If you were a little boy growing up in the seventies or eighties then you will know all about toy soldiers. These little green plastic G.I. Joes were the dedicated men that stood vigil over you from the vantage point of the bookshelf and bedside table while you slept soundly at night, safe in the knowledge that Major Gore and General Mayhem would make short work of any approaching night terrors. Buried inside most of our repressed childhoods is that yearning for one last chance to unleash John Rambo against the Soviet armada in one final, grand, epic showdown to determine whose nukes are truly bigger. Thanks to the men at Signal Studios we can all now get one more chance to unlease our inner child without looking like total fruitcakes in the process - Toy Soldiers: Cold War is here and it’s all about plastic toy soldiers!

Toy Soldiers: Cold War is the sequel to the action/strategy game, Toy Soldiers, and features 1980’s-era military technology set around the classic escalation of military aggression between the United States and the USSR.

Are you ready for a war?

In terms of gameplay, Toy Soldiers is a mix between tower defence and third-person arcade action. The objective of each level is for players to defend their toybox from an onslaught of invading Soviet toys sent in a series of waves. Money is earned for destroying enemy units which can then be spent on placing and managing turrets. Each turret is unique in its weaponry, its range, its rate of fire and its effectiveness against certain types of enemies. Simply upgrading a turret will not necessarily improve the turret’s effectiveness across the board as there will sometimes be drawbacks in adjusting the weaponry (for example, upgrading an anti-tank turret improves its rate of fire but removes the missile cam used to control the missiles), so accumulating resources to broadly upgrade is not necessarily a guaranteed ticket to victory.

Third-person action is blended in by allowing players to take control of turrets or radio-controlled vehicles. In the case of the turrets, killstreaks produce combo bonuses which give bigger money rewards for defeating enemies and unlock more powerful abilities, including special one-time attacks called Barrages. The Barrage reward varies randomly from airstrikes, Nukes, or even bringing in the Army’s Best Man - an invincible commando action figure with a red head band and touting an M60 in one hand and a bazooka in the other. Destroying a Red Star unit will also produce a Lucky Barrage without the need for a combo.

Vehicles are battery powered mobile units. When a vehicle’s batteries run dry the vehicle will break, but extra battery power can be obtained either by collecting floating battery icons or returning to a recharge stand to extend a vehicle’s battery life. Playable vehicles range from F-14 Tomcats through to M1 Abrams and AC-130 gunships.

Life can be a sandpit. Life is a short trip. The music’s for the plastic man.

Each level is essentially a diorama across which the Soviet invasion force must proceed towards your toybox base. Map settings vary from deserts and jungles to real world locations such as the streets of Paris and the National Mall in DC. The layout of the levels makes the entire battlefield look and feel ‘real’ (from a toy’s perspective), while it’s still quite obvious to see that it’s been set up in a child’s bedroom. Everything in the level is made from toys and is fully destructible.

Cold War’s arsenal of turrets is not particularly large - there are six basic turrets, all of which can be ‘upgraded’ but, as alluded to before, upgrades aren’t always improvements. The turrets available include a Machine Gun turret (ideal for light infantry), a Mortar turret (effective against targets behind walls), and an Anti Air (the only effective air defence against the high-speed jet fighters and long-range bombers).

Turrets not only differ in their arsenal but also in their size and placement. Anti Air and Artillery turrets require larger build sites to the rest and this placement dilemma adds an interesting element to base strategy. You may find yourself in dire need of more Anti Tank defences but have to make a decision between replacing your Anti Air missile battery with an Anti Tank bunker knowing full well that the next wave is a squadron of MiG-23’s. The pressure and responsibility of being a battle commander is not lost even when your troops are plastic.

With the right amount of skill players can turn a turret into ad hoc alternative weaponry. For example, a carefully aimed Mortar can be used to take out aircraft and a smartly fired Anti Air could devastate an infantry brigade in the distance. If left to their own devices, the AI can sometimes become trigger happy and focus on the wrong targets, which is by design and not a fault in order to encourage more player involvement ‘on the ground.’

I want to be…forever young!!

Game modes in Cold War include campaign mode, survival, mini games, and head-to-head multiplayer.

In campaign mode players go through a series of combat scenarios as the Cold War slowly heats up between USA and the USSR. The campaign includes some uniquely Soviet boss battles en route to the grand finale. Players have the option of a Wavelist Rewind which rewinds back to previously completed waves in a level, allowing you to rethink your strategy.

Survival mode tests how long you can survive against endless waves of enemies and offers three flavours - classic, lockdown, and hardcore. The mini-games are nothing more than a bit of idle distraction from the main battle but they can become a bit addictive in their own right as you compete against your friends’ scores and the global leaderboard.

Although the art of turret defence can begin to feel somewhat monotonous after some period of playing, the inclusion of multiplayer in Cold War helps to keep things fresh. Players can join forces and play the entire Campaign or Survival in co-op via split-screen or over Xbox LIVE. Co-op is handled very well, with each player holding their own pool of resources for building and managing turrets while the actual gameplay remains unchanged. As with most games, playing through the campaign in co-op mode is considerably more entertaining than going solo.

No Cold War game would be complete without the option of taking on the USA with the forces of Mother Russia, and in Toy Soldiers: Cold War there is a Versus head-to-head multiplayer mode for just this occasion. Here, the first player to overwhelm their opponent will claim victory. Standard waves are replaced with endless waves of infantry while Offensive Waves can be purchased to swiftly take out your opponent. Contested build sites cannot be used until captured by Special Forces (Ivan or Rambo) and Barrages can be purchased at a high price while vehicles must be purchased from a depot - there are no free replacements in Versus!

I love the smell of plastic in the morning!

Toy Soldiers: Cold War is a very entertaining action/strategy game with a lot of personality and hours of fun on offer. From the humourous plastic soldier antics to the strangely familiar battle cries of an even more strangely familiar 80s action hero, almost everything in Toy Soldiers is done with a bit of tongue in cheek. The graphics are well put together and the gameplay is simple enough to get used to, while still providing some deeper strategic options. Whenever the game threatens to become monotonous something new is introduced to liven things up and when all the dust finally settles after an onslaught of indiscriminate warfare, the multiplayer modes and mini-games will offer up even more entertaining alternatives. The game is mired by some slow loading times and an apparent leaderboard hack, but is otherwise a tremendously fun - and clean - action strategy game. Tower defence games are prone to becoming repetitive but there’s enough variety in Cold War to alleviate this bugbear and breathe life into those little green men’s plastic lungs. Definitely a worthwhile game, especially if you’ve ever been fond of toy soldiers or tower defence games.

The Good: Good, clean fun; multiplayer adds a new dimension of entertainment and replay; varied and exciting levels and mini-games
The Bad: Only good in smaller doses - can suffer from periods of monotony; unnecessarily slow loading times

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