In the early 90’s, War was fun. It had never been so much fun. Though not associated with the British Legion, the simple, joyful act of going up to your brother and killing him with your gun, then leaving him in his uniform, dying in the sun was a pleasure I have been trying to recapture ever since.
Today, war still isn’t associated with the British Legion, but neither is it fun. It’s a whitewash of overt patriotism and subtle hints to ‘be the best’ and protect the rest as tub-thumping, flag-waving marines grunt, guffaw and hoo-rar their way through one dull set-piece to the next, on an endless mission to destroy any nation that forgot to send America a Christmas card that year.
It is, however, clear that the bloody fine fellows at Kukouri Mobile Entertainment and Wired Productions have had a similar yearning to return to a simpler time when War was fun. If, like me, you’ve spent the last two decades waiting for a worthy sequel to Cannon Fodder (I’m aware of that Russian only atrocity known as Cannon Fodder 3 that came out last year. I firmly believe its creators and everyone else involved in its inception should be tried in The Hague). Tiny Troopers is the closest thing we’re likely to see to it.
Making the leap from mobiles, where it plays practically identically to the Amiga classic (and is free to play to boot), Tiny Troopers: Joint Ops brings the entire series to PS3, PS4 and Vita in one convenient package with cross buy, cross save and a brand new control scheme for little more than the price of a pint. It’s not quite the continuing adventures of Jools, Jops and Stoo, but it’s the closest thing we’re likely to get since Codemasters seem content to simply sit on Sensible Software’s IP and leave them to rot.
However, as imitators go it’s not a bad one at all. You command your squad of intrepid, cartoony-looking marines through over fifty missions divided into two campaigns. Although the scenery isn’t all that varied or interesting, taking in the usual concrete bases, deserts and the occasional jungle, the objectives are: ranging from simple seek and destroy missions to surviving waves of attackers and escorting groups of journalists to a waiting chopper. There’s even a zombie mode where you have to fend off waves of increasingly aggressive zombie hordes in return for glory on the leaderboards and additional cash used to upgrade your squad in the hope that they don’t get massacred on their next mission.
Its all fairly straightforward stuff, but its also a hell of a lot of fun. The new twin-stick controls lend themselves to the isometric perspective and make the action feel more engaging (if a little easier) compared to the mobile version. This is thanks to the increased accuracy and additional maneuverability that the dual analogue controls brings to the mix.
Handy really, because the game also uses the same permadeath mechanics of Cannon Fodder. When a member of your squad dies, that’s it. Well almost. You can use Medals found around the levels to save them, and initially they’re pretty easy to nab. As the game progresses, however, they become a bugger to find and also a finite resource, as you can only collect them once. This creates a nice ‘risk vs. reward’ scenario because as your troops increase in rank and become stronger with each successful mission (and therefore more worthwhile to keep alive), the means to do so becomes harder to come by. So, should they snuff it, you have to weigh up just how much Captain Darling is really worth to you. Like Cannon Fodder, it’s surprising how attached to the little gits you become. It makes stumbling into a mine field or cocking up a grenade-throw and seeing your entire platoon wiped out through one act of incompetence all the more agonising.
For heartless bastards it’s not such a problem, because there is always fresh meat for the grinder and the game’s upgrade system allows you to pour cash received from successful missions and looted from the corpses of your fallen foes to improve your combat effectiveness. This doesn’t apply to a single trooper, but every last one you recruit.
To counter this, I suppose, or as a carry-over from the slightly-shadier pay to win practices of the mobile version, special troops carrying heavy machine guns, rocket launchers and other weapons of mass destruction can only be employed for a single mission, rather than added to your squad permanently. This, in regards to a game that no longer has any micro-transactions (thank crikey) makes them a complete waste of funds compared to just spending your hard-plundered loot on upgrades for your bog-standard soldiers.
On the whole though, Tiny Troopers: Joint Ops is a fun and addictive game, and although it’s not particularly original, it’s still a a welcome throw-back to a time when war was fun. A time that, for jaded old cynics like me, may never come again.
