Tiny Troopers: Joint Ops (PlayStation 3) Review

Tiny Troopers: Joint Ops actually offers two products in one, but they are both extremely similar - one of them being the original PC release that Cubed3 looked at towards the end of last year. Each of the two campaign modes consist of levels that require the standard war-game "chores." Kill some soldiers, blow up a building, rescue hostages, and so on. It looks like the old-school cult classic Cannon Fodder, but is a lot less demanding. Just take any generic Call of Duty wannabe, add a kiddie look, a bird's-eye perspective, simple controls, and the result is this pack of mediocrity.

With it being almost as easy as playing Pac-Man in an Atari 2600, the controls are a piece of cake to learn. Left analogue stick moves the team around, right one shoots. When shooting no aiming is required, just point at the enemy's general direction and everything will be fine. Apart from the standard rifle, the player can collect grenades, missiles or even air strikes, which can be very useful with enemies that range from simple soldiers, snipers and grenadiers to jeeps, tanks and guys with flamethrowers.

Depending on the level selected, a team of up to three troops can be used. They move together as one, although they can sometimes get stuck in obstacles or cliff sides, resulting in health loss or gamepads being thrown out of the window. There is room for a fourth one, though - the specialist unit, who can be "rented" for a mission and either offers healing, more firepower, more grenades, amongst others, depending on the unit selected.

Due to its easy-going nature, all levels in Tiny Troopers: Joint Ops are very small, which translates to roughly three to four minutes for each one, something that can create that nice and addictive feeling, that renders gamers unable to put the controller down and instead play "just one more level," but when a game has more than 50 stages that recycle the same material repeatedly, things will unavoidably get very repetitive. The level structure doesn't help either; enemies are never really placed in a challenging way and "secret" items are not exactly hidden.

Completing a mission means more CP, which is the currency used for renting specialists, upgrading equipment and buying items while on the field. In order to accumulate additional CP, bonus items like dog tags can be gathered, but the best way is to do all the necessary killing very fast and without getting damaged too much in order to keep a CP multiplier full as long as possible. Expect minimal challenge, though - just keep on moving and shooting and all will be fine.

Like with most mobile games, it is a case of "play, get bored and leave it aside after a while." Each mission has three difficulty settings, but the changes are almost non-existent, leaving a soporific feeling of déjà vu. The various upgrades and clothes that can be bought are a very entertaining mode where multiple waves of zombies must be survived, add a few more days - or hours - of fun, but is that enough for most gamers?