I have one big issue with Toy Soldiers. This same issue also happens to be one entirely built from my own prejudices. It is this: Signal Games has smudged the brutal realities of war. I feel like Toy Soldiers pulls its punches exactly where it could land a knock-out blow by making a bold statement. It’s extremely frustrating, too, since everything else about Toy Soldiers has a pleasing simplicity that allows a wide audience to revel in a classic game of tower defence strategy.
Put another way, I want to love Toy Soldiers, and I very nearly do. It’s a quality game – those downloading it from the Marketplace will find much to enjoy. Instead, though, I’ve come away with a slightly dubious feeling, like I’ve been tricked.
The premise is simple: protect your toy box from invading enemy forces. If x number of enemies make it into your toy box, you lose. So far, so expected – this is tower defence 101. You earn cash by destroying enemy units; you then use cash to deploy a variety of weapon batteries best suited to repelling the waves of advancing enemies. Naturally, you can only build these batteries in set emplacements across the map. You can also take personal command of emplacements, which allows you to earn bonus cash for making multi-kills – this is particularly necessary on harder difficulties, but it remains optional. If you prefer a dirtier hands-on approach, you can join your little men in the trenches; if you are simply a tactician wishing to command from on high, then you’re not really penalised for this.
Where this all becomes problematic for me is in the setting – the levels are based on The Great War. Watching wave upon wave of toy enemies batter themselves on your toy machines of destruction is fine, up to a point. But real men did this. This actually happened. For four years. Ypres in France was nicknamed “Wipers” by the British Expeditionary Force due to the catastrophic mortality rate. Virtually a whole generation of British men was slaughtered by mechanised weaponry. In Toy Soldiers, shooting enemies only to see clockwork springs fall out doesn’t eliminate the horror of war, it cheapens it. And no matter how I rationalise it, I can’t escape this reaction. I know it’s me; I know I’m probably imparting greater significance to this than I should, but the inescapable fact is that’s how I feel. With Toy Soldiers, Signal Games could have made a provocative statement about war. Certainly, I’d feel very ambivalent towards a game where my own successes depended on the pointed obliteration of more realistic enemies.
This accusation is not a new one, and the same criticism could be levelled at most war games. Where Toy Soldiers differs, though, is in its deliberate and ultimately pointless attempt to hide its inspiration – it attempts a kind of pseudo-realism by using film grain and other effects to recreate the era, but with fictional encounters. Not only that, but there is no story, no motivation: you’re not trying to aid the survival of your own plucky bunch of heroes, you’re just tasked with levelling an opposing army. Toy Soldiers is bound all the more tightly to its source material because that is the only context there is.
Like I said, though, this is an issue entirely down to me and my own beliefs. Perhaps my reaction is even one born out of guilt, since it is also true that Toy Soldiers is good fun. I took immense satisfaction in both commanding from afar, watching my carefully selected emplacements decimate endless waves of toy enemies, and in jumping into a mortar or sniper tower or howitzer and pounding the enemy forces myself, earning a little extra cash on the side.
The game isn’t without other faults, but all of them are minor – there are curiously long loading times, for example – and it is perhaps slightly too easy on the default “normal” difficulty. That is not to say you won’t fail some of the levels – you probably will – but unlike some other tower defence games, this is simply down to trial and error. Once you’ve taken mental note of the types of enemies you can expect on any given map, it doesn’t ever vary; a simple tweak from chemical emplacement to a machine gun, for example, and you’re well on your way to victory. The clever function of being able to see forthcoming waves allows you to tweak and adjust on the fly even more.
All your emplacements can be upgraded, too, although these upgrades remain locked by campaign progress. The campaign runs to a healthy length, with twelve missions for both British and German forces alike, and its campaign completion unlocks a survival mode in which you must repel enemies for as long as possible. Once you bump up the difficulty to the higher notches, it also becomes fiendishly exacting – absolutely every penny earned has to be spent without error for you to succeed on Elite difficulty, and you’ll need to earn bonuses wherever you can by jumping in to take charge of your own emplacements. Throw in a competitive multiplayer element, and Toy Soldiers is a tight, focused package.
For the reasons cited above, I really struggled with how to score this game. In the end, I’ve put forward my own score, as I should, but I can suggest other gamers might be able to add a point or two if their prejudices don’t coincide with mine. I’ll have to be content with heartily recommending Toy Soldiers as an experience, while trashing its hollow sentiment. Instead, though, I’ll bash you over the head one last time with my “war is bad, mmmkay?” proselytising and leave you with this parting shot from satirist Jonathon Swift: “War! That mad game the world so loves to play.”
VideogameUK verdict: 6/10
