BiG DaH's Kage

Toy Soldiers: Cold War – My New Addiction Has Arrived

The original Toy Soldiers game came out a little over a year ago in March of 2010, bringing with it a fresh perspective on tower defense style games. Blending real-time strategy, tower defense, and first person action, Toy Soldiers easily cruised into my list of favorite arcade style games.

Now, Signal Studios has dropped another one on us, once again raising the bar with a “Cold War” edition of the game that’s based on 80′s movie themes. From the moment I fired up the demo, the music permeated my entire soul as memories of sitting on friends living room floors with popcorn and cans of soda ran through my mind.

Two words can describe how I felt after playing Toy Soldiers: Cold War for the first time…. “Kick” and “Ass”.

Signal Studios just took Toy Soldiers and turned it into an ultra fun and addictive friend battling zone. With the addition of co-op modes as well as all new minigames, there’s even more reason to be glued to the screen than ever.

It was pretty cool the way they’ve setup the co-op mode and if you’re familiar at all with Toy Soldiers, you know that you basically have a field of battle with empty areas that you can place weapons in. These weapons can then be automatically controlled by the game to fire against your enemies, or you can get “inside” the weapons and fire them manually to reign ultimate hell on the legions of soviet troops headed your way.

One of the coolest things about Toy Soldiers: Cold War is that you’ve got all new weapons as well as “Barrages”. When you are able to destroy enough enemies within a certain period of time, the game will award you with a random killstreak attack called a “Barrage”. This could be an airstrike, an artillery barrage, or even close air support that lets you take control of 3 different types of weapons from an AC130 above (very much like the AC130 missions from COD in the single player campaign).

Check out this video showing the Close Air Support barrage!

There’s more than just those barrages, but so far every kind of attack you get has been pretty devastating to the enemy and it’s wise to save them for times when you start to feel overrun. Funny enough, now that I think about it, this game definitely has some very slight elements of Call of Duty / Homefront in the way the barrages resemble killstreaks and the way vehicles are controlled such as a tank or helicopter.

As if that wasn’t cool enough, they’ve also gone as far as including certain characters bearing very strong resemblance to some of our favorite 80′s movie stars…. oh, and did I mention my favorite one comes with unlimited ammo and basically destroys everything while you have it unlocked?

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Toy Soldier RAMBO!

Back to the mini-games for a sec, these games are arcade style, quick to play and all about highest score on the leader boards. That pretty much sums up the requirements for a game that can inspire hours of smile inducing trash talkin’ between you and your buddies!

I dunno if it’s the attempt at getting the highest score out of my friends or the fact that the game sends wave after wave of easy target enemies at you just begging to be blasted sky high that keeps me satisfied, either way, Snickers ain’t got nothin on Toy Soldiers: Cold War.

Here’s a video of the first minigame called “Dolled Up”

So if you’re into arcade style games that blend real-time strategy with first person controls and tower defense style game play, Toy Soldiers: Cold War is a must have.

If you don’t know if you’re into those kinds of games, I highly recommend grabbing the free trial (On XBox Live’s marketplace now) and giving it a try. It may take a minute or two for things to start making sense, but once you get it, it just seems to get better and better.

Great job on this one Signal Studios and thanks for a kick ass game!