Tiny Troopers: Global Ops Review (PC)

The trouble with parachuting enemies is that it’s useless to try and hit them right as they are landing. Firing early leads to a lot of missed shots and then leads to some dodging to make sure their shots do not hit. Only then can I carefully aim and take these elite forces down with little trouble.

My avatar and his teammate deal with two waves relatively easily, although we fail to dodge an incoming grenade, and that takes out around a third of our health. I move to a better-protected spot as the third group lands and opens fire. I would have loved to have a high-powered machine gun to mow them down.

I weave through projectiles and take down two but my partner bites the dust. I move to get him back into the fight, which takes a little while, and know right away that it’s a bad idea. I make another stupid decision when I decide to tank a grenade rather than abandon the revival. I die after two other enemy shots find their mark. The teammate dies while attempting to revive me. It’s time to get back to base and invest in some better hardware.

Tiny Troopers: Global Ops is developed by Epiphany Games and Kukouri Mobile Entertainment, with publishing duties handled by Wired Productions. I played on the PC using Steam. The game is also offered on the PlayStation 5, the Xbox Series X and S, the Nintendo Switch, and older platforms from Microsoft and Sony.

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As the name clearly spells out, this universe features small versions of soldiers of the Special Forces flavor, ready to take what their real-world counterparts do: engage in covert action. A layer of references, bombast, and humor is added in the video game, which never fully works. The first campaign involves a prince, Middle Eastern tropes, and weird connections to real military operations. There are six campaigns to move through but the mission structure does not vary too much.

Tiny Troopers: Global Ops is a classic twin-stick shooter. Gamers directly control one character (computer soldiers join in single player) as it moves through a relatively linear revel, engaging groups of enemies, and seeking to complete objectives, some of them optional.

The game plays fast and loose with the idea of military operations. These are tiny soldiers, not real ones. They have no use for cover and their projectiles move slowly enough to be avoided. A dodge is useful to avoid areas of effect attacks and mines. Characters can equip a range of special weapons and abilities, including a classic rocket launcher, airstrikes, drones, and assault shotguns.

At the start, all the tiny troopers have is a pistol, relatively slow firing, and no equipable items. This is a good way to teach players that they should focus on movement to avoid incoming fire. Only once they can do that, they should focus fire to eliminate enemies. It’s important to always keep an eye on squad mates to revive them as quickly as possible when they go down.

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To spice things up, Tiny Troopers varies objectives from one mission to another. But everything you do in the shooter boils down to moving to a location, killing everyone, maybe holding down a button to perform an action, and then repeating until the extraction chopper shows up. When bosses show up, they will like slightly more powerful versions of normal enemies.

After each mission, players can choose to go straight into the next one in the campaign. But returning to the HQ is a better idea. Get another computer-controlled teammate (there are also options to customize appearance) but, more importantly, get into the Armory and invest earned experience. It’s a crime that it takes almost the entire first campaign to unlock the machine gun and there are plenty more upgrades to dump points into.

These do make characters feel more capable, especially once you get some solid secondary weapons and abilities. They also introduce some variety, although not enough to keep the levels from blurring together. Tiny Troopers: Global Ops can be fun as long as players focus on the combat and the armory upgrades. Moving through enemies as a capable soldier, able to deal with ambushes, bosses, and fixed positions, is a solid power fantasy. But the rest of the experience does not enhance the core mechanics and the universe feels made up entirely of cliches.

The experience offers solid multiplayer options. Players can engage in local cooperative play and in online action, using squads of up to four soldiers. There’s cross-platform play between the PC and consoles and global leaderboards allow squads to compare their performance.

Tiny Troopers: Global Ops aims for fun with its presentation. Everything is smaller, rounder, and more colorful than in the real world. There is no attempt to create detailed levels or characters, the focus is on offering playgrounds where big gun battles can take place. The world offers nothing interesting to explore and it constantly felt weird to see these tiny soldiers, who look and behave like kids, engaged in such violence, even if it's the cartoon variety.

The sound design isn’t better than the graphics. Enemies constantly bark in high-pitched voices, which quickly become annoying, and there’s little difference between the sound the pistol makes and that of the machine gun. The soundtrack is also unimpressive.

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