Starting off its life as a mobile game, Tiny Troopers was all about trowing cutesy soldiers into cutesy wartorn parts of the world and getting you to shoot baddies and blow stuff up in a not-quite-so cute fashion. As it made the jump to PC and consoles, it’s safe to say that those mobile origins were pretty clear to see, but Tiny Troopers: Global Ops is set to take that simplistic core to the next level.
The fundamentals of Tiny Troopers absolutely remain. This is a thoroughly accessible twin-stick shooter, a fact made particularly noticeable from the auto-aim that is applied to your directional gunfire. There’s no reticule on screen (unless playing with keyboard & mouse), so you just need to point vaguely in the direction of the enemy and start blasting for your shots to hit. It’s a good decision with an easy-going audience in mind, but part of me wishes you could opt for a precision mode where you’re in direct control.
Still, there’s perhaps not too much precision needed to survive here. The auto-aim lets you focus more on dodging incoming fire, picking when and where to use your grenades and other secondary weapons, and generally surviving the battle.
You’re also, when playing solo, backed up by buddy AI soldiers that you take into battle with you. This was a key part of the original as well, with a squad of up to four soldiers all rampaging through a level, but in the earlier games, they moved completely in lockstep with you. For Global Ops, that’s been changed up so that the AI are independently following and firing alongside you. You have some control, and they will always target the same enemies you’re shooting at, but it’s one or two steps removed from the direct control of before.
That could become a slight frustration for perfectionists though, as each of these AI buddies is subject to permadeath. If they’re downed in the heat of battle, you can revive them, but if you fail then they’re gone for good.
You might struggle as the enemies you face get tougher. From very basic gunmen, you then have special enemies wearing ostentatious cowboy hats that mark leaders able to give their nearby allies improved toughness and combat abilities. There’s also robotic Chicken Mines, which can be deployed and had me blasting away at innocent chickens whenever I saw them, and you’ll have to dodge regular incoming grenades as well. With multiple biomes and further enemies beyond this, it doesn’t lean in too heavily on particular stereotypes, but rather serve up a hearty stew of all kinds of typical bad guys.
Of course, you can leave the artificial intelligences behind and choose instead to play in co-op. There’s both local and online co-op built into Tiny Troopers: Global Ops, the former fixed to sharing your screen, while online allows for every player to go their separate ways through a stage, and that can really help as you try to tackle some of the mission objectives you have.
There’s several campaigns to fight through with each mission handing you objectives, side-objectives to grab from NPCs, and difficulty modifiers that you can set to match your ability. With a timer involved on one of the missions I tried, I ran out of time, partially from unfamiliarity with the level layout – I went the wrong way when searching for a rocket launcher to blow up defensive towers, running out of time for both missions, to find fuel for a stranded NPC and to find a golden truck stashed in a shipping yard. Still, this was just a short, sharp mission, and whether you succeed or fail, you’ll earn XP that will go toward building up your character.
All in all, and with a relatively short and sweet hands on time behind me, Tiny Troopers: Global Ops is shaping up rather nicely. It keeps the style and tone seen in the original games, but it’s coming from Australian developer Epiphany who were brought in for the Tiny Troopers: Joint Ops port. With the opportunity to make a full sequel of their own, it’s clear to see how they’re putting their stamp on things, modernising the gameplay and taking this series forward in emphatic fashion.
