Army Men 3D

"Yes, a good 3D action Army Men game does exist"

Opening Remarks: If late night talk show hosts ever talked about video games, no doubt the Army Men series would be their go-to game to base all their jokes around. The series has become the laughing stock of the gaming world, for reasons I can't entirely understand, since reviewers tend to score then around 4/10 and there are plenty of games out there getting scores much worse than that. But before 3D0 opened the floodgates and gave us a bazillion Army Men games, there was this, the first. How does it rank? Surprisingly high.

Gameplay: The title of the game is exactly what you get. This is the original PC Army Men game, now in 3D instead of a top-down, isometric viewpoint. I hated the PC game, but I always thought the level and mission design was good, if only it were in 3D, and now it is. Missions range from killing all the tan soldiers, infiltrating and base and sabotaging it with explosives, getting through a minefield, and so forth. There are plenty of weapons and vehicles at your disposal, and there are many different ways and tactics to complete each mission. The length of the game is reasonably long, and replay value is high.

Graphics: Not too shabby. Everything is sharp, not muddy like most PlayStation games, and there's no slowdown, even with huge explosions happening on-screen. The only downfall is the animation, which is a little lacking.

Sound/Music: Sound quality is good, and explosions sound absolutely brutal if you're playing with an enhanced audio system hooked up to your television. The music quality ranges from boring to good, but never reaches the extremes of bad or great. It gets the job done.

Play Control/Game Design: Controlling your character is simple enough, if not a little stiff. Aiming weapons is easy, and weapons that you throw (grenades, etc) give you a moving target to pinpoint exactly what you want to hit. Level design is great, and ranges from the desert to the jungle to city streets. The jungle levels are particularly fun.

Improve: Nothing. Keep everything the way it is. (Too bad 3D0 didn't do that, and instead gave future games new engines that ran with horrible frame rates and had terrible controls.)

Recommended if you like: The only other 3rd person action Army Men game that comes close to the quality of this one is World War. Stay away from Sarge's Heroes.

Final Words: It's really too bad that after this game, the Army Men series degraded into a bunch of crappy games. I really wish they had made a sequel to this using the PC version of Army Men 2 as a basis to bring it into 3D, because its levels that took place in the real world were just as fun, if not more fun, than the levels in the original game. Pick this game up if you want a decent action game to play. It's no Syphon Filter, but you'll enjoy it.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 10/19/04