Toy Soldiers

Oh nostalgia, how you have wronged me.

I originally wanted to pick up Toy Soldiers when it was released on XBLA years ago, but I was poor at the time and put it off for my “eventually” wish list. I was delighted to see it had gotten released on PC proper and it quickly made its way into my Steam wish list, which was whittled down to but a few titles this past holiday sale.

The problem with many “Arcade” style games (aka Indie games) is that they’re brief and usually meant to take up your full attention. On console, this works wonderfully because you really can’t multitask on a console. Alas, on PC... it’s different.

Toy Soldiers is a novel little game, half-tower defense and half “Toy Commander”. The meat of the game is building up base defenses with stationary turrets and killing off waves of dudes as they attempt to assault your base. As the game progresses, you gain access to fighter planes, bombers and two types of tank which allow you direct control and navigation of the battle field. You can also take control of the turrets at any time, but most often the AI does a fine job of blowing things up from the turret standpoint.

This brings me to the crux of the issue with the PC implementation of this game and most tower defense games: Once you’ve got your towers set up, you can pretty much ignore the game until the round is over.

Many times I found myself switching windows and browsing Reddit while my turrets dutifully defended my base without my involvement. The few times I did have to take control of things was at the start of rounds where the enemy’s base defenses were best taken out by tanks or when dealing with boss fights.

The presentation is nice overall. In addition to traditional achievements, there’s also special challenge achievements which unlock more trophies for the in game display case. The PC version nicely enough comes with the two pieces of DLC that were separate for the XBLA incarnation, and the Steam release has been updated to remove Games For Windows Live in favor of Steamworks integration. My only real complaint is that a console window showing game debugging information pops up in the background, and in windowed mode you can clearly see it ticking along with resource loading messages.

The set it and forget it game-play is jarred awake by the presence of boss battles at the end of certain waves. They start off fairly modest, but the final boss in the standard campaign as well as the bosses for the two DLC segments require “do it this way or lose” mechanics which I find incredibly frustrating. Although I managed to complete all three campaigns, it was not without some online walk-through browsing to determine what turrets I had to use and what combination of vehicles were best.

All together, the art style of each unit resembling an early 1900s tin toy is enjoyable and the mission intermission silent film reels bring a nice sense of style to the game, but the somewhat janky keyboard and mouse translation for vehicle control feels notably more clumsy than a controller.

While I was looking forward to playing this game, and the sequel “Toy Soldiers: Cold War”, my experience with the PC port has not left me very hopeful. Between stints of boredom and frustration, the novelty wears off fast. It’s a little difficult to recommend it at 10 bucks, but if you’re a fan of tower defense and retro toys, it might just make your day.


Final Score: Satisfied with sale price

yes

Doesn't launch on Windows 11 because of GFWL shitware being required.

If anyone knows a fix, letting me know would be much appreciated.

brings back alot of nostalgia, i remember playing this on the xbox 360 like 10 years ago