Toy Soldiers (XBLA)

A breath of fresh mustard gas in the realm of tower defense, offered exclusively on XBOX arcade

It’s a quiet night on the front lines in Belgium, at the beginning of the Great War (WWI 1914-1918, for all you, younger folks). A flare pops up, illuminating the dark sky, making it inevitably clear: you are being overrun by enemy infantry, crawling under your barbed wire and pushing hard on your flanks. Your heart skips a few beats; frustration weighs heavy on your decision in placing an MG (machine gun) unit so far from your fort’s entrance. Hoping your well placed barbed wire will slow down the bulk of the enemy, it becomes undeniable: you are now down to a spray-n-pray situation. Reloading your MG, you make quick work of the majority of the men stuck under your wires. A few slip through, victory dancing, on the way into your front door. You think to yourself…

“Only six made it in, and I still have fourteen more on the counter”

What you don’t realize is that four armored vehicles and thirty horse-mounted cavalry are en route. You have not upgraded any of your units enough to handle armor. You make a desperate last stand, firing all MG units, until they overheat and need to cool prior to resuming fire. Forty-three seconds later, it is all over – you have been overwhelmed…. Try again?

This is one of the many memorable scenarios that often play-out in Toy Soldiers, adding to the addictive nature of gameplay.

Toy Soldiers is the brainchild of proud parent, Signal Studios. At its core, Toy Soldiers is an action/RTS with loads of originality and a variety of gameplay modes.

Campaign Play as British soldiers trying to hold back the

German army. Includes 12 single-player missions

Campaign+ Switching up play as Germany, fending off the

British invasion. Includes 12 single-player missions

Survival How long can you survive endless waves? Tower

Defense to the extreme!

Multiplayer/Split-screen XBOX Live with friends or challenge your roommate to a match. Includes 6 multiplayer maps

Facebook Integrated Have a facebook account? Link up and play the Match Defense: Toy Soldiers game.

In addition, each campaign map has four levels of difficulty and its own side objectives.

Signal has released two add-on map packs to further feed your addiction…

Kaiser’s Battle Enter the fray as the French army with three new campaign maps, two new multiplayer maps, and one new survival map

Invasion Science Fiction has found its way into the Great War, making for some new and interesting action – UFO’s, space tanks, and giant robots. WWI and laser beams, you ask? Sounds crazy, I know, but it comes together nicely. Includes three new campaign maps, two new multiplayer maps and one new survival map.

One of the biggest features of Toy Soldiers is allowing players to personally man any AI unit on the field at any time. One minute, you are strafing enemy infantry from up high in your plane, next you’re firing a giant Howitzer across the map onto incoming tanks.

In choosing your next AI unit to control or upgrade, the bird’s eye view camera system allows for a quick movements and seeing the battlefield as a whole to better plan your defense. Want even more pressure? Press X and launch enemy waves faster, and increase your total score for the round.  All this provides a much, more in-depth experience.

Signal nailed it with sound and graphics, keeping within the authenticity of the time period, right down to the crackle of the gramophone during load times (which can sometimes be lengthy) and a visual graininess with the opening of each map. The beautifully rendered 3D environments provide the perfect backdrop to wage your war.

Going into this, I didn’t expect much from an arcade game, but what I got was so much more. At a time when the game market is flooded with tower defense and modern era “nuke ‘em” warfare, Toy Soldiers capitalizes on originality with an earlier setting and more action based tower defense gameplay. The comic sense of battling within a toy box is just enough to keep you laughing without depreciating the intensity of combat. Toy Soldiers may not be meant for everyone, it will either suck you in for the long haul, or spit you out after the first map. With achievements to earn, gamer points to be had, what are you waiting for? Join the massacre of miniatures!

Need deodorant and toothpaste this week? Nope, dump your money on Toy Soldiers instead.