What do all of your toys really get up to when there aren’t any humans about? Cynical old adults might claim these inanimate objects are just that, while youthful imaginations might dream of Toy Story, but let’s say that humanity’s own propensity for conflict and war have rubbed off on our toys, because what happens in Toy Soldiers when nobody’s looking is all out warfare. Best of all, while the first two games were Xbox 360 exclusives, the leap to the new generation sees Signal Studios partnering with Ubisoft and bringing Toy Soldiers: War Chest to Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC some time early next year.
The premise is really quite simple, pitting four different armies of toys against one another. While you might expect this to focus on military-styled toys, as the first two games did, War Chest really branches out with the possibilities. Sure, Kaiser Wilhelm’s WWI German-styled army is one of the four factions in the game, sending soldiers and tanks to do battle and with a home territory that’s designed to look like a WWI diorama, but they’ll be going up against the likes of Starbright and her Star Power army, fighting with cutesy fantasy toys like pixies and unicorns.
Rather than butting the two armies head to head, it’s a twist on the tower defence genre as one side attacks and the other, well, defends. So as the waves of little teddy bears and pixies try to swarm across Wilhelm’s battleground, you’re tasked with putting the various defensive emplacements in a number of set locations around the map. Naturally, these range from machine gun emplacements to long range artillery, which will try to mow down the oncoming enemy that travel along set paths, but you’ll have to decide when it’s best to place a new defence or if it’s better to enhance an existing one with more health or greater damage.
On the other hand, when Wilhelm’s soldiers assault the Star Power’s garden, the visual style shifts quite dramatically. It’s no longer a gritty battleground, but the greenery of a back garden, with flowers in place of model trees and marker pens used to make bridges. Defending this is a veritable smorgasbord of saccharine sweet toys, with colourful explosions of confetti and sparkles.
The twist in Toy Soldiers is that you’re able to take direct control of these defences. After all, if you want something done right, sometimes you just have to do it yourself, and hopping in to fire those cannons yourself lets you focus the fire on the targets that you really want to kill, and in the case of the artillery, there’s even an element of aftertouch, thanks to the shell cam view. As the Star Power army keeps on coming, the heavier units require a lot more of your attention, with armoured unicorns and piggy banks that just roll towards your defences.
The maps feature a lot of destructible elements, with things like small wooden fences chewed up by the battle, but you also have the opportunity to tactically alter the routes available to the attacking side. Blowing up a bridge means that the Star Power forces have to take alternate and more circuitous routes, giving you more time to pound them with fire. Just be wary of air units and flanking manoeuvres, which will catch you out if you’re not paying attention.
An added bonus to taking direct command of the defences is that you will start to earn action points. With enough of these saved up you’ll be able to summon your hero unit to the battlefield, allowing you to run around the map freely and bolster your defences on the fly. While you’ll be able to dish out a lot of damage, whether it’s with a heavy machine gun or a cupcake wand, they’re not too heavily armoured and you’ll soon have to start saving up action points again. That’s a good thing though, because you’ll come to want more and more firepower, and want to save up for the hero’s vehicle. In Wilhelm’s case, that’s a huge WWI-style tank, but Starbright gets to take to the skies and soar above the battlefield on her Pegasus, raining down fire from above while leaving a rainbow in her wake.
The only real disappointment is with the visuals, which don’t really seem to be trying to push the new consoles that hard. Though there’s depth of field and tilt shift effects, which should make screenshots look great, it would be nice if the world detail and units could be improved upon. However, this is offset somewhat by the move away from just featuring two sides of war-themed toys, which Star Power a very different looking army to the WWI Germans. With two more sides yet to be revealed, I’m quite curious to see what other kinds of toy Signal will have us playing with.
The tower defence genre should really be familiar to everyone by now, but there’s a few nice ideas and clever twists on show in Toy Soldiers that ought to mix things up for fans of the genre. Although there will be a lot in common with the first two games for Xbox 360 gamers, the new factions and the shift in visual style as a consequence ought to freshen things up, but either way, if you’re hankering for a new tower defence game then this should be one to keep an eye on.
CR8ZYH0RSE
I got these on the 360 and can say they are really fun to play,the first one was WW1 based and the massive train that comes in at the end as the boss was really hard to kill.I don’t think i ever managed to do it,the second one was Vietnam based and i found this one to be better than the first.Even though they are top down strategy games you can actually zoom in and play first person on which ever artillery placement you want and fire at the enemy.Well worth buying if you ever get the chance,i think i’ll get this one also when it comes out but i’m not to keen on the Starbright element though.
Dominic Leighton
Two of my favourite XBLA games, can’t wait to pick this up!