Toy Soldiers HD Review

"Defend the Toy Box!"

Campaign

December 20, 2021 at 4:43pm
By Jason Stettner

This is a surprising return for the classic tower defense series, a franchise that I thoroughly enjoyed during the Xbox 360 era. It’s now returned, being slightly cleaned up for the modern era. This is a World War I focused toy soldiers experience where you can directly control and influence the battle. The soldiers will be facing off within a variety of battlegrounds based on the trench filled locales of Europe.

It’s definitely somewhat nostalgia, and perhaps at this point gritty and old school in design. It does hold up quite well gameplay wise, being just as fun now as it was in the past. You get a solid campaign that provides a decent length to it as you battle waves of enemies alongside the odd boss. This is all to defend your toy box which is under constant siege.

You’ll use a variety of turrets to defend the location, various extra vehicles and of course a little creativity. You can also battle against another player or two locally or in online multiplayer. Therefore it’s the complete package of this original game, just brought back into this modern era of gaming, a nice thing to see.

Gameplay

You’ll see an above ground perspective as you watch what’s going on. You are actively involved though being able to take control of your turrets and the odd vehicle that might be sitting around. If you’re really going all out, there might be the odd soldier you can jump into the perspective of. The vehicles you control range from planes to tanks. You can upgrade your turret options, repair them and even replace them if need be.

You can also rotate these turrets and may need to as bosses will be coming from all angles and moving about. The core mechanics all hold up, but the visuals were definitely lacking. This is just straight up a HD remastering so it does look somewhat rough on modern displays. It’s nice to have the 60fps option but the 1080p resolution looks really rough and quite jagged. I was a bit disappointed when it came to the visuals of the game, I really expected more.

The Conclusion

Toy Soldiers HD is the great return of a classic, it holds up well with just the visuals being a bit of a drawback. You get a healthy chunk of gameplay to enjoy and it’s just as wild as it’s always been. It really does bring back the nostalgia of playing this and the concept of making your toy box come to life.

I really hope that Cold War gets a similar treatment, which I believe it’s supposed to. That one was fun as well. Whatever the case, this is definitely a worthwhile experience and it may surprise you with just how fun it actually is.

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Toy Soldiers HD Review on Xbox Series X
Review Code Provided by Redner PR

Rating Overall: 7.1