Series Review: Army Men

Game: Army Men: Sarge's Heroes
Console: Nintendo 64
Developer: 3DO
Release Date: 30th September 1999

Teaching the children of the late 90s that it's alright to kill people as long as they're a different colour to you and your friends, Army Men: Sarge's Heroes tells the tale of plastic armies in combat. You play as a soldier in the Bravo platoon (coloured green) and your greatest enemies are the tan coloured soldiers who are scattered across every level and will attempt to kill you on sight. The overarching story of the game involves the leader of the tan army "General Plastro" and portals to the real world.

In each level you're given 1 or 2 objectives to complete in order to progress. There's no checkpoints, so even if one objective is completed, the game resets to the beginning when you die. This wouldn't be such a problem if the game was easy but the controls alone add several levels of difficulty. Most of the time in levels your best bet is to attempt to kill all of the tan soldiers and hope that it makes all of the objectives easier to complete.

There's no lock on control for shooting in the game; if you see an enemy you have two choices. Either you shoot your weapon without aiming properly, firing in the direction you're facing (which works surprisingly well most of the time), or you can aim and target more precisely. The problem with these options is that the precise targeting is very slow, moving the crosshairs can seem to take forever and the shooting without aiming is impeded by the movement controls which are also pretty shocking.

For a combat game this is incredibly disappointing as moving yourself around the map and aiming/shooting your weapons are the main gameplay elements. There's a good selection of weapons in the game but usually too many are featured in each level and you have to spend a while cycling through the weapons to find the one you want, not to mention that most suffer from the aforementioned aiming issues.

Graphically, the game is fairly disappointing even when taking its release date into account. The characters themselves seem to be plastic so as to avoid adding detail to them, vehicles and buildings are incredibly blocks and low resolution at points, and a lot of the maps feel like barren wastelands. The music in-game is forgettable at best, with an unispiring soundtrack that seems to come under the category of "general action type music".

Overall the game seems like a rather frustrating mess with missions made much more difficult due to control issues, graphics which could have been better, a boring soundtrack and a convoluted yet generic storyline. I admit that it's probably difficult to think up interesting things to happen to little plastic men, but with a few changes this could have been much more playable. Perhaps it's just the fact that Goldeneye 007 was on the N64 that makes this feel way below par.

Rating: 43/100
Grade: E

Game: Army Men: Major Malfunction
Console: Sony Playstation 2
Developer: Team17
Release Date: 4th August 2006

With 15 different installments across all platforms to the Army Men series in the 7 years between these two games, there were quite a few gameplay changes between the two, not to mention a change of developer and publisher. The series as a whole has been widely criticised for the large amount of titles and a perceived decline in quality as time has progressed. I did wonder whether this game was going to be worse than Sarge's Heroes, but with Team17 as developers this time surely it could only get better.

The game starts off with a long tutorial which is sort of irritating if you like to get straight into gameplay, but there's a fair amount to learn also so it's necessary. After this, missions all around a house begin, starting in a shed, and moving through the kitchen, basement, and garden to name just a few areas of combat. The first thing to note is how cutscene heavy the missions are. Once you've cleared the enemies in one area, a short cutscene of the next area you're supposed to go to will play as if it wasn't obvious enough that you have to keep moving forwards.

Another aspect of the game that can get annoying is the constant radio contact from the commanding officer who tells you what to do. Not only does it sound like he's speaking in Simlish most of the time, he's in contact far too much with obvious information. The gameplay itself isn't too bad; generally you're shooting your way through enemies to get somewhere, to achieve an obvjective. Where the game does fall down somewhat is the camera angles and aiming. There's parts of the game where the camera changes, flipping the controls without any notice which can cause you to fall from a height and lose the level in the blink of an eye. Even when you're not losing levels because of the camera, there's still plenty of walking into walls and enemies because you can't see where you're headed.

As for the aiming controls there's a lock on feature in this game which is an improvement from Sarge's Heroes, but when enemies move or you roll sideways it resets itself and you're not targeted at the enemy anymore. In places with multiple enemies this can be a nightmare as targeting the one you want takes far too long, and you're likely to get hit by the frankly dopey AI if you're not moving all over the place whilst aiming. Quantity seems to reign over quality when it comes to enemies in the game; plenty of them spawn, so much so that it gets tiresome, but none of them are ever really that challenging unless the camera/aiming system cause you problems.

Graphically the game is said to be the best in the series, which makes you wonder how much worse it can really get. While the graphics aren't terrible, I'd expect more for 2006 and there's moments where things clip through eachother or don't quite look right. Musically there's some nice stuff which throws back to other Team17 games like Stunt GP, but there's also a lot of boring and forgettable tracks on here too.

With 30 missions to complete, it seems like there's a decent amount to do in the game, but a lot of the missions are short and almost all of them have a very small map with lots of going back and forth. There's some nice changes of pace with turret shooting levels, and the overall concept does work on the whole. It's fun to play as a toy solider throughout a house, despite the problems with the game. Ultimately though it's not something I found compelling as a game, as there was poor narrative and programming throughout. A better game than the N64 installment, but you'd hope so with the PS2 being a whole console generation later.

Rating: 58/100
Grade: D