge for you as they try to make their way into your base (Toy Box).

At the start of each mission you are given just enough money to buy a limited amount of weaponry, but as you defend your position from enemy attacks your funds soon start to build up so you'll be able to upgrade and repair units to keep them ready for action, Upgrades are earned as you progress through the game and you'll soon be able to upgrade your weapons to level 2 or 3, although a level three weapon isn't always the best choice for every enemy wave.

The control system is easy and you will easily figure out what does what, firing weapons is as easy as pointing them at your chosen target and pulling the trigger and the games vehicles work in the same way though, although if you leave a vehicle unattended for too long it will be destroyed, but they only take a little while to respawn.

Once you have played through the Allies 12 mission campaign you'll unlock the Campaign+ mode, this is played from the perspective of the Central Powers with the maps and bosses being similar to those you have completed, although similar the missions do play out very differently due to you being faced with more challenging enemies or you play at night time which vastly limits your visibility, if this is not challenging enough for you then there is elite difficulty which is available for missions you've beaten, elite difficulty vastly changes game play considerably, this is due to your defensive units only firing when you take control of them yourself which can lead to some hectic game play, which is on par with the Survival mode that also changes game play by sending wave after wave of enemy units onboard an armored train, that keeps coming at you until your Toy Box (base) falls.

　

Toy Soldiers competitive two-player matches can be played online and via split-screen. in multiplayer you have to take control of not only your defensive actions but also your offense by selecting which of the available units you will send into battle alongside your (AI) infantry, both players have a base each to defend and have the same placement points to use for mounting weapons, multiplayer is played out on a choice of 5 maps. and you can choose to play a custom. game with options to choose the types of units, amount of funds each player starts with.

　

Toy Soldiers is a game of real quality with all of the units being very highly detailed to the point that if you freeze the game using the built in tilt camera option and you move the camera around the screen to a recently fired artillary gun you'll be able to view the shell as it heads towards its target., and you can also select to follow the path of your ammo as it makes it way to your selected target, and if you score a hit you'll see pieces of clock work kit fly off..

Toy Soldiers is a fantastic game in which you could easily spend a lot of enjoyable hours playing.

9/10