Boogie Woogie Bugle Toy of Company HD
Toy Soldiers has been out for PC since April 2012, and the Nintendo Switch is getting its HD upgrade in the near future. There are some finishing touches the developers need to put on the multiplayer component, but we have played through a preview version and can share the preliminaries.
I did not play the original, so I wasn’t familiar with Toy Soldiers HD when digging into it on the Switch. I inferred it might be like playing with the little, green, plastic army guys, but I was wrong on that one. The game is really a sort of tower defense with some extras.
Those extras mainly come from Toy Soldiers HD’s neat twist on the genre. You start with plenty of infantry, but they seem intent on charging the enemy line, never to be seen again (all too accurate, there). What you have left are machine gun and mortar placements to make sure your side survives multiple waves of enemy infantry, cavalry, armor, and so on.
After several waves, you even get a boss to take down.
As expected, it costs resources to place a piece of artillery, and more to have it upgraded. There are some interesting features to be discovered in the game, but I’ll leave those little gems for the actual review. As you advance to the higher levels, there are new weapons you can unlock. Keep an eye on your resources, as you may need to hold onto some coin to get the next new toy (pun intended…).
Toy Soldiers HD has an interesting look with a mixed bag of near realism juxtaposed with imagery of a child’s play room/toybox. It is colorful and clear looking without trying too hard to be either photo-realistic or cartoonishly silly. The controls are not quite as fast as a keyboard and mouse setup, but everything works rather well.
All things considered, I am looking forward to the final release and playing through this with others when the multiplayer component is fixed up. Watch for our full review after the game is officially released.
