Toy Soldiers (XBLA 2010)

[runam0k]

Shown at TGS. Quite a way off but looks awesome.

While it has become an extremely popular style of game over the last few years, tower defense titles have always struck me as a boring concept, personally. Perhaps it's my penchant for firing weapons at moving targets in first-person, but I can't really articulate my lack of enthusiasm for the strategy-style gameplay.

My initial reaction to Toy Soldiers -- a tower defense game in a World War I setting -- in a behind-closed-doors Microsoft demo? Snore. Imagine my surprise, then, that I soon got genuinely excited to play the game when it lands sometime next year.

At its core, Toy Soldiers is another tower defense title. What makes Toy Soldiers different is that players aren't limited to sitting back and watching their tactical decisions come to life. While other tower defense titles slow down interactivity as enemy waves approach, Toy Soldiers allows gamers to take control of defensive emplacements.

During our demo, Xbox Live Arcade business manager Scott Austin showed off how players can place a sniper tower within the world as a defensive choke-point and quickly take control of the soldiers within -- effectively turning the tower defense title into a first-person shooter. Austin later took control of a landed aircraft labeled "Red Baron," flying through the fully 3D world and attacking incoming waves with the plane's machine guns. As enemies are destroyed and a wave has been defeated, players earn money, allowing them to purchase new toys to add to the chaos.

While Toy Soldiers is inspired by the First Great War, the actual setting of the game is situated in someone's home. The game essentially takes place on a living, breathing diorama. As Austin flew the Red Baron through the world we were able to spot the limits of the diorama's backdrop and even some household furniture. It's a unique way developer Signal Studios is able to justify the world's size -- which is still quite impressive and detailed for a tower defense title.

Sadly, our Toy Soldiers demo was hands-off and short. But from what we've seen, Signal Studios has a unique approach to a tried-and-true formula. Hopefully the game will be as fun to play as it was to watch when it lands on Xbox Live Arcade in 2010.

TGS 2009: Impressions: Toy Soldiers (XBLA)

Video: http://xbox360.ign.com/dor/objects/3...rs_flying.html

Video 2: http://www.gametrailers.com/video/tg...soldiers/56974

[solid]

Only just seen the video of this loks to be great looking and fun game.Cant belive its 2010 release whish it was sooner.

Reminds me of the toy type game from he dreamcast (toy commander? ) crossed with company of heores.

[gEELOVER]

SP & MP vids and such

Toy Soldiers Video Game, Singleplayer Gameplay HD | Game Trailers & Videos | GameTrailers.com

Toy Soldiers Video Game, Multiplayer Gameplay HD | Game Trailers & Videos | GameTrailers.com

looks alreet

[solid]

Nice cheers for them vids was hoping to see or hear something about this soon .

[solid]

Is there a release date for this yet ?

[Tetlee]

Originally Posted by solid

Is there a release date for this yet ?

There is now...

Ken Lobb, a creative director for Microsoft Game Studios, gave us a little more insight into the Toy Soldiers: Match Defense game that’ll be launching on Facebook on Friday. It will support and cross-promote the Xbox Live Arcade title, which hits on March 3 as the first entry in the “Block Party” promotion, but there’s also some connectivity between them.

At today’s X10 showcase in San Francisco, Lobb told TeamXbox that Toy Soldiers: Match Defense is “a Match-3 game with tower defense elements.” This has similarities to how Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords uses the Match-3 format as the main gameplay mechanic in a deep RPG, while Namco Bandai’s Gyromancer uses the Bejeweled Twist-style board to drive the RPG in that XBLA game.

Lobb said that the Facebook and XBLA versions of Toy Soldiers will be standalone games, which will both center on the “meta war” at the center of the Toy Soldiers story. There are a number of connection points in the XBLA version, such as the appearance of a pointer to the Facebook game from the XBLA game’s title screen. Additionally, Lobb said that you’ll be able to “monitor the war”—and how the Facebook game influences it—from the XBLA game, while being able to see XBLA scores from the Facebook app.

Even more exciting, though, is Lobb’s statement that you’ll be able to “earn a buff” in Toy Soldiers if you’re active in both games. Much like how owning the Wolfenstein XBLA added gold to your coffers in the Wolfenstein boxed release, it’s interesting that you’ll be able to receive a benefit in the XBLA title for playing on Facebook.

That’s all the info we have now, but you can count on TeamXbox bringing you new details as we get them leading up to Toy Soldiers’ March 3 release, as well as tomorrow’s appearance of Toy Soldiers: Match Defense on Facebook.

Not long to wait then, hope it's 800 rather than 1200 points as 800 is all I have left now

[EDIT]It has been confirmed as 1200 points

Might have to finally sign back into facebook at give that version a look too

[Rorifett]

1200 is the new 800 isn't it? Why've my wages not gone up 50% to compensate for the increase in arcade games?!!?! This does look like good fun though, really like the idea of an RTS/TD/FPS combined, there was a free online game on PC which had one player as the RTS controller and everyone else as FPS players, was good fun if you had a good controller putting in the relevant buildings etc that you could build a good base from. Wish I could remember the name, will do a search in a second.

It was called Savage.

But anyways, this looks good, again like so many other (as in, all) 1200 point games I'm gonna wait and see if they get reduced by a third before taking the plunge, if it doesn't drop then maybe just do without the games... Until I'm drinking and like oooooohh new shiny!

[LittleNose]

Originally Posted by Rorifett

1200 is the new 800 isn't it?

yeah, this is how I see it too... and for me it's just a little too much especially when I can pick up recently released games like Bayonetta for less than the price of two 1200 pt games. Plus the retail game I can resell once finished

[DJSigma]

1200 points works out to be about £8.50 if you buy pre-paid cards. I don't think that's a bad price for a lot of these games, considering the quality has risen rapidly over the last year or two, mostly due to the increase of the maximum size of the games (now 2 GB). We're seeing quite a lot of good games get a price reduction as part of the deal of the week too.

Here's the prices of the last 30 games to hit XBLA: -

400 MS Points - 1
800 MS Points - 19
1200 MS Points - 9
1600 MS Points - 1

So 800 is still the most common price by some way. I'm sure that will change over time of course, but then if the quality of the games goes up, I'm not complaining.

[Rorifett]

Just out of interest (an laziness on my behalf to not go check! Lol) what's the price been of the last 10 releases? or last 15 even? Just thinking it's been a mighty long time since I saw a game released at 400 points so going by the last 30 games might be giving XBLA a bit too long of a timescale to properly 'define' what the standard looking price of games are.

Don't get me wrong, I know that £8.50 for a lot of these games is 'worth' it but there are also a fair few stinkers which are going to be coming through which will have the 1200 price tag slapped on them because this is the norm, regardless of quality/development time.

The price of points seems to have gone up to 2100 points having an 'rrp/srp' of £19.99 (granted not all shops are selling at this price) but to make the points themself cost more and then to push the price of the games up 50% (no small increase, massive leap in price) is only hitting us, the consumers, twice as hard.

It's like MS' very own government VAT on Petrol, you're giving them profit when buying the points then giving them profit when you use the points to purchase a game/DLC. Win Win for them... Not quite sure what it is for us, not lose/lose as we gain games but certainly not a system I appreciate.

[DJSigma]

The last 10: -

Darwinia+ - 1200
Chime - 400
KrissX - 800
Death By Cube - 800
Vandal Hearts: Flames of Judgement - 1200
Serious Sam HD - 1200
Matt Hazard: Blood, Bath & Beyond - 1200
Polar Panic - 800
0 Day Attack On Earth - 1200
Alien Breed Evolution Episode 1 - 800

So half of them are 1200 there, but over the next 4 weeks there are 3 800 point games and 1 1200 point.

I wouldn't say that the RRP of the points really makes any difference. 2100 MS Points costs £17.85 when bought through the console/Marketplace site so anyone that pays any more than that is daft, lol. I usually pay ~15 quid.

[LittleNose]

wow, so the only 400 pts release for the last 30 releases was 'Chime'. Which is the only game with proceeds to charity too.

Although I haven't demo'd all the others, I know I would only consider buying the 800 pts games if they were 400 pts (deal of the week maybe). Alien Breed maybe an exception, but it's "episode 1", so say 3 episodes are released, that's ~£20 that you unable sell second hand after you're finished, no ta

The only game on that list that i'd consider paying full whack for is Darwinia+, but unfortunately as I have it on PC, i'm not going to do that.

A big part of the digital distribution for me is the inability to resell games once finished. I take this into account when making any purchase (i.e. buy a new mobile phone, sell the old one). For the most part I find that the MS 'marketplace' is overpriced (including DLC, and don't get me started on avatars items)

If it wasn't for the 'deals of the week' making things priced more acceptably, I'd not have bought much on XBLA at all. The DotW means that although I've bought a few games that have only entertained me for an hour or two, I didn't mind the price they were picked up at, as there have also been a few good surprises.

[DJSigma]

Check out the list of XBLA games here: -

List of Xbox Live Arcade games - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

If you sort the list by the price column and check out all the 400 point games, the vast majority are just rehashed old titles like Sonic the Hedgehog, Missile Command, Asteroids, Tempest, Time Pilot and so on. Personally I would rather have 800/1200 point games than more games like that.

There are definitely 1200 point games that should really have been 800 points though, and there are other games (0 Day Attack on Earth, for example) that would have been better off not existing at all.

[Tetlee]

*should really be a discussion for a seperate thread but just to add my 2ps worth

Now I was always someone totally against 1200 point games and didn't cave in to buying one for some time(I think Trials HD was my first).

However it has to be said the standard of quite a few 1200 point titles has really been raised to a new level and for me stand tall against many retail games in terms of playability.

I tend to grab my 2100 point cards at around £15(always wait for offers on them), that makes the 1200 point games work out at around £7.00. While they may not have resale value, taking into account they're a day one purchase, by the time I get bored of them I think a release day bought retail game would have easily lost at least that value by the time I resell them.

So I guess I've changed my outlook on 1200 point XBLA games, as long as I consider them worth the asking(many of which I do not), then I don't mind paying for them, they're worth the £7.00 to me and alot of them would never exist on disk form(Trials, Darwinia+, Vandal Hearts: FoJ and Shadow Complex as good examples).

As for the subject of this thread, I'll wait until the demo before I consider if Toy Soldiers is worth 1200 points or not, I have a feeling it will be, although I'll have to wait until I can afford another points card

[Earlyflash]

Sorry to be a pedant, but... For a 1200 point game to be £7.00, you need to be buying your 2100 point cards at £12.25.

At £15/2100 pts, a 1200pt game is £8.57

Again, sorry for the pedantry.