Toy Soldiers Cold War, for xbox 360

Rating: 8.5/10; Great

Played: April 2018

Requires both strategy and action skill, so only recommended for people who like both genres

Cold War is the sequel to Toy Soldiers, and has the same style of gameplay, though vastly improved. It is a tower defense where you are able to take direct control of your towers, as well as armoured vehicles, helicopters and jet fighters; thus combining strategy with skill based action shooting, vehicle combat and flight simulation. On top of this, you can earn special one time use powers, such as carpet bombing and a nuke. The most interesting special has to be the Rambo action figure, which you control directly to wreck everything while spouting hilarious one liners from the movies.

Otherwise, the gameplay is pretty much the same as Toy Soldiers. Enemies will spawn in groups of the same type from set locations and follow set routes to your base, while some take pot shots at your turrets and vehicles. Each unit that reaches your base depletes your health points and each unit killed grants money to be used to buy/repair/upgrade turrets. The interface shows you the type of units that will be coming on the next 2 waves, so you have some time to prepare. You are also able to rewind time to a previous wave so if you screw up you do not have to start from scratch again.

All units have been upgraded to the modern era with modern equipment. The enemies get ATVs instead of horse, and a variety of infantry and vehicles, including ridiculously overpowered mobile missile launchers and sci fi laser tanks. Turrets are the same types from the first game with the addition of anti tank rocket launchers, which are fun to control because the rockets are wire guided. The enemy can also get specials by way of carpet bombing, though they are a fixed wave rather than a random thing. Barbed wire has been removed and additional game modes have been added. General mode prevents you from controlling anything so it is pure tower defense, and it is balanced to reflect that. Action mode is the opposite where your turrets have no AI and will only attack when you control them. On top of that, there is a survival mode on a few maps where you fight the same waves over and over to see how long you can last (which does get boring fairly quickly), and multiplayer (which I did not try); the replayability is much better than the first game.

Vehicles are much more fun and easy to control in this game. Tanks and IFVs are more speedy, manoeuvrable and powerful than the old WW1 tanks. Tanks and helicopters have a much longer time before they are destroyed when you exit control of them to interact with turrets; this makes switching back and forth more fluid. To balance this, the vehicles have a battery life and will be destroyed if you let the battery run out. Returning the vehicle to its charge station will allow the battery to recharge, and allows quicker use of the vehicle again than if you let it be destroyed and respawn (unless it is too far away or low on health, at which point you might as well let it explode).

Excellent gameplay which seamlessly combines multiple genres make this game stand out and improvements across the board make this game more fun than its predecessor. The same highly scripted nature of the levels and the lack of a Soviet campaign in the base game (it is DLC which I did not play) bring the game down a bit.

Pro

• Can control turrets and units
• Good balance between the various units and structures
• Your unit AI is fairly good
• Destructible environment
• Great variety of gameplay
• New ways to play in General and Action mode
• Multiplayer mode
• Immersive and hilarious audio
• Auto save time rewind for each wave

Con

• Limited replayability as there is no randomization
• Flamethrower/gas turret looks ridiculous; the toys are using real life stuff rather than the turret being a toy version of a real weapon