A cute but boring city builder. While the toy theme and whimsical music make a great first impression, the gameplay is dull, finicky and unbalanced. You place "blocks" of buildings that are supposed to combine into each other (multiple houses = a mansion, that sort of thing), but it feels wonky and unsatisfying. Selecting the "Snap To" option helps, but then you realise the entire game is just stacking stuff in service of a simple, exploitable economy. Even original SimCity is better than this!
A tactical action game starring the famous toys. Using surprisingly complex controls (dive, prone, roll, etc), you'll guide Sarge through many missions. The shooting action is only OK, but the more complex tactics are better: recon, airstrikes, paradrops, mine ambushes, driving vehicles and mortaring new routes through destructible terrain. It's funny too, with propaganda ("Reptilian Tan menace!") and melting enemies. A very good game, until it was sadly wrecked by annoyingly unfair escort missions. Failing missions because your AI allies drive directly into enemy tanks is just not fun.
Bad North is a miniature tactical roguelike. With (at most) 4 units, you defend tiny islands against viking invaders, with no story beyond survival. Simple mechanics and pleasingly spare visuals & sound (throat singing!) make a strong first impression, but the gameplay has little variety and peters out quickly. There are no tough choices, there's always "one true path". It's repetitive and lacks replay value, a big problem for a roguelike where death means a restart! Worth beating once, though.
A solidly charming medieval city builder. Starting out with a keep and a few peasants, you expand to build farms, mines, taverns and (of course!) defenses like walls, towers and moats. It's pretty (especially winter's blanket of snow), but unfortunately lacks much depth. Beyond the challenging early game, when you can barely scrape enough food together, it's fairly dull. Late game structures like cathedrals are pointless, while combat is perfunctory. Worth playing, but Stronghold this ain't.
Despite releasing 5 years later, this is a depressingly samey sequel. The colonial gameplay is almost identical, but padded: pioneers now want leather as well as cloth, for instance. This doubles the supply chains needed without adding anything new or exciting. The bigger maps are consumed by chunkier houses and endless production buildings. The pace remains slow. Combat is more complex but still clunky and entirely optional: the AI only fights if you do! Meh, at least the graphics are better.
A relaxing city builder with a generic 17th century colonial setting: no real nations or locations, just a "new world" with natives and colonisers. The goal is to build up colonies with housing, food and services, using cash crops, gold mines and trade fleets to pay for it all. There are minor military aspects, but these are fiddly more than fun. Pirates in particular require annoying micromanagement. However, the colourful graphics, hymnal music and slow pace make this a mostly enjoyable time.
