Toy Soldiers Review

This month Microsoft is throwing a block party. The Xbox Live Arcade Block Party runs the entire month with a new Xbox Live Arcade title releasing each week. This weeks release is Toy Soldiers. Gamers get a chance to shrink to miniature size and take control of World War I toy armies. The game is a rather neat hybrid game, Toy Soldiers takes cues from real time strategy games, tower defense games and war action games. As the toy commander it is your duty to protect your toy box from waves of enemy soldiers, tanks, airplanes and other surprises.

The gameplay is very fun and addicting. As the toy commander you place different armed units on designated build spots. The game uses a cash money system and you get money for racking up kills. String multiple kills together and get a few extra dollars to spend. The money can be spent on more units, unit upgrades or to repair already placed units. That’s the tower defense and RTS portion of the game, but the real fun comes from the war action game portion. You have a few choices on how you play you can, just place units and watch them take out the waves of enemies, or you can jump into the action and take control of any of your units, from the machine gun nests, to the mortar cannons, or for some real fun jump into the provided fighter planes or bigger bomber planes.
As the levels progress you will face more difficult enemy units, and most levels end with a boss unit thats going to take all your power to destroy.
The game offers a single player campaign mode, or split-screen and Xbox Live multiplayer modes. The campaign is straight forward you progress through levels, and complete various objectives to unlock different rewards. These rewards are mainly for show, but once you complete a level you do unlock different units, or new upgrades for units.
The multiplayer action is surprisingly fun. Just like the single-player mode you place various units on build spots and have to protect your toy box from the opponent. However instead of just being on defense you also need to use some offensive strategy and launch various waves of units at your enemy. For once there is a solid offensive mode in a tower defense title.
Controls are very solid. Usually I’m not a fan of RTS and Tower Defense games with a controller and prefer a mouse, but I have yet to get annoyed. Also the controls of the flying units are easy to grasp.

The game itself looks very good. The WWI theme is carried throughout the game. Different environment items break apart from ammunition blasts, like wire fences and trees. And the ground will kick up dirt and look bombed out. Other neat video effects occur when your toy box’s health gets low, the screen will slowly have less color and begin to look scratchy like an old film. It’s amazing how far XBA games have come graphically and Toy Soldiers is one of the top. When flying around the battle field since these are toys in a diorama you can see the surrounding room which really makes the games uniqueness shine.

Overall this is an amazing game and really kicks off the Xbox Live Arcade Block Party with a bang. Toy Soldiers takes all the addicting parts of RTS, Tower Defense and Action games, and mixes them into a masterpiece. The game looks great, sounds great and plays great. I would have liked to see some more useful in-game unlocks, and even some more challenges other then the single challenge per level. But adding Xbox Live multiplayer action really ups the replay value. For a fan of Tower Defense games you’ll love Toy Soldiers, for a fan of RTS games you too will love this, and if you’ve played all the other WWI and WWII games this is another one you’ll enjoy. Finally big kids get to play like their toys do, Toy Soldiers should be a buy for all!