Army Men: Sarge's Heroes

"Pretty average but still better than you'd imagine"

Appearing on virtually every format known to man, 3DO's Army Men series has the reputation of being possibly the worse series of games ever known to man. Having learnt of this reputation and having never played one before, it was with some reluctance that I handed over money for this game... but would it be as bad as I anticipated? Well no really. That's not to say it's a great game, as it certainly isn't, but it's hardly the unplayable trash I'd been led to believe it would be.

AM:SH is a 3rd person action game and despite its use of toys as its protaganists, it plays far more like an ultra simplistic version of Hidden And Dangerous then say, Toy Commander. Basically you're a rambo-esque green soldier who must fight a war against the evil Tan soldiers pretty much single handedly. In your arsenal you have pretty much everything you'd expect and a few you wouldn't - there's the standard rifle, shotgun, bazooka and hand grenades, but you can also plant land mines and get a mine detector to sweep areas.

Whilst the carnage is hardly as intense as Expendable and wandering in guns blazing will often get you killed, it's hardly brain teasing stuff. Despite the variety of mission objectives given, they generally involve you walking to the big X on the map and killing everything that gets in your way. It's only really in bits where you have to sweep for mines to let an injured comrade pass an area that you ever get any real variety. There are certainly problems with regards the responsiveness of the controls - aiming at targets that are close up can be a real pain and actually killing anything in a hurry is pretty tough too as to shoot anything your solider must have an aiming animation play first. This often means that you'll get killed, particularly when facing off against tanks (which can only be destroyed with explosives). Given its subject matter it is actually a pretty tough game, especially as death puts you back to the start of the mission - as some missions can take up to 15 minutes, this can be especially annoying.

There's also problems with collision detection, most obviously when you walk over a log on the ground - the player twitches around jerkily before deciding whether he'll climb it or not. The jumping system is also pretty useless. The game is made up of 14 missions of varying length and will take a day or two to play through, although a lot of this time will be made up of replaying missions several times. Once that's over though, there is actually a passable 4 way split screen mode which somewhat lengthens the games appeal.

Graphically it must be said that Sarge himself looks great - the animation bar the odd glitch is fine and there's a really nice shiny effect on him. Sadly the rest of it looks very dated - bland textures, sparse levels and identical enemies. Its not really bad, but still very average indeed. The sound is actually pretty decent though - the score suits the setting and the voice acting is not bad at all. Sadly though it sounds really badly recorded and very scratchy, which somewhat detracts from the effect.

All in all whilst the game is fundamentally kind of rubbish, I did actually find myself quite enjoying it. As mentioned before it's rather like an accessible version of Hidden and Dangerous, with none of the frustrating planning and complexity. Ok it looks poor and is glitchy, but for a quick blast its not that bad. It's by no means a great game or even a good game for that matter, but at least it's not an awful game. And given its reputation, that was the biggest surprise of all.

GRAPHICS - 5/10 - Sarge looks great, but the rest is bland, sparse and pretty outdated.

SOUND - 6/10 - Good score and surprisingly decent voice acting is spoilt by the low sound quality. Sounds like you're listening to Medium Wave radio!

GAMEPLAY - 5/10 - Often frustrating thanks to some glitches and bugs, but it has its moments. Definitely like a beginners version of Hidden And Dangerous.

LIFESPAN - 6/10 - The 14 missions won't take long to play through, but the 4 player battle mode will keep you going for a while.

OVERALL - 5/10 - Not as bad as you might think, but hardly a great game. If you want a flawed but reasonably accessible war game it might do the trick.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 05/21/03, Updated 05/21/03