As a child, I was not a fan of playing war. Small soldiers were therefore not for me, preferring to play with MASKs, GI Joe, Visionnaries, Dragon Ball Z, Saint Seiya and video games. And there, I'm taking advantage of your wondering what I'm talking about, to simply whisper a "Barbie doll" to you. You don't know it, reader, but you have just suffered a crushing strategic defeat, I won the war by interfering in your subconscious to finish you off with a surprise flick... Huh? I don't have pants...?
*BOOM*
Well done soldier. You turned my own strategy of surprise against myself. For the trouble, I'm going to tell you about the game of the day: Toy Soldiers HD.
How come it's not a real reward and I would still have talked about it anyway? Do you have any proof, you little impertinent? No, so shut up and listen to what a video game veteran like me has to teach you on the subject!
Toy Soldier is a Tower Defense game in which your little plastic soldiers from the First World War come to life during twenty campaign missions. The goal, like any self-respecting game of this genre, is to prevent the opposing waves from reaching your base, here your toy box. Simple, concise, effective as a concept for a genre that has been on the rise for a few years on Smartphones and PCs, but is still quite shy on consoles. As proof, Toy Soldiers HD is not an original game, but an HD reissue of the game originally released on Xbox Live Arcade (aka, the Xbox 360's fully digital indie games label). I barely touched the original version. My minister's schedule at the time meant that I didn't have a second to myself to play games that I wasn't testing. But to be honest, if I remember playing it for 5 minutes, I have no memory of what I thought of it at the time. So don't expect the game of the 7 differences, but rather a fresh vision of this game... which I wouldn't really have liked to discover in fact. Not that the game isn't bad or that the HD paint job is bad, but because it has some shortcomings on some gameplay mechanics that unfortunately aren't forgiving. And curiously, these are not the shortcomings specific to any Tower Defense, but rather the little something extra that Toy Soldiers tries to bring.
You see, in classic Tower Defense you put down your "towers" and let them clean up, only upgrading them, repairing them if necessary, selling them in favor of something more efficient, depending on the finance earned when your towers kill enemies. The rest is done automatically with your towers attacking the first targets in priority or, depending on the game, the priorities you put. But in Toy Soldier, rather than prioritizing towers, you can directly take control of them. The game then switches to third person view, thus replacing the 3/4 view from above (there is also a so-called strategic camera which is an overall plan of the battlefield seen from above) and you direct your shots as in any GST. Except that the maneuverability with the joystick is counter intuitive, since remaining permanently behind the turret, targeting will be done with the left joystick. Very unsettling to have to erase the habits of decades of third-person action games. And of course, there is no possibility of changing options in the menu which is satisfied with the bare minimum.
But either: we end up getting used to it. Hardly, but the shot finally takes after a few hours. The second other big problem will not be solved so easily, because it is also related to the gameplay, whereas it could also have been solved in the options, especially since many games offer this solution. But before citing it, an applied example is in order. In the game, in addition to your towers, you will sometimes have characters or infrastructures already deployed on the field. Characters like the cameraman who, taking possession of it, will launch an automated race towards the opposing base to film the conflict in a grain of period image that you will have the opportunity to watch in real time, or even, and this is the concern that I want to highlight: watchtowers. These last precision units house snipers whose place you can take to use their ranged skills. Unfortunately, in the skin of this type of units, do not ask me why, I have no idea, it is totally unplayable, because the sensitivity in this mode is absolutely not suitable for playing with a gamepad, but a mouse and as I said above: impossible to adjust this sensitivity in the options. So using what could have been a valuable asset turns into a vile curse on the joysticks. As a result, we quickly abandon the campaign in favor of the online mode, hoping to be able to have fun with friends and complete strangers.
Unfortunately this test will not talk about online, since since the release (almost 2 weeks ago), the latter is inaccessible on Xbox (version tested) due to a technical problem still not corrected at the time of writing. these lines.
However, it works on other media.
- Xbox (version testée Xbox One)
- PlayStation
- Steam
