Ever since Call of Duty was unleashed into the hands of every 12 year old in the nation, kids have been under the illusion that they could handle themselves in battle. They may well be endlessly revising and researching from the comfort of their Ben 10 duvet, however on the streets where can they turn to refine their war strategies? If only there was a way they could still conduct special ops warfare on the bus, in the park, or on a Vita perhaps … watch out! Care package inbound!
Tiny Troopers: Joint Ops is a port of 2 rather successful mobile games, which collectively went to sell over 11 million copies, that now finds itself on the Playstation Vita. Billed as an action packed, twin stick arcade shooter, Tiny Troopers gives you control of your very own band of merry men and guide them through perilous terrain in order to reach an extraction point. As it combines both Tiny Troopers 1 & 2, you can thus expect 2 separate campaigns to play through, each with their own unique set of challenging maps to get stuck into. What war game these days is complete without a zombie killing side quest, which is exactly why you can also expect to take down a barrage of undead terrorists in this fast paced frantic fight for survival to take your attention away from the perils of modern warfare. Playable with both analog sticks and touchscreen, Joint Ops gives players the choice of how to approach each map. With around 7 hours of promised content to keep you busy, it serves as the perfect solution for those twiddling thumbs, so lets crack on.
As good as Tiny Troopers was for a mobile game, the smaller screen often clashed with my chunky thumbs, however incorporated onto the Vita its a much easier play. With the larger screen there’s more room to stretch those fingers out, and it appears the Vita has also improved the accuracy of your troopers’ attacks, meaning their are no issues this time with ‘misfiring’ your weapons, or targeting trees opposed to enemies. Taking the game further than on your mobile is the Vita’s dual analog sticks, which for Tiny Troopers is a perfect inclusion and asset; never before has this game been so accessible and simple to play. The game does encourage you to use both sticks and screen simultaneously which can be tricky to master, but once you get the knack of using your ‘touch applied’ grenades and airstrikes in conjunction with your stick lead movement, you’ll be wading through the battlefield in no time.
Visually Tiny Troopers is presented in a very cute cartoony manner, which won’t be receiving any global critical acclaim any time soon, but it does accommodate the game rather well. It’s a more acceptable look for a mobile game, but it would have been nice perhaps for a few more graphical tweaks to make the most of the Vita’s power. Through the 58 campaigns, you’re soldiers will scale a multiple of different environments, which though fairly basic are vibrant and fairly varied. During your campaigns you will traipse through desert, snow, towns and forests, fighting during night as well as day, to make each mission feel just a tad different to the previous one. Whilst playing you’ll be subjected to some little ‘Worms’ like voices coming from your oncoming enemies, which again mixed with the tiny cartoon soldiers and lack of blood, it really is just a bit of harmless fun not to be taken too seriously.
Tiny Troopers’ goal is simple, get your guys to the extraction point taking down everyone you see on the way. Most missions also have a side quest, which could be to destroy radio towers or enemy tanks before extraction, which becomes a bigger task when finding the grenades you need after accidentally throwing one at a tree. At the end of each campaign you’ll be faced with a garish timer, giving you only a short amount of time to plan your attack, adding a new level of suspense to the game. For almost every mission you’ll be paired with another lil bloke, who when kept alive, will often level up as you do, or if he’s not looked after properly can perish, however he can be brought back to life with a particular in-game item. Scattered throughout each battlefield there are a number of rewarding items to collect, dog tags for an extra score boost, comic quotes from in game characters, and most importantly gold medals. Along with the currency you earn from each successful drop, the medals you pick up can be used to redeem exciting new additions to your team which prove more useful on harder difficulties and later missions, the lil Gatling Gun chap for instance is wonderfully helpful. These gold medals will also allow you to resurrect your fallen brethren, and if you don’t want the same thing to happen again, you can use your currency to upgrade your army’s defence and weapons. It may not be the biggest around but there is a good amount of customisation options for your soldiers from the off, meaning you won’t be faced with any of the in app charges of your mobile phone adversaries.
As ‘Wired Productions’ put it, it’s an epic, bite-sized arcade shooter, that’s filled to the brim with action packed mini maps of mayhem, and that’s exactly what it is, in short bursts at least. Tiny Troopers isn’t the kind of game you will play for more than an hour at a time, never mind hours on end. It’s a game which is intended to be played in short bursts, like lunch breaks or car journeys, and playing for any more than say a good 20 minutes, like most mobile games, it gets very repetitive and rather boring. After a long stint of playing through Joint Ops you’ll notice that the maps are relatively the same, the missions are very similar to each other, and the night time levels are just previous levels you’ve played only darker. The Zombie side missions make a nice change of pace and killing undead chickens is a refreshing stress relief, but once again after playing for longer than an episode of Neighbours, your attention span and interest will dwindle considerably.
Tiny Troopers: Joint Ops is a nifty little game and a well made port of a mobile phone game, which honestly is a rarity in this world. It’s a puny sized arcade shooter with an impressive 7+ hours of content, however trying to play it all in one go is a grave challenge and shouldn’t be attempted. A lot of the level designs are very ‘copy & pastey’ but alternating between the 2 available campaigns keep it an enjoyable play, especially when you later unlock other battlefield locations. Every aspect of the originally Tiny Troopers has been greatly improved and the Vita accommodates the game wonderfully, yet you can’t help but think it’s peculiar to release on it, a hop in hop out game released on a system which doesn’t tend to be carried around enough to benefit from it. It’s by no means the greatest handheld game on the market, but for an adorable £4.99 it’s packed with more content than most games twice the price.
Disclaimer:All scores given within our reviews are based on the artist’s personal opinion; this should in no way impede your decision to purchase the game.
You must be logged in to post a comment.