Toon War

I went into Toon War looking for a quick twin-stick fix and came out with a fairly clear picture of what this is: a no-frills, vehicle-based top-down shooter that was clearly built with a mobile-first mentality before landing on PC. You pilot either a military vehicle or a drone through waves of enemies across themed worlds, snow, water, air and forest, clearing zones and pushing through boss fights in regular, runner, and survival modes. That structure sounds fine on paper, and honestly for the first thirty minutes it is. The moment-to-moment shooting works well enough. Power-ups drop frequently and rotate between double shot, triple shot, flamethrower, and laser options, which gives you just enough variety to keep a finger on the trigger. Missions mix in objective wrinkles like rescuing hostages and defusing bombs, and the boss fights do change pace from the standard mop-up. The local co-op for two players is the most defensible reason to install this. Sit down with someone, split the screen, shoot cartoon tanks. It works. Here is where the wheels fall off though. The leveling system ties your vehicle stats to grinding for stars, and if you go into a late zone underleveled, you are effectively stuck. There is no difficulty setting to compensate. The level design is flat in the worst way, and without a way to revisit earlier stages for grinding, it is easy to hit a wall that turns a casual shooter into a frustrating chore. There are also reported achievement bugs, at least one player on Steam flagged that the kill-50-water-tank and boss-8 achievements do not unlock even after the game is finished. For a game this small, broken achievements sting more than they would in a larger release. The Steam review count is basically nonexistent, the player population is near zero, and there is no ranked or online multiplayer to speak of. If you are here because you want competitive twin-stick play or any kind of live online experience, wrong address. The netcode question is irrelevant because there is no online to test. Toon War is strictly a local affair, and a short one at that, roughly seven hours of content at a generous pace. For the price it sits at, it is not a scam, but it is also not a game you would recommend over Nex Machina, Assault Android Cactus, or even a sale on Enter the Gungeon. It is the kind of title that makes sense as a couch co-op placeholder for ten minutes before you pull up something better. Completionists chasing achievements should be aware of the bugged unlocks before committing. Fred, Scout Team