Army Men: World War - not to be confused with the PS1 game that has the exact same title and the exact same box art but is a completely different game - is the fourth PC game in the series coming after Toys in Space. On PlayStation, there are four different “Army Men: World War" games making it a sub-series of sorts, and they’re considered to be a separate timeline from Army Men 1, 2, and Toys in Space. I’m not sure if World War on PC is also a different timeline or if it takes place at the same time as the first game, but honestly, it doesn’t really matter; deep storylines have never been Army Men’s cup of tea. Unlike the other games in the series, there is not “protagonist;” you play as random Green soldiers. When the soldier you’re controlling dies, you move to control another soldier under your command. As you progress through the levels of the game, you gain more soldiers under your command that follow you from level to level. You can even have soldiers enter tanks that follow you to the next level. The lack of a protagonist means that there’s not as cohesive a story, but there is a story there, and while it’s not great, it’s okay and serves nicely as a narrative backdrop for the action. The game looks nice, too, although it is worth noting that the item icons aren’t quite the same as they were in Army Men II and Toys in Space. I’ve seen a lot of complaints about the visuals online, but I was pretty happy with the way the game looked. It did feel like it was rushed a bit more than II and Toys in Space but not to the point where it’s a true detriment to the game; there’s just a noticeable drop in polish. The story may suffer for lack of a single protagonist, but the level design is fantastic. The game opens with a D-Day style beach invasion against Tan defenses. The first level starts off fairly easy, naturally, to get you acclimated to the game, but it’s an awesome opening engagement. As the game progresses, you’ll have a variety of missions like destroying Tan artillery, blowing up a Tan tank depot, shutting down Tan AA guns to allow for air strikes, etc. The game’s first 14 levels culminate in the final mission in the Tan capital where you fight your way through the city and destroy their capitol building. That last mission is TOUGH. It’s not quite as tough as Toys in Space was in its last couple of missions, but you’d better have a large and strong force to make it through the Tan defenders and manage to destroy their capitol. The sound design is...fine. It’s not as good as Toys in Space, and it’s nowhere near as good as Army Men II, but at least it’s still leagues better than the first Army Men game. The weapon sound effects are solid, and music, while forgettable, is fine and fits the setting and tone of the game. There’s a random battle mode like with the previous games, and while I didn’t find it to be quite as good as Army Men II or Army Men: Toys in Space, it was still a lot of fun and can add some lasting power for those who give this game a download. Unfortunately, there’s an issue with modern computer mouses. I don’t know if it’s the lack of trackball or modern mouses are just too sensitive and it freaks out, but the cursor will get stuck now and then or jump around. It’s manageable, but it does get really obnoxious and make controlling the game take a little bit of practice. Army Men: World War may be a step down from Toys in Space and a decent drop from Army Men II, but it’s still a competent entry in the series and a fun game that’s absolutely worth playing. The music may be forgettable and the visuals so-so, but the missions and action are a ton of fun. If you just plan to play random battles instead of the campaign, I can’t really recommend World War when Toys in Space and II do the battle mode better. If you play the game for the campaigns, though, and like the series, that’s a different story. In that case, I absolutely recommend this game. Like the other old Army Men PC games, it’s dirt cheap on Steam and GOG, so give it a download and push back the fascist Tan advance into the liberty-loving Green Nation. My Rating - CAfter Army Men II, I kind of thought 3DO perfected the Army Men formula. Where could they possibly go up from there? Like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, they answered that question with "Space!" Adding aliens is when most series jump the shark. Army Men's advantage, however, is that it started off in mid-air over the shark, so this pretty much just ends up feeling like "Eh, okay. Aliens. Why not?" The story takes place after the events of Army Men II. As the Green and Tan armies continue to clash, a flying saucer descends from orbit and crash lands in Tan territory. General Plastro of the Tan Army manages to strike up an alliance with the Aliens to crush the Green Army. In exchange, the Tan agree to aid the Aliens in their war against the Galactic Army. Naturally, the Galactic Army and its leader, Tina Tomorrow, ally with the Green Army. While this pretty much just ends up being more of the same gameplay but with sci-fi units thrown into the mix, when you're getting more of something that's fantastic like Army Men II's gameplay, that's nothing but a good thing. Graphically, it's a little bit better than Army Men II. The colors are a bit more saturated, and the visuals look a bit sharper, but it's generally what you would expect from an Army Men II sequel. I don't think the music is quite as good, but the sound effects are either the same or slightly improved depending on the specific sound effect. The new sound effects, though, like the lasers and the alien death noises, are awesome. The laser weapons have a deep, meaty sound to them. There are some awesome new weapons here. You can upgrade the vulcan gun to a laser rifle, you can get napalm mortars and air strikes, and you can call in a spacecraft to beam down Galactic Army troops the same way you can call in a plane to drop Green paratroopers in. The AI is honestly my biggest complaint about the game. The enemy AI will usually put up a good, stiff challenge, but the AI for your troops? Dumb as a sack of rocks. Doorways and small rocks are the bane of the Green Army. Army Men: Toys in Space is a weird follow-up to Army Men II, but it's definitely a good one. It's got a custom battle mode very similar to Army Men II's, and that's where you'll probably spend the majority of your time. I played through the campaign in like once or twice as a kid and then dumped a few hundred hours into the custom battles. I'm not sure I'd call this a "must play" if you just want the random custom battles - stick with Army Men II - but if you want a new experience of the same style, then Toys in Space is exactly what you want. The campaign falls far short of Army Men II's campaign in my opinion, but it's still a fun playthrough. My Rating - CTo say the original Army Men game is a bit rough is an understatement. You hope games like that get a sequel that turns the series around, but a lot of the time, the sequel is just more of the same. Thankfully, Army Men II is an example of the former. The first game may have been somewhere between hot garbage and painfully okay, but Army Men II took that, fixed virtually everything that the first game did wrong, and produced a product that's not just much better but genuinely great. Just like how a lot of people ignore Wolfenstein and Duke Nukem until the 3D games, a lot of people don't bother with the original Army Men and just pick up at II, and I honestly can't blame them; after all, this was my first Army Men game. Army Men II picks up immediately after the end of the first game. Sarge has largely foiled the Tan plot to utilize their "super weapon" against the Green, but not completely; portals between the Plastic World and the Real World are now open, creating an entirely new front in the Green vs Tan war. The first level drops you out of a portal and on to a kitchen counter. You have to fight your way around to the other side of the U shaped counter to find the portal and return to the Plastic World. Once there, you fight your way through to a radio station to stop a Tan sabotage plot. That's largely how the campaign goes - a couple of mission in the Plastic World, a couple of missions in the Real World, a couple more in the Plastic World, etc. Between the switch between worlds and the varied environments within those worlds, that makes sure that the game never begins to feel stale. The campaign isn't super long anyway - it took me about four and a half hours - but what it lacks in quantity of hours, it makes up for in quality. About halfway through the game, you discover one of the Tan super weapons in this game; with the help of an insane Grey scientist, they have constructed a machine that takes the plastic pieces of dead soldiers and reanimates them into plastic zombies. These zombies are extremely tough to kill, and if you want a little more challenge (and a lot more chaos), there's a cheat you can enable that spawn a zombie every time a soldier dies. Personally, I love it, and because these guys are made entirely of plastic, it's not quite as left field as if you were playing through Battlefield and Russian corpses started reanimating and trying to eat you. In addition to the short but extremely fun campaign, there's also a multiplayer mode. I'm not sure if this still works online - I honestly never checked - but what I always do is set up a game against AI bots and have a huge Green vs Tan vs Grey vs Blue fight. You can select your map, select a certain number of units to start with - including vehicles - and have a bathtub meat grinder. This is one of the most important improvements over the first game, at least to me. The campaign is significantly better, but it's very short - shorter than the original game's. The multiplayer, however, is several orders of magnitude better, and it could keep me entertained for a whole day sun up to sun down. Aside from gameplay and controls, everything else about the game is superior, as well. Visually, it still looks like a game from a quarter century ago, but it looks much better than the previous game. Sound design doesn't even feel like the same series. Whereas the original game's sound design and music were downright painful after a level or two, the weapon sound effects are much improved here, and the soundtrack is not only tolerable but legitimately good and fits the tone of the game to a T. The voice acting, while still turn of the century gives-English-dubs-a-bad-name quality, is also much improved over the first game. Army Men II is one of the single most nostalgic games for me, and it reminds me of my early childhood. Back before cliques, back before we started liking girls and/or boys, back when my friend Richard and I were just military obsessed eight-year-olds before he went off to the Navy and I went off to become a teacher, there was Army Men, and it was our prepubescent boyhood daydreams come to life. Army Men II isn't the best PC game, it's not the best turn of the century game, and it's not even the best Army Men game, but it IS my favorite Army Men game because of the period of my life of which it evokes memories. Even aside from nostalgia, it's a seriously fun game, and like the first game, it's dirt cheap on GOG, so go download it asap. My Rating - BJerrel Dulay, the utter madman of a developer behind one-man studio Sungrand, continues to surprise by releasing free homebrew games in addition to his commercial game releases. He’s recently released his first PSP game, Silver Falls: Battle Fever - Galaxy Bound Curse. There’s very minimal story here as it’s an all gameplay focused score chaser, but it uses the aesthetic and setting of Galaxy Bound Curse, hence the subtitle. Obviously being on the PSP instead of the Game Boy, the sprites are a lot sharper with a lot more of the world on-screen at once, but it’s still unmistakably based on Galaxy Bound Curse. As it’s a PSP homebrew, you’ll need either a PSP with CFW, a PS3 with CFW, a Vita or PSTV with CFW and Adrenaline, or - the easiest option - an emulator like PPSSPP. The gameplay is very simple. You run around in the woods by a small lake or large pond and kill all of the cryptids and mutated animals you see. Or at least kill as many as you can; they spawn endlessly. There’s a campfire on the south side of the pond that you can use to your advantage; lure enemies into it, and not only will it delay them as they have to go around, but they’ll take heavy damage when they hit the fire. You play as Sheriff Fred, so your primary weapon is his gun, but you can pick up secondary weapons that you find as you run around the map. My personal favorite is the bear trap that you can place in front of approaching enemies for some extra damage, but there are several options. I’m absolutely terrible at the game - my score has yet to break 1000 - but it’s a lot of fun and perfect for pick-up-and-play when you have five or ten minutes to kill. On the subway or pooping at work? Whip out your PSP and take a little Silver Falls break. Because of the higher resolution and sharper image of the PSP compared to the Game Boy, the game looks fantastic. It retains the style of Galaxy Bound Curse, so you’ve still got the limited colors and sprites, but everything just looks so sharp and crisp. The sound design is classic Silver Falls and feels very much like what a Frontier game mode in Galaxy Bound Curse would have been like. Between rounds, you spawn at the campground behind the bar in town, and there are people you can talk to both inside and outside of the bar. This is the only real bit of story in this game. The characters that spawn seem to be random, and their dialog is mostly references to other games - some released, some still in the work - that sound like regular lore drops to the uninitiated but are clear and apparent allusions to long-time Silver Falls fans. Silver Falls: Battle Fever - Galaxy Bound Curse is not only the first Silver Falls game on PSP but also the first in a planned “Battle Fever” sub-series that Jerrel plans to expand to other games’ style. I don’t know when it will be ready for release, but I know he has one in the works based on 3 Down Stars, and I’m definitely excited for that. I’ve played games that I paid real world money for that were much shallower and less entertaining than this, and all this game costs you is...nothing. It’s a free download. With that in mind, you’ve got no reason not to download it and at least give it a try. Who knows? You may end up liking it and want to check out Galaxy Bound Curse (which is also a free download). My Rating - CI'll be honest, as I have absolutely zero interest in the Pokemon Mini, I never thought I'd actually review a game for it. Then Jerrel from Sungrand went and made a damn Silver Falls game for the thing, and because I'm such a huge Silver Falls fan, I'm now morally and ethically obligated to review it. That said, I have to admit that I knew this was coming; I was the first person to back the Kickstarter for it when the campaign launched last year. So how is this Silver Falls homebrew title for the Pokemon Mini? Well, keep in mind that it IS the Pokemon Mini, but within that context, it's really not bad. As usual for the series, the peaceful folks living in Silver Falls are just trying to get through their daily lives unimpeded by bloodthirsty cryptids. Unfortunately for them, monsters have appeared on the nearby North Island. It is up to some of Silver Falls's greatest heroes to clear the island of the monster infestation and make it safe again. You play as Wilma, a wise hunter; Bull, a burly lumberjack; Gold, a friendly carpenter; Hogan, a lively electrician; and Oxa, a starry-eyed dreamer. Setting up camp on North Island, this five-person dream team fights for the safety and security of their friends and family back in Silver Falls. And probably for freedom or something; I bet those cryptids have oil. You start off in the party's camp where you can review their stats, review the camp's stats, see some character dialogue - this doesn't tell a grand narrative epic or anything, but it's some nice drops about the series's lore and the characters' backstories - and have characters perform jobs. Each of these jobs has a positive and a negative effect; your character's job, if successful, may raise your camp's safety but lower its food and possibly even find a useful item. If your characters are in bad shape, though, they may fail the job and have nothing but negative effects. There is a random chance of a monster encounter, affected by your camp's Safety stat, so you may go from job completion straight into a battle. The battle is really the main gameplay; each character has a unique attack and a "power" attack. Combat is turn based and, since it's Pokemon Mini, pretty simplistic, but it's more fun than I expected going into it. Silver Falls: Monsters in North Island is in an early build with future updates already planned. There's currently no sound in this build despite Jerrel's having made an entire soundtrack for the game, but that fix is coming soon. He also plans to add a save feature, improved visuals, more enemies, recruitable pets, mini games, Code Linker connectivity with other Silver Falls games. The current build may be a bit bare bones, but considering that the Pokemon Mini was basically nothing but minigame shovelware, this is a pretty impressive game for some seriously weak hardware. I can only judge it based on what's here at the moment, and that's pretty slim, but the foundation is here for a seriously surprisingly good time, and considering the platform, what's here is honestly a lot better than I expected. My Rating - C |
I'm a teacher.And I like to play video games. I like to collect video games. I like to talk about video games, and I like to write about video games. During the day, I teach high school history; during the night, I spend my spare time gaming. Then I write about it. Archives
April 2024
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