oy Soldiers: War Chest sees the series return after a four-year gap, bringing its trademark mix of tower defence and third-person action to a new console generation. The core reasons for the games’ appeal still stand: it’s a cleverly-wrought blend of genres made with humour and verve, and the sort of game that works well for grown-up gamers and for kids. Sadly, it’s tarnished by some dubious money-grabbing practices that make it harder to recommend than it really ought to be. First, the basics. As we said, Toy Soldiers is at heart a tower defence game. You control a toy army charged with defending a bedroom base. Wave after wave of infantry and armoured vehicles (or equivalents) swarm from portals on the other side of the map, and it’s up to you to wipe them out before they reach and damage your toybox. To do so, you place turrets in the available positions on the map, which spit out machine gun fire or anti-armour rounds to mop the invaders up before they reach it. Enemies killed are converted to cash, and you can spend that cash on building more turrets or on upgrading your existing ones, increasing their range, upping their damage or adding more protection. Some maps also have spots where you can place larger artillery or anti-aircraft turrets (the only way to deal with airborne enemy waves). Where Toy Soldiers differs from other tower defence games is that it plays out in a fully 3D landscape, and in that you’re encouraged to take a more active role. At any point you can grab the controls of a turret and start blasting away and, if you’re any good, you’ll be slightly more effective than your AI troops – especially at range. What’s more, blasting away at your enemies will now fill a hero meter, and when you’ve filled it up enough you can unleash a hero figure onto the battlefield. At this point, the game becomes – for a limited time – a third-person shooter. You can roam the battlefield, wiping out infantry and armour with a choice of two weapons and doing your best to grab batteries to extend your time on the field. On top of this, some levels come with vehicles already on the map. You can take these out and do your best to wear down enemy positions – some levels have them – or turn the tide of the battle. What’s more, you can keep filling the meter rather than unleash your hero, and spend the points on some tasty bomb barrage instead. The gameplay sounds simple, but in practice it’s more frantic than you might imagine, not to mention more fun. You’ll find yourself quickly building and upgrading turrets, then hopping in one to tackle tanks or aggressive fairy ponies before they can cause too much damage. You’ll hop aboard your own captured tank or a fire-spitting, explosive dice-dropping falcon to tackle enemy emplacements or whittle down the incoming hoards, then popping out again for urgent repairs or a last minute effort to get anti-air turrets up and running before the bombers cruise in. Each map has its own style and its own challenges, and there’s a surprising amount of variety between them. Little details, like the way that common household objects become part of the scenery, help sell the bedroom battles theme. As a game design, it works. What’s more, the armies themselves up the fun factor. Where the original Toy Soldiers went for straightforward military forces and the sequel, Cold War, went for eighties action-movie clichés, this one explores retro nostalgia for childhood toys, bringing back the first game’s Kaiser and his steampunk-enhanced Germanic units, but also a fantasy dark lord, a sci-fi super-soldier and a unicorn-riding, fairy princess faction with a horde of brightly-coloured bears. Who needs zombies or Nazis to shoot when you’ve got that? There’s not, in truth, much difference between the armies and how they operate; the core turrets and emplacements work in much the same way. What’s more, the single-player campaign follows the same path and has the same intros and cut-scenes no matter which hero and army you take on. All the same, it’s hard to resist a game where the Kaiser’s gatling guns and cannons square off against fairies and unicorns, or where the dark lord’s troops are literally smashed into plastic pieces by incoming fire. Toy Soldiers: War Chest is fun, and there’s little wrong with its genre-blending gameplay. The constant switching between turret-management and action gives the game a pace that other console tower defence games often lack, and the whole toy wars theme is really appealing. Sadly, it’s let down by its dated graphics, some difficulty issues and some optional micro-transactions that leave a bad taste in the mouth. It’s a good game at heart, but it lacks a little soul. Originally posted at http://www.trustedreviews.com/toy-soldiers-war-chest-review
