#toycommander

Toy Commander’s narrative is essentially ripped from Toy Story, the Disney/Pixar flick from 1995.  It takes place in a young, imaginative kid’s house.  He hasn’t been spending much time with his multitude of toys, so one of them rises up as the Toy Commander - stealing the title from the boy - and stages a coup.  The protagonists of both works even have the same name - Andy.  The major mechanical implication of the narrative is that the game’s environments are split up as different rooms in Andy’s house.

The varied house environments are one of the main reasons why the game doesn’t grow stale over time.  Each room contains a handful of missions to complete and one toy who rules over that dominion.  If you can achieve the boss time on at least three missions, you’ll unlock the boss fight as the room’s final mission.  There’s a clever bit of dialogue at each mission’s outset that goes a long way toward building up the overall environment of the game.  Different bosses have different speech patterns, and their mission completion instructions are neither too vague nor too descriptive.  There’s also some subtle tutorial design going on here: the first mission in each room is typically a race, which acclimates the player to the new environment.

Somehow, the missions in Toy Commander rarely ever feel repetitive.  This is due in large part to the varied environments, but also to the varied vehicles.  The major categories of vehicles include air, ground, and sea vessels.  Within those classes are subsets that vary the vehicles’ controls even further.  Helicopters, for instance, fly way differently than fighter planes.  Missions often contain multiple objectives that sprawl across an entire house wing.  Something as simple as “get the firemen to the fire” becomes an eight minute ordeal when you realize the different steps required to complete the task.  The missions also stay fresh because they’re paced well.  You’ll never have two or three lengthy missions in a row.  Rather, the long hauls will be punctuated by quick speed-runs or action-packed fighting missions.  There’s also a great deal of character that exists within the missions; miniature stories that unfold thanks to your actions.  The game staves off boredom by consistently keeping things interesting and should serve as a prime example of mission/pacing design for current developers.

Besides for the boss times set in each mission, if you’ve got a VMU handy, all of your high scores are saved, too.  This isn’t necessarily something that Toy Commander uniquely does, but in starting a new game, I was thrilled to find 15 year-old times set by friends/family.  Speaking of friends/family, the game supports 2-4 player deatchmatch-style multiplayer.  It’s nothing out of the ordinary except for the fact that you’re dueling with a ton of different vehicles.  Also, there’s a sweet feature whereby shooting stationary turrets makes them friendly toward you and aggressive toward your opponent.

When you reach the end of Toy Commander, you’ll be treated to an earnest commentary on life.  The game cautions the player not to defer his/her dreams.  Though you may grow, hold fast to some youthful wonder or else wither.