Tiny Troopers Review: A PC Port Best Left at the Mobile Level
Tiny Troopers is a decent game, however the PC is not the proper place for this game.
Tiny Troopers comes to us by way of Iceberg Interactive and Kukouri Mobile Entertainment. The game tries to put a fun spin on the often gritty feeling of war. It seems that they almost pull off the aspect of sugar coating war until your enemy is laying in a pool of blood begging for life. When you first put yourself in the missions the game is a fun romp through but quickly can become a chore an repetitive. You will find yourself enjoying the game but cautious not to lose one of your men because it will make the game more difficult. Once a soldier is gone he is no longer usable making the game a bit more tedious at that point.
The game requires you to bring your tiny band of soldiers to face a variety of opposing forces including snipers, tanks, dudes with dynamite, and cowardly bastards who call down airstrikes on you. That’s just to name a few. You’re rewarded for each kill and objective accomplished with points that you then spend on weapon upgrades, deployable specialists, and a handful of call-downs which are accessible while the mission is underway. Essentially, it creates a sense of having a private defense contractor akin to Blackwater. Albeit a very adorable one.
The maps and environment start out simple with the enemies easier in the beginning. However, this changes quickly just a few levels into the game, at times, even frustratingly so. I attribute this mainly to one thing: it being practically a direct port from the mobile platforms means the only things changed were that the controls were tweaked to accommodate the lack of touchscreens on PCs. This leads the game to have levels where it’s a little too hard for its own good. Having played games like StarCraft a bit too much, I was a put off by my lack of ability to micromanage my guys. Perhaps a minor change in gameplay granting the ability to have units shoot in different directions would’ve made this game more worthy of taking up the CPU cycles of a PC gamer’s machine. Keep in mind that on a PC, or even a laptop, installed games tend to not be time-wasters. While this would be a fun game to have on your iPad while in a doctor’s waiting room or while stuck on board an airplane, there are much better, cheaper and even free games to take up your CPU time with.
That’s not to say this isn’t a good or fun game to play. It features lots of things that go boom, plenty of strategy required to navigate the maps and position troops for adequate cover, and a variety of fields of fire. There’s a tremendous amount of bloodshed along with high body counts in this game, either on OpFor or for friendly troops. You are also privy to your soldiers’ names and they get tougher as they survive through the missions. It’s very easy to get attached to them and I found myself being genuinely upset at the loss of a veteran soldier. However, the targeted demographic leaves me a little confused. With all of that going on, the game itself is cartoony in nature. There’s blood pooling on the ground amidst explosions and smoke. Enemy combatants are slowly dying (and no, you can’t put them out of their misery) in growing puddles of their own blood. Exactly who are we trying to get to play this game?
In truth, this is a good game with well-thought-out dynamics and a lot of fun factor and play value. However, the PC isn’t the proper platform for games such as this. It’s a time-waster, and a good one at that, but if PC gamers are going to play an RTS, there are better options on the market. While I understand the need to find new markets for a product to raise revenues, this game shouldn’t have been ported and should’ve stayed exactly where it was. It was already on the perfect platform for it and I just don’t see it making any waves on anyone’s desktop.
7/10
