Review: Toy Soldiers
Apr. 30th, 2012 04:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jeriendhalNo, not the movie from the 90's. This time around it's a tower defense game originally for the XBox Arcade, now available from Steam. I picked it up for $7.50 over the weekend just because the premise looked cute and the graphical style was good.
The basic idea is that the game is played out on a battlefield, which is actually a large toy set. So the tanks are windup, the soldiers are tin, and when they die the fall apart in a mess of exploding springs instead of blood.
The Good: It's honestly a fun game. You get a variety of weapons to handle both ground and aerial threats and a wide variety of enemies to use them on. The art department obviously had a heckuva lot of fun putting together the little vintage advertising cards for the loading screens, not to mention the period music.
The Bad: Several points here unfortuntately, though they weren't enough to tip the game over into the Not Recommended catagory for me.
1. Enemy units can be a bit hard to see, given that they're grey on a reasonably realistic brown field of battle.
2. Even though it's tower defense game, you have mobile units to use in several scenarios. I suppose flying the biplanes is a lot easier using an Xbox controller, but trying to do it with a mouse and keyboard on my laptop is a PITA.
3. Your placement options for your defense turrets is very limited, which can be annoying if you're used to more freeform placement like Plants vs. Zombies.
4. There's something seriously disturbing about using mustard gas to kill your opponents, even if they are tin.
The basic idea is that the game is played out on a battlefield, which is actually a large toy set. So the tanks are windup, the soldiers are tin, and when they die the fall apart in a mess of exploding springs instead of blood.
The Good: It's honestly a fun game. You get a variety of weapons to handle both ground and aerial threats and a wide variety of enemies to use them on. The art department obviously had a heckuva lot of fun putting together the little vintage advertising cards for the loading screens, not to mention the period music.
The Bad: Several points here unfortuntately, though they weren't enough to tip the game over into the Not Recommended catagory for me.
1. Enemy units can be a bit hard to see, given that they're grey on a reasonably realistic brown field of battle.
2. Even though it's tower defense game, you have mobile units to use in several scenarios. I suppose flying the biplanes is a lot easier using an Xbox controller, but trying to do it with a mouse and keyboard on my laptop is a PITA.
3. Your placement options for your defense turrets is very limited, which can be annoying if you're used to more freeform placement like Plants vs. Zombies.
4. There's something seriously disturbing about using mustard gas to kill your opponents, even if they are tin.
