Toy Soldiers was a game that was first released on the XBOX Live Arcade around two years ago. Interestingly, it was published by Microsoft themselves. The game itself is built around the premise of two kids playing with toy soldiers, making the title very apt for describing what the game is about, something which games lack these days (I mean, Deus Ex? What the heck is that about? Rabbi snuff?). The game itself is sort of a Tower Defense game. For those unfamiliar with that particular genre, it’s quite simple. Goal in one end, enemies coming from other end. Set up guns to shoot soldiers before they reach goal. Soldiers reach goal, very bad. That’s the basic premise. Tower Defense games are everywhere and in every possible form these days. So what does this one do differently? Well, the toys in question are centered around World War I. Which is actually interesting, considering how many games have taken place in WWII compared to WWI. One would almost think that the Americans didn’t wanna bother with a war where they only peaked their heads out for the last year of the action and couldn’t take all the glory. But I digress.
Since Toy Soldiers takes place in an era before people made up rules for war, it contains such lovely weapons as mustard gas. Now, since seeing soldiers coughing up bloody bits of their own lungs isn’t exactly something Microsoft wishes to associate itself with, the game doesn’t feature any gore or anything. Instead, killed soldiers simply explode into cogs and other bits of clockwork when they die a horribly, slow death. I do wonder what this is supposed to do for the game being kid-friendly however, considering that they still stand around and cough and seem to be in visible pain as they do. I suppose that as long as you keep away from the colour red as well as naughty bits when making the game, it’s all okay. Then again, spraying a bunch of soldiers with mustard gas and watching their life bars slowly trickle away is immensely satisfying, if also rather gruesome. Then again, being gruesome towards NPCs makes up 50 % of my enjoyment of video games, with the other half being bitching about them afterwards.
I don’t mean to imply that I get off on it, but…
Toy Soldiers does have a unique feature, though. If at any point you feel like personally gassing a bunch of little army men, you can always take control of one of your weapon emplacements and murder the everliving crap out of some people. Or toys, I guess. Still satisfying, though. I used to make my friends’ toys explode into little bits of metal and they always just started crying. Now I can actually do it without repercussions. Although the lack of crying does tend to make it slightly less fun. But whatever. The game also has biplanes and tanks in the later levels, allowing for even more gleeful destruction. It’s pretty fun. The only problem with taking control of the guns is that you won’t be able to shoot as accurately as the computer. Especially with the mortars and Howitzers which the computer is frighteningly good at aiming with. I’m not saying that we should just give ourselves up once the robot uprising happens, but it would probably save is a lot of grievances is all I’m saying.
The game functions fairly well, and it’s probably the best Tower Defense game I’ve played – not that the competition from Flash-based games on free websites was particularly fierce – but it does have some issues. The biggest one is the boss battles. Most of them are unwinnable unless you prepare for them in advance. For example, there was one called the Tsar Tank. A huge vehicle with a ton of health which would roll down the street too close for my long-range artillery to hit it. I figured out on the next try that I needed to use mortars which could fire in all directions and also fire right next to themselves. But in order to get enough mortars, I needed to build them throughout the entire round. Something that I had no way of knowing unless I played through the round before and lost. That is not good boss design, that’s just cheap and fake difficulty.
“There has to be a better way of gathering intel.”
But oh, this game has far more problems than that. You see, I bought the PC port. And said PC port is absolutely horrendous. For one thing, it runs on Games for Windows Live, one of the most heinous things produced by Microsoft since Windows 95. It does not work. At all. I bought the game through Steam. This gave me a product code that I needed to register for some reason. I assumed that it was because of the multiplayer. Okay, no problem… Except the stupid thing kept saying the key was invalid. And I couldn’t shut the game down because the overlay wouldn’t go away. Then I went out of the game, forced it to shut down and looked for a fix. Okay, apparently I had to do it through their website. Brilliant. So I went to the website, signed in and they asked me to input my personal details. For “making future purchases simpler”. Well, after this they will assuredly be simpler, by virtue of not freaking happening.
After putting in my details (Richard Hez from Fokyu Street in Pesdorf, Germany), I finally got to play the game. Wait, no I didn’t. Games for Windows Live needs to update. It tells me to shut down the game. Well, since it refuses to let me remove the overlay and control the game so I can freaking shut the mother you know what down, that is going to be slightly problematic. But. I. Digress. I forced the game to shut down once again. Then I could finally play the piece of crap. So I start it up, play through some of the single-player. Then I get a message from my friend who also owns it. He wants to play multiplayer with me. I accept. So we look around for a while, but can’t find the multiplayer. Eventually, my friend looks it up. Turns out the PC port has no multiplayer. Allow me to reiterate: The PC version has no multiplayer. For no reason. They just decided not to include it.
“Pew, pew? Anyone? Guys, this is not how you solve balance issues.”
How do I even grade a game like this? The core gameplay is still solid, but the PC port is such an atrocious piece of crap that there has to be some special circle of Hell reserved for whoever works in Microsoft’s game department. Where they do nothing but try and get their piece-of-fleece service to work. I eventually decided to grade the port, simply because I paid 5 £ for this thing, and if I have to suffer, then so do you, Microsoft. Does that make me entitled? Well, no. I paid for this. I am already entitled to a good product. I paid the same for Left 4 Dead 2 on sale, so no excuses. If I can make one of you cry, then this will all be worth it. Screw you, Microsoft. And screw you, Signal Studios. I hope you both get attacked by Candirus the next time you’re out swimming.