Toy Soldiers: Cold War is an Xbox live exclusive arcade game that combines a third person strategy game, a shooter, and a tower defense game centered around the fight against communism. Signal Studios has created an awesome experience that is pretty short, but considering the fact it’s an Xbox live arcade game, it’s a pretty average length with good gameplay and some replay value.
Gameplay
The game takes place in a variety of places around the world such as Korea, Cuba, Russia and even the United States. Some of the pros of the game are; Toy soldiers is a very, very fun game when it comes down to gameplay and the strategy isn’t too difficult for a beginner of the strategy game genre. Basically, you can look at the terrain to get a clue of the types of enemies you will be facing, such as a battleship where the majority of the enemies are paratroopers or planes.
Another one of the positives are the boss fights which take place about every three levels or so. Every boss has three stages and a final stage. These bosses do a good job of looking tough and taking up half the screen, but a good combination of anti- air and anti-tank turrets will whittle down the health quickly. The boss fights seem to add difficulty, but they are generally pretty easy to defeat—except the final boss who is a bit tougher. These break up the gameplay and add diversity which strengthens the experience.
Throughout the game, you earn upgrades to your turrets that make them stronger which helps considering the game scales in difficulty. This adds to the replay value as I went back to the earlier levels to get a better rating once I had all my upgrades. I went through the game twice just because the game was that fun, but it ends after that.
Toy Soldiers: Cold War is a very entertaining game that manages to achieve its goal of being fun—albeit short lived. This may be fun for some, but others who are penny pinching may find it a better idea to look elsewhere for a better dollar-to-game ratio.
Visual/Audio
The visual style of Toy Soldiers: Cold War is one of my favorites on the Xbox live arcade. The plastic figures makes me think of my childhood. Nothing is as much fun as plowing into a group of communist toy soldiers with a machine gun—just like I imagined as a child. The game does a very good job of creating a unique art style that is beautiful and realistic, while maintaining a cartoonish style that provides nostalgia. The audio is pretty good but seriously, If I have to hear “This One’s for Jimmy!” one more time, I’m going to find someone on the street named Jimmy and murder him. The obvious Rambo tribute was nice, but the repetitive audio spoiled it to the point that sometimes I didn’t want to use the most fun and destructive of the rewards. However, the military radio transmissions coming in every now and again during the battle are nice and add to the experience. The sound of explosions and machine gun fire are amazing and make you want to play even more.
Toy Soldiers is a very fun, yet bite sized adventure that you most likely won’t be going back to after you have your fun with it. Priced at fifteen dollars, it’s pretty steep for the amount of game that you get. However, I would recommend this game to any friends that have some cash to spend as it is very approachable. The art style is great, and addicting gameplay gives the game very high marks, but in some parts the overall audio lacks (Rambo)—yes, it is that annoying. The final line is that Toy Soldiers is a pretty good game that definitely deserves a look if you have some cash to spend.