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Check this OUT! Someone made a game for all of us!

http://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/t/toysoldiersxbla/

the Trailer is worth a watch.

http://www.xbox.com/NR/rdonlyres/50AFF2E3-A331-41D9-9E47-37AFACD5FB33/0/vidToySoldiers03hi.asx

That actually looks pretty cool!

I dont play, just paint, but i'd give it a go... Looking forward to seeing what real tabletop gamers have to say about it when it is out.

Interesting.

I'm not sure how I feel about this.

I mean, the point of playing miniature games is that you're capturing the idea of playing a battle...which is the same thing video games do, but in a different way, as they allow you to recreate stuff virtually (as opposed to in your imagination as with mini games).

So to make a video game about a toy soldier game just seems...weird. Why not just make the soldier game without the 'toy' part?

It just seems as strange as if someone made a miniature game about, say, spaceship combat, but you also had to have a miniature of a guy playing the video game of the space combat game.

I just don't know what that extra 'layer' adds...I'll have to wait and see I guess.

It's sort of like RC car video games. Pretend to play with pretend cars?

I think it would be a game I would play

Seems like they're taking the Army Men concept and using it on "historical" toys.

That looks sweet I might have to get that.

Kid_Kyoto wrote:It's sort of like RC car video games. Pretend to play with pretend cars?

And I always thought that was bid odd too...although to be honest I did play that video game as a kid. But at least with RC cars they do drive in real life and handle differently, so I guess there is *some* reason to theoretically simulate the 'sport' of RC car driving.

With mini games, since I spend so much time imaging how the battle would look in 'real life' (i.e. the cinema of my imagination) it seems counter-intuitive to have a game that purposely eschews that immersive element to dwell on the fact that you're playing a 'miniatures' game. It just seems backwards to me!

Breotan wrote:Seems like they're taking the Army Men concept and using it on "historical" toys.

That's what I thought too. Considering I absolutely loved those games, I'd get this if I had a 360.

yakface wrote:
Interesting.

I'm not sure how I feel about this.

I mean, the point of playing miniature games is that you're capturing the idea of playing a battle...which is the same thing video games do, but in a different way, as they allow you to recreate stuff virtually (as opposed to in your imagination as with mini games).

So to make a video game about a toy soldier game just seems...weird. Why not just make the soldier game without the 'toy' part?

It just seems as strange as if someone made a miniature game about, say, spaceship combat, but you also had to have a miniature of a guy playing the video game of the space combat game.

I just don't know what that extra 'layer' adds...I'll have to wait and see I guess.

I'll tell you what I enjoy. As with the Army men games, I really love the toy nature of the games because of the potential terrain types out there. One of my favorite battlefields for Army Men was playing in the play room. Scattered toys, toy chests, chairs, all sorts of cool things to fight over. I'm hoping this game includes something similar beyond the model train style battlefields.

Wow, that looks so good imho! I am totally going to get it...

Graphics wise WOW that was amazing. I was just saying to my coworkers how I used to get excited over mario when it first cam out in the 80's I think? Now they have stuff like this and WOW. Though it is definately early WW!(very early) hence were my historical side has a problem with it. Tanks didn't come out for several more years. The reason it is early WW1 because...NO TRENCHES!!!!

It's out on X-Box? That doesn't make sense.

yakface wrote:
Interesting.

I'm not sure how I feel about this.

I mean, the point of playing miniature games is that you're capturing the idea of playing a battle...which is the same thing video games do, but in a different way, as they allow you to recreate stuff virtually (as opposed to in your imagination as with mini games).

So to make a video game about a toy soldier game just seems...weird. Why not just make the soldier game without the 'toy' part?

It just seems as strange as if someone made a miniature game about, say, spaceship combat, but you also had to have a miniature of a guy playing the video game of the space combat game.

I just don't know what that extra 'layer' adds...I'll have to wait and see I guess.

Well this is nothing more, than having say, Monopoly as a computer game, or poker or even Vassal. If the concept of playing these games with with real objects, be it dice, minis, cards or whatnot, or is it playing something you like just with other people be it online with stuff you enjoy. Now imagine if there is a game that you can play 40K. Is that going to be bad? At least this way, you will have every mini and not worry about buying everything, and they will already be assembled and painted, so all you have to do is paint.

Also you there will be no reason to have YMDC because you have to play by what is made so no more the rules go this way or that way. It will be RPTW 'rules played this way'.

Isn't this a $10 game, though? Seems good for those times when you're tired and don't have the mental energy for anything miniature-esque.

As for the RC car game comparison, I spent many an hour playing ReVolt, which is a fantastic game. It adds a little bit (a la MarioKart powerups) that you couldn't do in real life, and the tracks would be impossible in real life as well (the camera followed the car, and you'd drive through pipes, around corners, etc). I don't think that a game like this could add that extra bit of "pop", but I'll probably buy it anyway.

I think one of the things I like most about warhammer is the strategic movement involved on a game board. It's different from something like a shooter game, where you're just taking a small part in a larger conflict, or even a RTS, where you're controlling everything but usually in a larger space.

I like the idea of a 6' x 4' type area where I can bring in reinforcements, move up the flank, etc. It's one of the things I love about warhammer, and it looks like this game captures it well.

It looks like it comes out for download on the Xbox in about 5 days (Wednesday) . For $12 I think that's awesome!

This thing looks friggin sweeeet.

I only watched the trailer (work computer wont load pics for some reason) but other than the fact that the games seem to occur in rooms containing "battle boxes" I don't see how these resemble miniatures. They look just like any other world war x RTS soldiers.

But it does look kinda cool. Graphics are eh IMHO. Guess I can't expect the best out of every new game. Hell I was dissapointed when the sequel to my favorite game EVAR Bioshock 2 looked almost the same as the original. Still looks good... but they barely updated it. Oh wait I'm rambling...

Glad to see so much positive response! DakkaDakka clan, anyone?

Johnny we hardly knew ya!


This game doesn't look like it goes to the extream of fighting off the table and under the bed and shooting at the cat, but it's still pretty funny looking.

Damn, I wish Marx still was in buisness. I really miss those bad ass sets they used to have like Fort Apache, Guns of NAverone, or Porkchop Hill.

That game makes me want to go out and get an assload of 1/72 scale and get to the pew-pew noises.


for the kills!!!

I will only buy this if Gwar writes the manual. No problems with rules .

I found a preview for the game- there aren't too many out there, but it definitely speaks very positively of it! For $12 with 2 campaigns, multiple online modes, as well as split screen, I think this looks like a steal...

http://www.cheatcc.com/xbox360/rev/toysoldierspreview.html

Toy Soldiers Hands-On Preview
-------------------------------------------------------------
A Child's Battlefield
-------------------------------------------------------------
by Steve Haske
January 18, 2010 - When it comes to historical time periods being represented in games, the first thing everyone thinks about is the second World War. And really, it's impossible, or damn near impossible not to-there's probably more games about killing Nazis in bombed out European villages or killing Japanese on the bloody shores of the Pacific islands than there are first-person shooters, cover shooters, and Wii shovelware titles combined. But, what about the "war to end all wars"? How many games can you think of with a WWI setting?

In any case, whatever number you happened to come up with (if any) is a much, much smaller number. And while that's not going to change anytime soon, it isn't stopping Microsoft Game Studio from releasing Toy Soliders, a new WWI-themed strategic war game. The premise behind the name comes from the fact that you're not actually fighting a real war with real men (though the game's levels are all modeled after actual WWI battles), but one made up of old-style toys and dioramas that you might have found in a child's bedroom in less contemporary times. I was able to experience the game hands-on at CES, and what I came back with were impressions of one of the best looking and unique XBLA games in recent memory.

The developers at Signal Studios are calling Toy Soliders an action strategy game, but in reality it's more of a hands-on approach to the tower defense genre (and a damn pretty one at that). Normally this isn't a genre I gravitate towards, because sedentary gameplay is usually, well, pretty boring. Not so with Toy Soliders. Taking command of an army of plastic subordinates, I went about arranging my defenses, preparing for German troops to invade my territory. Setting up placements in the game is easy. Each map has a number of pre-made spaces where you can set up AA guns, mortars, anti-infantry machine guns, sniper towers, barbed wire obstacles-even entrenched units that spray enemies with poison gas.

Units are placed by picking a free space and selecting which type of child's killspawn you want from a pop-up wheel menu. As soon as they're spawned (the countdown of which is stylishly presented as a hands moving on a period clock), AI will take over and start attacking the enemy. Aside from defensive placements, there's also a host of vehicles you can use to turn the tide of battle in your favor, although I only saw cavalry troops, zeppelins, a bi-plane and the theoretical Tsar tank, a two-wheeled artillery (it actually just looks like a giant cannon) that existed in the real war, albeit in blueprint form only. Any units you want to add to your battlefield cost money, which is earned from destroying the enemy; peppering a group of charging infantry with machine gun fire yielded small dollar amounts per hit. This profitable destruction is par for the course in this game. The final game will have over 50 units total.

Now, here's where it gets interesting: at any point you can manually go in and control any unit you want. While the default camera offers a bird's eye view of the action, selecting a unit zooms in, making the game control like a more typical action game. This allows you to manually man an anti-aircraft gun, spray down or gas enemy infantry, fire mortars (using an adjustable trajectory), hop in a bi-plane and spit machine gun fire at troops across enemy lines, or engage in some first-person sniping. Aside from being a lot of fun-I particularly enjoyed using the mortars (which features a shellcam that lets you follow your path of destruction across a map) and the sniper tower-there are also strategic advantages to manually controlling your units, like your soldiers delivering a faster rate of fire or reloading speeds. There's no penalty for switching between units, so taking care of whatever task your army needs to maintain the defensive only takes a few minutes to learn. As with any strategy game, however, units all have measured strengths and weaknesses against each other, meaning that you'll have to think carefully about which particular strategy will work best in any given situation.

Toy Soldiers' single-player campaign will offer 24 missions, with twelve afforded to both British and German campaigns. On the multiplayer side, the game will have local two-player split-screen matches, head-to-head, attack-and-defend matches online, and leaderboards. Overall, Toy Soldiers was one of the best surprises of CES, both for its unique approach to military strategy as well as its great aesthetic (not to mention the game's gorgeous visuals-this is an XBLA game?). It just goes to show that sometimes the best things do come in small packages.

By Steve Haske
CCC Freelance Writer

it's $15 IIRC from an xbox email.

too bad you have to download it. id probably pick it up otherwise

Really? It's listed as 1200 Xbox points, whatever that comes out to.

If you were going to get a CD of this in a package, it'd be nowhere near that!

I'm stoked

Too bad I'm too stingy to pay for gold

Kid_Kyoto wrote:It's sort of like RC car video games. Pretend to play with pretend cars?

Actual RC cars are great fun to drive. Awesome!

RiTides wrote:Really? It's listed as 1200 Xbox points, whatever that comes out to.

If you were going to get a CD of this in a package, it'd be nowhere near that!

I'm stoked

yup, 400pts = $5 US with microsoft's screwy scale.

Oh... lol! Good to know

CrazyThang wrote:Too bad I'm too stingy to pay for gold

Too bad you don't need gold to download it.