There have been quite a few tower defense games released in recent memory that lean towards frustrating and tedious gameplay. So it was a breath of fresh air playing through Toy Soldiers, the first game in Microsoft’s “Block Party” event on Xbox LIVE. Toy Soldiers takes you out to the battlefields of your bedroom floor as you carry out World War I in an attempt to protect your coveted toybox from the invading German forces. All the units and settings are based around WWI and the soundtrack is grandiose as it rallies players up for battle. What makes Toy Soldiers truly entertaining and fast paced is the ability to take control of each individual unit that you have strategically placed in hopes of wiping out the onslaught of enemy soldiers, tanks, and defenses. You can drop down from overhead and fire off mortar rounds, unleash fury with a turret, drive a tank, pick off a few of the opposition from a sniper tower, or do a quick bombing run with a plane. Every couple stages you face off against a massive boss that must be eliminated quickly as they devastate your defenses swiftly and prepare to make run at your toybox that will immediately end the level. You must quickly place and upgrade units to maximize your firepower using cash that is gained from wiping out units of the opposition, or blowing up debris lying around the playing field.
It is a more focused tower defense games as you are limited in the placement your toys of mass destruction to cement platforms scattered around the toybox. This also limits the number of units you can place, causing you to plan your defenses carefully as one spot may benefit more from a chemical thrower that it would from a turret. Sadly, there are only 6 different units to place, each with 2 upgrades that are earned as you play through the single player campaign. It is a small offering and it would have been nice to see a few more classes to work with, but the lack of variety doesn’t detract from the game enough to be an annoyance. The other minor frustration is that if you drop control of a tank or plane, it will automatically explode after ten seconds if you don’t hop back in and you have to wait 30 seconds for another to spawn. I found myself avoiding tanks or planes at times because I didn’t want to come back from a bombing run to find my defenses falling apart. As the war wages on, the game becomes fairly difficult on normal but never too difficult especially for tower defense veterans, until you play on the elite difficulty. The elite difficulty asks only the most dedicated players to micromanage each individual unit as they will not fire without you taking control, unlike the lower difficulties where they annihilate with or without you. The campaign is 3-4 hours long, with a Campaign+ that unlocks after the regular campaign is completed.
The only difference between Campaign and Campaign+ is that you take the side of the Germans, but these two modes make the game fairly beefy for the asking price. A challenging Survival mode is also included where you must hold out against a growing number of enemy units. Toy Soldiers contains a multiplayer segment that allows you to go head to head in split screen or online. As you build defenses against your neighbor, you must also send out units to attack the toybox across the field using the Y button. The multiplayer is fun, if only for a bit as there isn’t much variation but it is still an enjoyable addition to the game that certainly doesn’t detract from the title. I’m not the biggest fan of tower defense games, but I was able to easily find enjoyment out of Toy Soldiers as it constantly kept me on my toes zipping around the battlefield and dropping down to blow the smithereens out of attackers. It is a great starting point for those who want to try out tower defense titles and it will keep tower defense fans busy for a bit too. Despite a few minor complaints, Toy Soldiers is a tower defense game well worth checking out, on Xbox LIVE Arcade right now.
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