Byte-sized reviews

Toy Soldiers
In a massive space that was almost completely devoid of any video games, Toy Soldiers was a nice surprise at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show. This unassuming little XBLA title takes the oft-ignored setting of the first World War and casts it into the world of child’s playthings—it’s basically WWI as re-enacted by large scale toy dioramas.

What separates Toy Soldiers from any number of other strategy games (aside from its plastic militia) is that it lets you take control of any units you choose to make. From tanks to anti-infantry to chemical weapon stations and AA installations, picking the unit of your choice is as easy as selecting them onscreen, at which point the camera swings down like a third-person shooter.

Needless to say, compared to the usual strategy of just selecting, managing and ordering units (á la most real-time strategy games) Toy Soldiers‘ hands-on approach is a lot of fun. It also helps to make what would otherwise be a somewhat monotonous design—essentially tower defense-style gameplay, where your only objective is defending against waves of enemies—more interesting and exciting.

It’s also pretty cool to see how closely the developers stuck to the real life conditions and set-ups of actual WWI battles (with a few exceptions, such as German prototypes of giant fictional tanks that were deemed too impractical for use), though this does lead to a somewhat unbalanced campaign as the war drags on and tanks enter the fray.

Toy Soldiers is definitely an entry-level strategy title, with its streamlined resource management (kill things to get cash, spend cash on new units and upgrades), but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t give this one a shot. Its colorful, unique aesthetic, arcade-style take on the RTS genre and ease of use are all good reasons to check out one of the best XBLA games I’ve played in some time.
 
Microsoft Game Studios
$15
4.5 out of 5

Mega Man 10
For those of you that remember old-school Mega Man on the NES, Capcom’s got another treat for you. Mega Man 10 follows in the footsteps of 2008’s Mega Man 9, which was intentionally “de-made” as an 8-bit game as homage to the classic series.

If you remember the series fondly because of its challenging, timing-and-memorization based gameplay, you’ll feel right at home with MM10. If you thought MM9, or any of its predecessors for that matter, was too hard, you’ll probably end up crying like a little bitch after playing this one, too. It may be 2010, but MM10 is as punishingly old school as it gets.

However, compared to the blue bomber’s last outing, there have been a few (minor) changes made. First up, there’s an easy mode, for the first time ever.

Call it a concession to the changing (read: easier) face of game design these days, but this time around you actually have the option to play a Mega Man game where damn near every deadly spike or hole is covered with a platform, making the game, well, pretty easy.

There are also the prerequisite lesser enemies and Mega Man can take more punishment before he dies. Clearly, none of the masochistic pleasure you get from the series can be derived from this mode.

The other major addition is the option to play as Proto Man, Mega Man’s shield-wielding brother from the get-go (rather than as downloadable content). He’s basically the same, except he can deflect bullets when jumping and is twice as vulnerable as his brother. That’s pretty much it.

The rest of the game is exactly how you’d expect: a hell of a lot of treacherous, borderline-sadistic level design, tough enemies and tougher bosses (though it’s slightly easier than MM9).

If you like this sort of thing, you’ll love it, but the old-school factor will have you re-playing levels over and over (and over) before you can get through them unscathed—and that’s not even counting the game’s ridiculous number of bosses.

Capcom
PSN, XBLA, WiiWare
$10
4 out of 5