With little fanfare, the folks over at Signal Studios released some DLC for one of the rare few tower defense style games I enjoy: Toy Soldiers: Cold War. Between fighting for Mother Russia in the Evil Empire DLC or saying “good morning” to Vietnam in the Napalm DLC, I am happy to have a reason to jump back in to Toy Soldiers: Cold War.
“Evil Empire” has you playing three new campaign missions that are probably the best out of the two DLC packs that Signal Studios released. I really had to use strategy more so than brute force in the missions. One of the new vehicle on the Russian side, The Hormone, is a beast against light armor and infantry. I would mainly use the chopper for air-to-air combat and stick with the tanks and turrets for ground forces. The Orbital Laser barrage is pointless to air targets so use it when a land heavy attack wave is coming. I had to laugh at myself for thinking the game was broken when the Orbital Laser went through the bombers i was trying to wipe out. It’s a minor annoyance and easily looked past. On the bad side, the final boss was a little easy to take down. The tanks somehow do a great deal of damage to the Super Tank and simply chasing behind it while shooting at it is all I did. Having the vehicles recharge faster than normal also made the boss fight child’s play.
“Napalm” places you in Vietnam for another three missions yet I couldn’t tell you what the 1st two missions were like. They were over in a flash for me. Either I got really good from playing Evil Empire or these missions were, for the lack of a better term, for babies. All I remember is that I used fully upgraded artillery turrets, aimed them at where the waves were coming out and let the A.I. take over. This gave me some time to eat my lunch so I guess I can be thankful for that.
Napalm did, however, find time to make me hate the new laser tanks in the final mission. No matter what I threw at them, the laser tanks would just keep on coming and in the process, destroy all of my level 3 upgraded turrets. Even when you get a laser tank of your very own to use it seems to take more shots than it should to bring them down. I was so focused on those abominations that the final boss was the least of my concerns. I experienced nothing but frustration with this mission and it brings the whole DLC pack down a notch.
The mini-games added to the DLC packs are just like the rest of them to me, play them once then never again. The whack-a-mole variant mini-game for the Evil Empire map has you controlling an artillery cannon and you have to shoot pigs instead of moles. The Hang Time mini-game is nothing more than seeing how many soldiers you can rescue before time runs out or if your chopper is destroyed. I can’t see how anyone had more than a minute of fun with any of the mini-games. I could be missing the point with them since that is probably why they were put in Toy Soldiers: Cold War.
On the online multiplayer side, I couldn’t get a game going that wasn’t riddled with lag so I can’t say for sure if the new multiplayer maps are any good. The new survival modes are very good indeed though. Instead of throwing new survival maps in the DLC, Signal Studios went ahead and added two new modes instead. For the Evil Empire DLC, you get Trauma mode. If you have no blatant disregard for your turrets and figure “I will just replace it if it dies. I have money to do so”, be prepared to lose.
In Trauma mode, every turret you place ticks health off your toy box. Since 20 is your health limit, you can see the importance of not only placing strategic turrets but also keeping them alive. I liked how Trauma mode made me think on my feet a lot more and second guess myself a lot. If you don’t want a “thinking man’s game”, Commando mode is here for you. Depending on what survival map you select, you have nothing but your commando barrage to take on the waves of enemies. This mode is so much fun. It never got old as I ran up to a wave of infantry and mowed them all down as my commando shouted cheesy one-liners. I had to adopt a stick-and-move strategy for the helicopters since their rockets do a lot of damage.
There are some hits and misses with each of the two DLC and really, if you want more Toy Soldiers: Cold War you should buy both, no question about it. For 400 Microsoft points each, that is pretty cheap for what you get in each DLC pack. If you must only get one of them, however, I feel Evil Empire has more of what the style of the Toy Soldiers’ series is about between the strategic campaign missions as well as Trauma mode.