The Tiny Troopers franchise is about a decade old already, and developer Epiphany Games just launched a brand new entry for the series with Tiny Troopers: Global Ops. Published by Wired Productions, it’s available now for PC and all major consoles.
For some reason, we always saw Tiny Troopers as the franchise that filled the gap that the Army Men games left behind. Even though the gameplay formula is quite different and they both have their own visual style, we liked having little soldiers to go to battle with and were looking forward to Global Ops because of it – not in the least part because it also support multiplayer gameplay with its twin stick shooter formula.
If you’re looking for innovations to the franchise or even genre, Tiny Troopers: Global Ops might disappoint you – it’s a fun but rather formulaic twin stick action shooters with a large amount of levels to tackle. Their short runtimes make it easy to jump in for a short session, and the relatively straightforward mission objectives make it a game that’s welcoming towards newcomers as well.
Whether you’re setting POWs free, grabbing intel or just defeating a bunch of enemies, there’s an almost arcade-like quality to the gameplay. As with many arcade games, it’s easy to get into but harder to master. The latter isn’t necessarily true for how challenging the missions are, but there’s replay value in pushing for a better score, which you can do be meeting secondary objectives, being accurate with your shots or careful about your health.
The controls are easy and intuitive as well, which is refreshing in an era where games aren’t afraid to overwhelm you with different moves – sometimes even running out of buttons on the gamepad and forcing you to press multiple at once. Tiny Trooper: Global Ops is a classic case of moving with one stick while the other one aims your weapon – which you fire with the trigger. You can switch to other weapons and dodge roll when in danger, but that’s about it. In between missions you can upgrade your weapons and unlock new ones, but the core mechanics never really change.
There’s an interesting tiered upgrade system in place as well, not just giving you a chance to upgrade weapons but also inviting you to level up in order to gain access to different upgrades, which creates a nice dynamic with different reasons to jump back in and keep playing. And if you want to get those unlocks a little faster and earn a bit more experience, you can also dial up the difficulty level for the game – there are five levels to choose from so expect a bit of a learning curve between them.
Tiny Troopers: Global Ops certainly isn’t the best looking game out there and wouldn’t have looked out of place one or two console generations ago. It also doesn’t manage to innovate on its own formula, but it does manage to reignite that old spark with some easy to enjoy twin stick shooting fun.
Score: 6.8/10
Press Play Media 