Toy Soldiers is the first title to kick off XBLA Block Party on March 3, 2010 – get ready to man the guns and fight for freedom. Developed by Signal Studios, Toy Soldiers is an intense tower defense game based on World War I and all missions are set on the proper dates and locations of famous World War 1 battles.
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First impressions often mean everything, and Toy Soldiers makes sure you’re impressed right away. The menu starts off with the worn-out sepia tone film, and an old war hymn playing. The game allows you to jump right into the training mission, or you can access other extras such as friends’ leaderboards, download content, or your game options. A little treat for those who enjoy the 360 avatars, you’ll unlock a gas mask for your avatar as soon as you start the game, and you’ll get a free gamer picture as well!
Loading times may seem slightly long for the campaign missions to load, but part of the games’ presentation comes into play here. During loading screens, you’ll be various propaganda posters promoting the USA and its war effort. Also, the game will often be playing a WWI hymn in the menus, adding to overall atmosphere. During the battles, you’ll hear the machine guns tearing through ammo, the echo of Howitzer shells, and the whistle of bombs dropping from the air. Cavalry horns, soldiers battle cries, and the general sounds of war all make for an extremely authentic war experience.
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The visuals in Toy Soldiers are quite stunning, and easily more impressive than some $60 retail titles out there. All weaponry, enemies, and environments are extremely well detailed and just wonderful to take in. Battlefields are full of foxholes, sandbag barriers, trenches, and various structures as well as other piece of equipment. Dynamic background outside of the playing field keep things from looking too plain. Battlefields vary from snow covered fields and grassy terrains, to war-torn cities. Textures are marvelous and not a single section of this game looks disappointing, and you become easily submersed in the beauty of Toy Soldiers.
As Toy Soldier is a strategic title, you’ll be very pleased to discover that the game offers a detailed training mission, then opens up to a full campaign with a towering 24 single-player missions! Each and every battle takes place at factual World War I battle locations, so even you history buffs can’t complain. Like all tower defense games, waves of enemy units are attempting to reach a goal – Toy Soldiers is portrayed as a game located in a child’s bedroom – naturally, the axis is attempting to destroy your toy box.
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Earlier missions have a relatively easy difficulty as the maps allow only a frontal assault. Your toy box is generally situated directly behind you in these missions. Once you reach the sixth mission, the maps open up and enemy waves are able to spawn from any side of the map, and your toy box will be in the middle. In turn, you have the option to build a myriad of towers in your defense. Some maps require you to focus on the ground, others are more focused toward incoming aerial attacks, and of course, some are just an even mix
Tower weaponry varies from machine guns and mortars, to massive 18 pound Howitzers and chemical warfare. Dedicated territories for tower placement are marked on every map, and you can clearly see them all by clicking the right analogue stick and entering an overhead view of the battlefield. Some weapons are much larger, so you’ll need to place them on the large territories while machine guns, mortars, and others can be placed on any tower surface. You’ll soon figure out what types of enemies to expect, and which towers will be most effective, and from which position. In conjunction to the towers, you can also buy and place barbed wire fences to slow down smaller infantry types, causing them to crawl on the ground, while you shred them apart with machine guns. You’ll find 5 towers to build, and 1 extra automatically in the levels, but each has 2 possible upgrades once unlocked. Also, as opposed to most tower defense games, Toy Soldiers doesn’t require you to build your tower and let the game do the rest, although that’s a choice. However, you’re more than welcome to take full control of any tower you create, and manually aim/fire at enemy waves crossing the battlefield.
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A whole array of enemies are waiting to overtake the allies, ranging basic infantry to heavily armored tanks, as well as fighter planes and bombers. As expected, earlier waves are easier to defeat, but do require some quick tower placement and money management in some missions. In the early missions, you’ll be using the machine gun, mortars, and 18lbs Howitzers. Most enemies can be taken out by the first two towers, though bosses and clusters of enemies are easily destroyed with the heavy weapons. Certain enemy waves, such as the Cavalry are much faster and require special attention – I suggest machine guns. Aerial attackers can be brought down with either anti-air towers, or by your own hand if you jump in the plane located someone near your starting point. If your plane is destroyed, you can simply get another after a very short re-spawn time. Be sure to keep an eye on some enemies that will stop and take the time to attack your towers with bazookas and grenades – kill them quickly to avoid an unnecessary expense.
The matches in the campaign have no time limits, but you gain the victory after surviving all enemy waves. If 20 enemies in total make it into your toy box, you fail the mission. Unfortunately, if you survive all waves, and the boss makes it to the toy box, the mission is a failure, regardless how well you did otherwise. Thankfully, you don’t fight a grueling boss on every level, but on specific milestones throughout the campaign. Don’t rely completely on the AI to shoot, they often wait for enemies to be close-by, whereas you can manually attack them with the machine gun, sniper tower, and Howitzers from a lengthy distance. The quicker you take out the waves, the less chance you’ve got of having to do everything all over again.
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As always, building costs money, as does upgrading. If you can manage to destroy copious amounts of enemies in a larger combo, you’ll make more cash – that’s a good thing. You won’t have to worry too much about cash managing early on, you can afford everything that’s accessible. However, once you hit the larger maps, you’re going to need to think carefully on what’s best for upgrades, and when is the best time to do the job. If you even run out of cash, you can sell some unwanted towers for a quick boost to your wallet. Keep an eye on towers that being to smoke, select them, and use the repair option – it’s cheap, it’s quick, and it’ll probably make a difference in the end result.
Well, that pretty much covers the campaign mode of Toy Soldiers, so I guess the war is over. Oops, I suppose we should mention that in conjunction to the 24 campaign missions, the game also offers both split-screen head-to-head, and Xbox Live multiplayer! Xbox Live enables gamers to go head-to-head against one another, with 5 maps, each supporting a different mode. The modes include Tank Battle, All Out Blitz, Attack and Defend, Ground Attack, and Air Assault. Loading times are relatively quick, and you’ll find a match within a few moments. Unfortunately, the does currently suffer from frequent disconnects and lag. While some matches aren’t too bad, it surely does require a patch to fix the stability for those who wish to jump into the 1 vs 1 competitive multiplayer.
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In the end, Toy Soldiers is a simply fantastic experience, and one of the most outstanding tower defense games I’ve ever played. For 1200 :MSPoints:, you receive a solid 24 mission campaign, offline split-screen, and online 1vs1 in 5 different modes. The campaign alone will take over 10 hours to complete on the ‘normal’ difficulty, and online play offers hours of enjoyment on top of that. Once you’ve completed the game once, you unlock campaign+ where you redo all 24 levels from the German perspective, adding even more replay value. In addition to that, you’ll also unlock a challenging survival mode where you defend against waves upon waves of enemies. While there is one multiplayer achievements, this game is enough fun to make it enjoyable to earn. Toy Soldiers is a remarkable title, and I very much recommend you buy this game if you’re at all interested in tower defense, or action-strategy experiences. For more info, check out the Xbox Live Marketplace!
Win a Toy Soldiers Code!
To enter for a chance to win, simply leave a comment below and tell us who the developer of Toy Soldiers is. A random winner will be chosen at 8PM EST / 5PM PST on Wednesday 3rd March. Please leave a valid email address and I will send you the code if chosen. Note: If your comment does not appear straight away it may have got caught by the anti spam filter, I will approve your comment before the deadline is over (I will try to approve ASAP) so there is no need to post again. Further rules can be found just below.
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