Travel back to childhood with me as you revisit those little green army men you used to play with. Didn’t have any? Maybe your brother, sister, or one of your friends had some. And they would probably play all sorts of convoluted “army games” with them, wouldn’t they? Anywhere could become a battlefield as long as they had some of the quintessential plastic soldiers. The idea has spawned many a movie, cartoon, and video game. And not too long ago, the concept arrived on the Xbox Live Arcade in the form of Toy Soldiers. Fast forward to summer 2011, and we’ve been graced with Toy Soldiers: Cold War, the sequel to the brilliantly intuitive Toy Soldiers. Best described as an RTS meets FPS meets childhood, it’s a battle royale between toy soldiers, Howitzers, tanks, and…bug spray?
All posts in Xbox Live Arcade
Review: Toy Soldiers: Cold War
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Review: Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet
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I wasn’t a fan of Limbo. At best, it was a decent puzzle-platformer with some admittedly gory imagery, which is really the only aspect I enjoyed. The plot, endlessly debated by critics everywhere, was nothing to write home about in my opinion, and it bored me rather quickly. So upon the announcement of Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet, I braced myself for more of the same. Thankfully, aside from the mostly pitch-black environments (pops of color are much easier on the eyes) and wordless narrative, ISTP is much more of a peppier, action-oriented puzzler on the Xbox Live Arcade that I genuinely enjoyed my time with. And, at least to me, it’s much more unfriendly than Limbo.
Review: Warhammer 40,000: Kill Team
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The Warhammer 40K universe is home to plenty of tangling spiderwebs of plot, though to look at Warhammer 40,000: Kill Team, you wouldn’t know it. In fact, from the look of things to an outsider sitting in on a playthrough it would seem as though you’re a space marine sent to clear out an enormous spaceship teeming with Orks by any means necessary. This is peace through superior firepower, and how. With the holiday season carrying in Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine on a wave of other new releases, it’s obvious that Kill Team was tossed together in an effort to hype up the main breadwinner. Obvious how? It channels the isometric Alien Breed: Evolution series and all of the other arcade releases basking in its glow to provide a hollow dual-stick shooter that’s satisfying, but only in short bursts…like machine gun fire.
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Review: SEGA Rally Online Arcade
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Sega Rally Online Arcade retains the infamous “Game Over YEEAHH!” exclamation that plays upon completion of a race, but it just doesn’t sound the same. It’s not campy enough and didn’t make me giggle as much as the series’ previous incarnations, namely its first arcade appearance in 1995 with Sega Rally Championship, as well as subsequent iterations on the various Sega consoles since. This ran through my head during my first few moments with the game’s incredibly skimpy trial version, offering one track and one car, with a whopping one race built to entice players into buying. Did it entice me? Not so much, but it didn’t matter since I was keying in the review code.
Review: Beyond Good and Evil HD
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If you didn’t catch the daring adventures of Jade, Pey’J, and Agent Double H that graced the PlayStation 2 and its fellow 6th generation of gaming consoles almost ten years ago, nil desperandum. You needn’t dust off your trusty console and hit up Ebay just yet. If you’ve got an Xbox 360 and a few bucks to spare, you can dive into one of the best games that most people never touched in the here and now, all spiffed up in HD and paired with achievements to boot. That’s right – Beyond Good and Evil HD is all that you wanted and more.