Army Men

• Release Date: December 07, 1999
• Genre: Action
• Style: Combat
• Similar Games: Toy Commander (Dreamcast)

Game Description

Army Men is a mission-based combat game that has you guiding a green plastic commando named Sarge in warfare against a tan-colored toy army. Soldiers use bazookas, grenades, flamethrowers, mortars, automatic rifles, and land mines to trash each other. You can also drive jeeps and tanks across the varied terrain. To help you learn the controls, a boot camp option offers a series of eight training missions.

Once you are ready, choose from two campaigns: desert and alpine. Review your objectives before each mission on the briefing screen, and prepare for battle against an onslaught of plastic troops. A mission will fail if you exceed the time limit, allow your rivals to win, or let Sarge die. The options screen lets you view current objectives, consult a strategic map, exit vehicles, and abort your mission. You can also adjust the control scheme, select a difficulty level, and toggle music.

Roots & Influences

One of The 3DO Company's most successful franchises, Army Men games have appeared on the PlayStation, Nintendo 64 and PC, and will soon to be released for the Sega Dreamcast sometime in 2000. The Army Men series of games are based on the small green plastic army men toys that have been littering young boys (and girls) bedroom floors and toy boxes for years. The big differences between the molded plastic and the electronic commandos are that the warriors in this game can really fight and parents don't have to worry about stepping on them!

Review: Overall

After a spotty showing on home consoles with its Army Men franchise, it's surprising to see that Army Men for the Game Boy Color makes a fairly strong showing. There are some flaws the developers should have fixed, but overall Army Men is an enjoyable playing experience.

Army Men's graphics, albeit a bit grainy, are well done. Its color use is appropriate without being too bland or too bright. Everything on screen is, for the most part, clearly visible and identifiable. The one exception is Tan soldiers in the desert stage, because with coloring similar to the background, they tend to blend in, which seems to be more by design than anything else. There is one annoying thing about the graphics, though. When shooting at a Tan soldier, you see your bullets land on the ground behind him. He doesn't seem to react at all, making it difficult to determine if you're hitting him until moves.

The game's music is average, consisting of a few simple drum cadences with military overtones that tend to repeat, but don't get annoying. Likewise, the game's sound effects are standard fare, consisting of tinny shooting and explosion sounds. With average music and sound effects you might want to turn the volume down and listen to something else, but then you'd be missing out on Army Men's great use of voice clips. There aren't many different clips in the game, but those present sound almost crystal clear, with just a hint of graininess. Every time Sarge picks something up, he makes a comment; these clips help to define his no-nonsense characterization.

It's easy to get annoyed with the game's pace, more specifically, the way Sarge moves so agonizingly slow. He practically crawls through the terrain, making any sort of hit-and-run tactics or duck-and-shoot gun fighting all but impossible. This is a design flaw, since there's no reason why Sarge shouldn't be able to move around faster. After you reconcile yourself to the idea of moving around the terrain at a snail's pace, you'll have to get used to the game's two control layouts, neither of which are easy to use. The first layout has you pushing up to move forward and pushing sideways to turn; in practice this setup is a little quirky makes precision turning while moving quite difficult. The second layout lets you move and turn at the same time, but limits you to facing one of eight directions. So if you happen to be a little off in aiming at an enemy soldier, you have to first turn away to readjust your position, then turn back -- while he's shooting at you!

Despite the fact that you have to fight the controls a little, Army Men is still an enjoyable action game for the Game Boy Color. Fans of Army Men games and casual gamers alike can enjoy the arcade action.

Review: Enjoyment

The control system takes some getting used to, but Army Men does provide some enjoyment.

Review: Graphics

The overall visual package is well done.

Review: Sound

Average sound effects and music complement nicely done voice clips.

Review: Replay Value

There's some replay value if you use different strategies.

Review: Documentation

The manual doesn't stand out from other {!Game Boy Color} manuals.