The main message delivered by the current generation of mainstream war video games can be summed up with the words “War Is Not Fun.”
It’s not all that surprising, given the fact that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare games, Medal of Honor and Battlefield 3 all mimic ongoing conflicts with repercussions that hit close to home. But for better or worse, war (and what happens before and after it) has been used as an entertainment setting for centuries, and the results don’t always have to be gritty and dour.
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Cold War follows up on last year’s Toy Soldiers, a relatively unheralded title by Seattle-based Signal Studios that became a hit on Xbox Live. Whereas the previous game took on World War I, the new one is all about the 1980s.
TS:CW keys in on the over-the-top pop culture absurdity created by the escalating tensions between the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. As an indirect result of the saber-rattling between Washington and Moscow, we got Rambo, Rocky IV and G.I Joe on our movie and TV screens. The heroes were entertaining in a muscular and uncomplicated way, and their legacy finds fertile soil in this new game.
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You get a fusion of two different genres, namely tower defense and third-person action, in Cold War. Tower defense games task you with placing turrets, barriers and weapons to destroy enemy troops trying to move across a territory. In TS:CW, those troops are 1980s-era Soviets, and you’ll command a set of U.S. military toys to stop their plastic Communist threat. Those toys are where the third-person element comes in: You can take over the turrets and anti-aircraft cannons to shift the outcome of a battle yourself.
Most tower-defense games place the conflict at a cool remove, letting the player manage the battlefield from above, but Toy Soldiers enables the player to change the tide of a skirmish by getting up close and personal.
You can manage individual units, use special power-ups and steer powerful vehicles into the conflict. Racking up combos generates a Barrage power-up, for instance, where you can take control of special units like the Commando soldier and the Attack Helo. The former seems a lot like Sylvester Stallone’s Rambo character and the latter will make ’80s babies remember the old Airwolf TV show.
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Controlling a jacked-up, indestructible warrior wielding a machine gun in one hand and a rocket launcher in the other will make you smile, especially when he sends plastic enemy limbs flying in every direction. One nice touch is how the vehicles you drive are all battery-operated: You’ll need to get them back to charging stations before they run out of juice. It’s a nice bit of balancing that ensures you don’t run wild with these powerful toys.
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Aside from the in-the-trenches action, TS:CW makes one understand the appeal of military spending. The bigger the budget, the bigger the toys you can buy for taking out bad guys. Unlike the U.S. military, though, Toy Soldiers doesn’t let you spend money you don’t have. In fact, you earn end-of-level bonuses, but not spending cash. You’ll need to monitor your war chest as the levels go on because if you spend too much, you’ll find yourself without the funds to repair or upgrade your turrets and other weapons.
Even though you know the kinds of vehicles and troops to prepare for in advance, the actual onset of a wave’s attack can seem abrupt and intense. When a dozen tanks roll down the throughways, two or three anti-tank stations may seem paltry. Likewise, you can be set to decimate all manner of ground assaults, only to have a fleet of fighter jets start swarming above and firing missiles on your emplacements. Throw in multiplayer and you get a lot more game than it initially seems.
My biggest quibble was with the camera controls. I felt like the camera was too slow when I zoomed out to an overhead view, which made management of battlefield assets even more hectic. You’ll definitely need to be flexible with your strategy and be mindful of letting it evolve, but the Wave Rewind feature lets you skip back to the previous round. This way, you can start at a specific part in the level sequence where things go wrong, so you don’t have to play the whole thing over again.
Cold War is deceptive because you’ll want to play it like an action game, but you’ll best succeed when playing it as a strategy game. It never stops being fun, though, and it manages to channel that fetishistic regard for military detail that you got with G.I Joes and similar toys. The game includes the same kinds of little nuggets about its vehicles and big guns that the blister packs for the old-school toys did.
It also peppers in other little touches—5 ¼ floppy disks and VHS tapes strewn across the theater of war, for instance—that evoke the era that the game takes place in. Toy Soldiers: Cold War mixes just the right amount of humor, strategy and player control to prove fairly addictive. Thankfully, the hairstyles and bad fashion of the Reagan era don’t show up. Some things just aren’t funny no matter how much time has passed.
Techland Score: 8.5 out of 10
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Evan Narcisse is a reporter at TIME. Find him on Twitter at @EvNarc or on Facebook at Facebook/Evan.Narcisse. You can also continue the discussion on TIME’s Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME.