"$10 For Wholesome Plastic Goodness Isn't That Bad"

Army men is one of those series that has inexplicably stood the test of time. After dishing out game after of game of the same old plastic burning combat, the makers decide to scrap the old story line by killing everyone off and building upon a new gritty, extreme and radical formula while retaining a certain charm that the army men games have always had.

The story isn't anything to piss your pants about. Green Town gets blown up by an evil dictator and trigger happy war hero Sarge goes off looking for revenge. Is it a shoe in for Best Story of the year? Probably not, but it does give you justification for mindlessly slaughtering hundreds of Tan soldiers.

As far as gameplay goes, it really has not changed very much from the last few games. You've got about 12 missions each with it's own set of simple tasks and side quests. Missions don't get any more complicated than collect object A or blow up vehicle B but they are varied as to make the player think that they're doing something new. The missions steadily get harder and introduce a new array of weapons. The enemies however don't seem to get any smarter, even on the harder difficulties. Playing on Hard doesn't mean it's harder to kill the baddies because they are uber smart, it means they're harder to kill because it'll take you 10 more bullets to kill 'em. The levels mainly consist of enlarged household areas, sandboxes and generally any area a 10 year old would take his plastic men of valour to duke it out for supreme glory of the toybox.

The game itself is a third person shooter. Sarge doesn't handle too badly, the control scheme won't send you to the hospital, and the game ends before it gets too dull and repetitive. There is a multiplayer mode with a few modes such as death match and capture the flag and it's not half bad if you have friends to play with, because playing against yourself gets really old, really fast.

Audio in army men games has always been pretty good and it shows in this time. Each mission has its own distinct track and it manages to convey the mood of the area quite nicely. Sound effects aren't spectacular but they get the job done. My only major gripe is that explosions don't sound like explosions, but then again the missiles are made of plastic, so I'll chalk that up to realism. Voice acting is very good except for that one tan soldier who sounds as if he's just some guy they found lounging around the office. The script however is full of corny lines, many of which replace famous quotes to correspond with plastic, but they still managed to put a smile on my face.

Graphics take a huge leap away from the old army men games. Sarge takes battle damage as his health drops. Sometimes he might lose an arm or get a hole in his chest, heck he might even lose his head. Everything looks like a toy replica of a bygone war film and the tone is much darker than the happy go lucky look of the older army men games. The cutscenes in the game are way cool, and I mean really cool. They're computer generated and they serve as nice reward to the battle weary player.

Overall the game is a solid offering. I really disliked how they took out the melting plastic deaths you could achieve with the flamethrower, and the mediocre multiplayer mode along with the generic gameplay doesn't make me come running back for another serving of the game. However its low price tag makes it king of the bargain bin compared to most other games you'll find in the same price range.

To sum it up:

Gameplay: 6
The gameplay is pretty repetitive and the multiplayer mode doesn't help its score very
much.

Audio: 8
Good soundtrack and good voice acting for the most part raise its score but the
sub par sound effects hurt it.

Visuals: 7
Lovely cinematics, fair amount of detail and graphics that are just on par with today's standards give this game a shiny 7.

Value: 5
It's like every other generic action game out there and it'll last you for about
2 or 3 weeks before you toss it in with the rest of your games.

Tilt: 6
Even with all of it's short comings, it is very cheap (only 10 bucks) and it
delivers everything in a solid package.

Overall: 6.4 rounded = 6

Buy or rent?
Spend the extra $5 and get it, not only will you have something to do for a while but it'll make your collection look more impressive, and that's always a plus.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 08/10/05