There are many ways to a man’s heart. If they were born sometime between 1975 and 1985, two of those ways may very well involve either He-Man and the Masters of the Universe or G.I. Joe. Many childhood dreams and imaginations involved these characters waging war amongst one another, but fans have never been able to see these battles come to life. That is, until now.
The Toy Soldiers series has always tapped into the hearts of fans by bringing these types of memories to life. Simply adding in licensed versions of the actual toys that many of us knew and loved as kids, such as He-Man and G.I. Joe., it seems like the resulting game would be an easy success. Everything is there for Toy Soldiers: War Chest to be a successful game. All that it has to do is fire on all cylinders and make its mark on gamers. It’s too bad that when you finally get to pull the proverbial trigger that is this experience, you get a misfire most of the time.
The concept is pretty simple: Imagine what your toys do when you are out of the room. Toy Soldiers shows what happens when all of your various toys take sides and wage war on one another. This plays out in a well-designed tower defense-style game that has great weapon and terrain variety as well as lively character classes. All of the various factions that you would expect to find in your toy box are represented. You have your stereotypical German army, led by Kaiser Wilhelm, complete with WWII-era tanks and artillery. Dragons and medieval knights are represented by the Darklord, and your science fiction-themed figures fall under the Phantom regime. Even your sister’s toys make a stand in this imaginary war, as Star Bright forms an army complete with mystical fairies and magical unicorns.
These should all seem familiar if you've played one of the previous games. The big addition to this chapter is the inclusion of a couple of licensed toys, namely G.I. Joe (split into two separate armies), He-Man, and Assassin’s Creed. There is an instant gratification that is hard to put into words when you see familiar toys like this brought to life on the battlefield. The first time that you experience it, you will likely be left giggling with joy. It will make you feel like a kid again. Unfortunately, that feeling wears off quickly.
Gameplay is akin to a standard tower defense game. You need to spawn towers and weapons in specific spots on the map, depending on how much money that you have on hand. As you take out the enemy troops who are attempting to make their way across the map and capture your base, you will be given additional funds to build towers and upgrade existing ones. The game has an excellent system in place where you need to earn or purchase (using currency that you earn in-game) the various upgrades and abilities for all of your weapons. This helps encourage players to spend time experimenting and playing with all of the various characters and armies, not just the ones that you favor.
It is also worth mentioning that not all of the armies are exact cookie-cutter copies of one another. One army’s anti-air weapons may be more effective than another, while something like the German artillery cannons may be more effective than Star Bright’s. This is another thing that encouraged me to switch things around as I played through the campaign. Some missions proved more manageable with certain characters versus certain armies, which had me choosing characters I might have otherwise ignored all together.
Instead of just letting your various towers automatically attack the enemy, you can select a tower and take complete control. In previous games, doing this allowed you to earn special kill streaks and bonuses. This is not only necessary for success, especially considering the limited range that the AI-controlled versions of your towers have, but it’s also the key to accessing the big payoff for fans of the classic toys included in the game. As you defeat enemies with direct control of a tower, you will slowly fill up a gauge on the side of the screen that allows you to summon your marquee toy into battle. This is what you need to do in order to take full control of Duke, Cobra Commander, or He-Man. Playing as them is a ton of fun, as the game then shifts to a third-person shooter, and each of them has their own abilities and arsenal to take down your enemies in bulk.
So far, all of this sounds great. So what is the issue? The issue is that, despite some great content and ideas, the game is overflowing with design and technical flaws. There are so many that there are almost too many to list. First off, especially if you're dealing with the Hall of Fame addition, there is a rampant bug that constantly makes your DLC items inaccessible. This can pop up at any time, from when you first boot the game to even happening during a loading screen. I've started matches with someone such as G.I. Joe selected as my character, and by the time the game actually starts, it reverts me back to one of the four baseline characters. It usually takes restarting the game several times in order to get your content back.
In terms of actual gameplay flaws, the battlefield is filled with invisible walls that your hero character just can't get around. There are few things worse than chasing down a group of enemies only to you have your character be stopped by and invisible forcefield. The areas that you can access are not clearly defined a lot of times; there are some places that enemies can move that you can’t. It really does't make a lot of sense. Plus, you have no jump ability, so even the smallest change in terrain height means the end of your path. I've also seen numerous instances of enemy troops spawning below the map, where you can just barely see the tips of their heads or their weapons sticking out from the ground. This makes their hit boxes incredibly small, almost impossible to target, a lot of times. When this happens, your turrets can't even detect the enemies when they are within range.
There are also issues with some of the animations, particularly He-Man's. It seems as if they were switched during the game’s production. If you switch to his axe, the animation shows him drawing a sword and he says “I'm prefer to use my sword,” but then he's magically holding an axe when you regain control. Just the opposite happens when you are switching back to your sword as the animation shows He-Man drawing his axe, which he already had in his hand, he mentions that he wants to use his axe and then again, magically, he has a sword in his hand at the end. It’s comically bad at times like this, and you can’t do anything but shake your head in disbelief that something like this made it to the final version of a game.
It’s really sad to see things like this cause the derailment of an otherwise fun experience. The game has a world of potential, but once things start breaking, like the things I mentioned, the experience slowly becomes unbearable. All of the fun and enjoyment is quickly sucked out and what remains is a buggy mess. Strangely though, as bad as things get, I kept going back in for more, hoping that none of these errors is triggered and I can enjoy reminiscing with my childhood heroes. It’s also disparaging to me that these, in the grand scheme of things, feel like they could be rectified with relative ease by the developers. We are in the digital age and it shouldn’t be that big of a deal to address these things via a title update or patch.
Sadly, I’m not sure that is going to happen. I’ve been waiting a few weeks for some sort of improvement with an update. I haven’t seen anything. Toy Soldiers: War Chest is an incredibly promising experience that ultimately shoots itself in the foot. The gameplay concepts are great and there are plenty of modes to enjoy, whether players are alone or with friends, online or off. There is an infrastructure for regular content updates via weekly missions and challenges, which could keep things fresh over time. However, unless these basic, technical problems are rectified, it will all be for nothing.
Toy Soldiers: War Chest is a great idea marred by unforgivable, technical flaws. Even with all of the problems that the game has, I still get enjoyment out of playing it, but it should be so much better.
* The product in this article was sent to us by the developer/company.
Guess who's back!!! If you have been here before, you know the basics: lifelong gamer, father, and of course, former certified news monkey. I still consider myself all of those things, just maybe not in the grand scale that I once did. I’ve been blogging on the industry for more than decade now, in some form or another. It wasn't until I landed here at Gaming Nexus that I really dove in head first. Now, writing about games has become what I do for fun (and sometimes work) and something I intend on doing until the day I die (in some form or another).
I'm a huge fan of just about everything you can interact with using a controller, no matter how old or new, good or bad. If you put it in front of me, I will play it (at least once).