Also available on Gamecube, PlayStation 2, and Windows 2003 was a dark year. That was the year that 3DO filed for bankruptcy and sold off the Army Men IP to Global Star Software. Global Star then proceeded to say "What if we took Army Men, removed everything that made it a cult classic series, and added in a bunch of gritty dark drama that literally not one singular person on Earth asked for?" Thus Sarge's War was born. The box art says it all. Sargeant Hawk stands atop a pile of melting Tan corpses amidst a destroyed brick wall that, probably because it's made of plastic I guess, is burning with a bandolier around his chest, an M-16 in one hand, and a heavy machine gun in the other. Yeah...it's as weird as it sounds. The premise of the game is that, after repelling a vicious Tan surprise attack, the Green Army manages to fight the Tan to the point where General Plastro agrees to a peace treaty. Right out of the gate, Global Star has the series's primary antagonist acting super out of character. Also why is Plastro out the Green military prison and back in command of the Tan Army? Like, did these guys even play the games they're making a sequel to? Anyway, a rogue faction of the Tan Army led by a "Lord Malice" - super creative and not at all edgelord name - manages to Trojan Horse what looks like a nuclear bomb into the courtyard where the treaty signing is taking place by hiding it inside a statue commemorating the historic peace accord. When the bomb detonates, Greentown is destroyed. Plastro is dead. Grimm is dead. All of the Bravo Company heroes are dead. Countless Green and Tan soldiers and civilians are dead. Sarge, who was racing to warn Grimm when he learned about the bomb after fighting a group of rogue Tan, gets to Greentown just in time to see the mushroom cloud. As he walks through the carnage, he sees Vikki's half melted form. She dies in his arms. Sarge then does the obligatory angst scream, finds two automatic weapons to point in the air, and starts firing at the clouds. It's cliche, it's horribly out of character and off tone for the series, and it's just...weird. It's like a shitty version of Spec Ops: The Line eight years before Spec Ops: The Line came out. Lest you think my only complaint with the game is the bizarre story, think again. The sound design is horrendous as well. It took the sound problems of Army Men RTS and made them ten times worse. You can adjust the sound effect volume, music volume, and in-game voice volume from the settings menu...but you can't adjust the cut scene volume at all. So at default levels, sound effects are deafening, music is obnoxiously loud, people are shouting in-game, and everyone is whispering in the cut scenes as if you're in church and mom has thwacked you in the head with the bulletin twice already. I'd go on to criticize the music, but there's hardly any. There's some music here and there, but by and large, the levels are played in silence except for the gunshots. Not even footsteps - unless you're on a metal floor or something or climbing up a ladder, you run silently. That won't stop the Tan from hearing your non-existent footstep sounds, but you definitely won't hear them. It's just...a weird sound effect omission. I don't even know if that was intentional or a bug that made it past QA along with the entire garbage story. Oh, and the worst offense of all is the voice acting. Instead of having Jim Cummings voice everyone as is tradition for the Sarge's Heroes universe games, they got some Terry Maratos guy to voice Sargeant Hawk. His filmography suggests he's a decent actor, but he sucked as Sergeant Hawk. Zero wit or humor. Just dark and angsty edgelord. While that's exactly what Global Star was going for, it's absolutely not Sarge. While I could fill a tome with complaints about the artistic direction of this game, as an actual game, I have to admit that it's really not as a bad to play as it is to experience from a narrative perspective. It looks good for the series; it's no Halo 2 or Metroid Prime, but the visuals are better than anything we'd seen from the series previously. As expected, the PS2 version looks just a tad rougher than its two counterparts, but it looks pretty much the same on Gamecube and Xbox. Controls, oddly enough, are the biggest differences. I can't put my finger on exactly why, but the controls just feel wrong on PlayStation 2. The aiming feels stiff and jerky, and the buttons, while the same basic layout as the other two versions, just feel awkward to use. Gamecube, on the other hand, feels flawless. Totally comfortable, totally natural, and completely complaint-free from me. Xbox, the version I played through from start to finish for my review since I wanted to get as many platforms represented in the series as I could, falls in the middle but FAR closer to the Gamecube side of things. It doesn't feel quite as comfortable to control as it does on Gamecube, but it still feels excellent outside of some minor aiming jank, and it's infinitely more playable than the PlayStation 2 version. Army Men: Sarge's War is a game that honestly isn't bad but is just...weird. It shows how utterly tone deaf Global Star was with the series, and honestly, I think this game is the beginning of the end of Army Men considering that Global Star only made one game after this, and, aside from a weird Java mobile phone game in 2010, no Army Men game was made after Take-Two bought the IP in 2007. Army Men may not have been enough to save 3DO, and it may not have been a mainstream series, but the folks who liked it - like me - REALLY liked it, and if Global Star had taken the time to learn and appreciate what the series was, I genuinely think it could have made them a decent even if not massive profit. Sarge's War is definitely worth a play if you have a Gamecube or PC able to run 20 year old games, a PlayStation 2 if you're in a PAL territory, or an Xbox if you're in North America. Just know going into it that while it has the same protagonist as Sarge's Heroes and Sarge's Heroes 2, the tone of the game is diametrically opposed. My Rating - CAlso available on PlayStation 2 and Windows Real time strategy seems like kind of a natural fit for the Army Men series, but it took until the end of 3DO's life to make that a reality. 3DO didn't even release the Gamecube version two and a half years after the PS2 and PC releases; Global Star handled that port after acquiring the Army Men IP in the wake of 3DO's collapse. RTS games on console had long been attempted with several seeing releases on Nintendo 64, PlayStation, and Saturn, but Army Men RTS was one of the first that really felt "right." Starcraft 64 was solid, but it didn't feel quite fluid enough with the controls to be on par with its PC counterpart; Army Men RTS, on the other hand, is the best console RTS in my opinion until the release of Halo Wars three and a half years later. The game's story follows Sergeant Hawk and his Bravo Company commandos as they push across Tan lines to take out Colonel Blintz, a Green officer who defected to the Tan after being shot in the head. The game's story makes multiple allusions to the film Apocalypse Now which itself is based on Joseph Conrad's 1899 novella, Heart of Darkness, even to point of Blintz's final line of dialogue in the game being "The horror, the horror," a direct quote from Heart of Darkness antagonist, Kurtz. I utterly loath Heart of Darkness thanks to the insanely deep analysis of it I had to do when I took AP English IV, but I can't deny its literary value, so referencing a film based on the book definitely pleases the academic in me. The game features a 15 mission campaign that tells the story in addition to a set of "Great Battles" which are missions designed for building large bases and longer engagements as well as "Special Operations" which are missions with some very specific objectives. All in all, it's got a good bit of content with 23 missions over those three game modes. If you're playing on PC, there's also a multiplayer option, although since it relied on GameSpy, you have to jump through some hoops to get that to work. As you're building up your forces and fighting your way through the missions, you'll naturally have to keep an eye on resource management, a staple of any RTS game. While games like Age of Empires hit you with numerous resources to manage, Army Men RTS takes a page out of Starcraft's book; your only resources here are plastic and electricity both of which can be harvested from toys strewn about the world. Army Men RTS actually looks pretty decent for a mid budget game, and unlike most of the series, it actually hit pretty good marks on each part of my checklist. The story is, while basic, well done to provide a context for the game's campaign. The visuals, as I just mentioned, look good. My only complaint there is the explosions; they're sort of a soft explosion like in the Toy Story 2 game on N64 if anyone played that instead of the more visceral explosions we saw in Army Men II and Army Men: Toys in Space. The sound design is good with some decent even if not stunning music and the solid voice acting that we've come to expect with the Sarge's Heroes universe games. Jim Cummings continues his performance of literally every single character in the game except for Vikki, and it's his performance, I think, that really elevates the game's sound design; the beneficial effect that just having a good voice actor can have for a game really can't be understated, and Jim Cumming's performance gives the game a light-hearted and humorous feel that fits the "toy soldiers" motif perfectly. The biggest hurdle that RTS games on consoles always face is with control, and perhaps surprisingly give the mediocrity for which the Army Men series is known, 3DO and Global Star really nailed the controls here. It would take until Halo Wars three and a half years and a whole console generation later and developed with a significantly larger budget for a console RTS game to surpass Army Men RTS in controls. Deselecting units can be a little awkward, but selecting and directing your units feels completely natural, and that's the most important element of RTS control. Rather than having to select a specific building, you just hold the R button and can use up and down on the D pad to cycle through building menus to make the units or structures you want to build. Barbed wire fences also automatically appear connecting guard towers and fence posts as long as they're positioned properly. A lot of the things that were either cumbersome or omitted from past console RTS games have been creatively fixed here. RTS may not do much to shake up the typical RTS formula, but that's not necessarily a bad thing; the phrase "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" has endured for so long for a reason. Army Men RTS, while sadly 3DO's last Army Men game, is also one of their best Army Men games. I, personally, still prefer the tactics games on PC and the third person shooters on Nintendo 64, but as far as quality goes, RTS definitely deserves a place right beside Army Men II and Sarge's Heroes 2. The game's PC version has been updated and made easily playable on modern machines thanks to GOG, and considering that the PlayStation 2 is the best-selling console of all time, I imagine a lot of people still have one of those, making that version an option. I'm naturally partial to the Gamecube version given that that's the version I played growing up and is on a Nintendo platform, but I've tried all three versions, and there's not a bad choice to be had. Whether you go PC, PS2, or Gamecube (the real gamer's choice), Army Men RTS is a game that is worth checking out whether you're a fan of the series or not. My Rating - BAlso available on PlayStation and PlayStation 2 as Army Men: Air Attack 2 Army Men: Air Combat - The Elite Missions continues 3DO's weird insistence on giving games different titles on different systems and, in this case, different regions. On PlayStation, this game is called Army Men: Air Attack 2. On PlayStation 2, it is also called Army Men: Air Attack 2, but only in North America; in Europe, it's called Army Men: Air Attack - Blade's Revenge. Here on Gamecube, it's called Army Men: Air Combat - The Elite Missions. I don't know why they couldn't just pick a damn title and stick with it - at the very least, keep it consistent across regions for PS2 and just call it Air Combat 2 on Gamecube - but alas, here we are with a naming scheme that would put Nintendo's winners to shame. Army Men: Air Combat - The Elite Missions is a direct sequel to Army Men: Air Combat. Before I play a game, I often browse other players' and critics' reviews to see what they liked and disliked so I can pay attention to that and see if I agree. One of the things I noticed when doing that here is that - unsurprisingly - IGN is an utterly worthless source of reviews because their reviewer clearly didn't even play the damn game. They talk about how this is "the Gamecube version" of Air Combat "on Nintendo 64." Uhh, no. No it's not. It's a sequel. Yeah, there are some similarities because 3DO was pumping these games out like Russia pumps out war crimes, but they're absolutely not the same game. Baron von Beige, the primary antagonist in this game, didn't even appear in Air Combat. Literally the opening cut scene introduces him. It's like calling Star Wars: The Phantom Menace an expanded remaster of Star Wars: A New Hope. It's just objectively wrong in every sense, and I'm honestly surprised even "6/10 too much water" IGN would have such an egregiously lazy reviewer on their payroll. Anyway, this is why I make a point to play through every game before I review it or at the bare minimum play a good ten or twenty hours at least - it ensures I actually know what the hell I'm talking about. Having established Green air superiority during the vents of Air Combat and Air Tactics, Tan dictator Plastro hatches a new plan to take the skies from the Green - ace pilot Baron von Beige, an obvious reference to Manfred von Richthofen, a World War I German fighter ace more commonly known as "The Red Baron" who was credited with 80 aerial kills. Baron von Beige is the only pilot who can match Captain Blade's skill in aerial dogfighting, although Beige flies a World War I style triplane. He also likely references Darth Vader from Star Wars as both are extremely skilled fighter pilots, both are shot down in the end of the movie/game, and both are (except for Vader's death scene) never seen or heard speaking without their masks. Regardless of whom he does or does not reference, Baron von Beige begins relentlessly attacking Green Army positions in an attempt to draw out Captain Blade. Blade, being a cocky Top Gun esque hot head, falls for the bait, and his entire squadron is shot down. Over the course of the game's 20 missions, you have to rescue your team (two or three times...), attack Tan factories and installations, and eventually confront Baron von Beige in a one-on-one dogfight (minus the infinitely spawning ground units that will attack you throughout the final battle). Visually, the chips fall about where you'd expect; PS1 looks the worst with Gamecube and PS2 looking pretty on par. I thought the Gamecube version looked just a hair better, but it felt like the PS2 version ran just a little smoother in some places. They're so close, though, that both of those could just be in my head. Props to the PS1 version, though; while it looks pretty rough compared to the two 6th gen versions and doesn't run as smoothly, it looks a lot better than I expected to. It seems like 3DO finally figured out how to use the PS1's hardware pretty well by this point. It still doesn't look as good as some of Sony's first party games or some of the major big budget third party games on the system, but for an Army Men game on PS1, I was impressed. Sound design is also pretty good here. Music is solid, sound effects are pretty great, and the voice acting is good...in the context of Army Men, anyway. It's still cheesy as hell, but that's part of the series's soul. The most important part - the gameplay - is also solid. I don't know if I had some settings messed up or what, but the controls felt a bit clunkier and more awkward than they should on PS2. It controlled as fine as you could expect with a D pad on PS1, and it felt amazing to play on Gamecube, but something about the controls on PS2 just felt a little off to me, and I never could quite put my finger on why. Regardless, though, even with the unexplainable awkwardness of the PS2 version's controls, it doesn't take too long to get used to. This really is a pretty smooth and comfortable aerial combat game. Army Men: Air Combat - the Elite Missions on Gamecube (or Army Men: Air Attack 2 if you're playing one of the PlayStation versions) is definitely one of the better games in the series. I'd personally put it at #4 - below Army Men II, Army Men: Sarge's Heroes, and Army Men: Sarge's Heroes 2; but above Army Men: Air Combat/Air Attack. I strongly recommend playing the Gamecube version if you can - between the visuals and the controls, it's definitely the best version of the three. Failing that, go for PS2. If, somehow, you don't have a PS2, a Gamecube, or a Wii, then PS1 is still a good option. Despite being the obviously weakest of the three versions both mechanically and visually, it still plays surprisingly well and is absolutely worth playing if you don't have access to one of the two 6th gen versions. The game had some bugs I noticed towards the end, but nothing that prevent me from progressing or that I found particularly irritating. It's worth owning this game not only to have on your shelf with your other Army Men games but to play and replay occasionally; it really is a genuinely fun time. It's one of three Army Men games on Gamecube, one of seven Army Men games on PlayStation 2, and one of ten Army Men games on PlayStation. If you're collecting for any of those systems or for this series, make sure this one gets a spot on your shelf; it actually deserves one which is more than some of its compatriots can say. My Rating - BAlso available on PlayStation 2 Army Men: Green Rogue on PlayStation is one of the few instances of a cross-generational game release where the past-gen version is actually better than the current-gen version. That’s not to say that the PS1 Green Rogue looks better than the PS2 Green Rogue - it absolutely objectively does not - but as far as fun goes, yeah, I’d rank the PS1 game above the PS2 game. They have the same story which is why I was originally going to cover them both in the same review, but after playing the first couple of levels on PS1 for comparison, I quickly realized that the gameplay and the levels, while sharing the same rough settings (jungle, alpine, city, etc), are completely different between the two games. 3DO went for a more “run and gun” style game here as opposed to the standard third person shooter that most of the series provides, and while they probably nailed that goal better in the PS2 game since it automatically moves you forward, the PS1 game is just more fun. It’s still got a real run and gun feel, but it doesn’t scroll forward automatically, so it gives you a little bit more of a feeling of control. You can’t go backwards in the level, so it’s definitely not just “regular Army Men but in a tunnel,” but you aren’t forced forward before you’re ready, making it easier to ensure that your genocide of the Tan fascists is complete. It’s also just not nearly as difficult. The final boss is like the Mount Everest of difficulty spikes and is downright unreasonably difficult, but the first 98% of the game is pretty fair and much less brutal than the PS2 game in my opinion. A challenging game is good; a brutal game is frustrating. On PS2, Green Rogue is the latter; on PS1, it’s a solid example of the former. The premise of the game is that the Green Army has completed a secret project to create the Omega Soldier - the ultimate super soldier - by extracting plastic from Sergeant Hawk and each of his Bravo Company commandos and mixing them together to mold a soldier with the strengths of each of them. Cool concept, not gonna lie. Too bad that cool concept is ruined by horrible gameplay and a complete lack of any character development. You awaken in the jungle in the wreckage of a Green helicopter that was shot down while transporting you. You start walking and decide to murder everything you see because everything is trying to murder you. In the PS2 version, you fight Blue and Grey soldiers in addition to Tan soldiers, although the game never explains why the Blue and Grey are allied with the Tan; in this PS1 version, though, you're only fighting the Tan with no Blue or Grey troops appearing. Aiming feels a bit weird, but it’s not nearly as hard to aim as on PS2. By and large, it feels a lot like aiming in any other PS1 Army Men game; cumbersome and clunky but not unusable. Graphics are about what you’d expect from a PS1 Army Men game - much inferior to Metal Gear Solid, but better than something like Return Fire on 3DO. Sound is...fine. Music is definitely solid, but the sound effects are unfortunately so forgettable that the music itself kind of gets dragged down. You get mostly the same weapons as on PS2 - rifle, flamethrower, and rocket launcher; but instead of a grenade launcher, you get regular grenades that you throw like in the other games. You also don’t have to pick which weapon you want to carry; you get all of them once you pick them up, and you can switch between them. Each weapon can be upgraded to level three by picking up a duplicate, and each time you die, you lose a level. If you have a weapon at level one and die, you lose that weapon entirely (except for the rifle; you’ll always have at least a level one rifle). I honestly think that’s a pretty decent way to balance it; it was pure frustration to get a weapon maxed out on PS2 only to lose it in favor of a level one weapon because you weren’t able to get out of the way of the weapon swap. All in all, Army Men: Green Rogue on PlayStation, while better than the game’s PlayStation 2 version, is awful and definitely the third worst game in the series after Green Rogue on PS2 and Portal Runner on Game Boy Color, respectively. No game will ever dethrone Green Rogue on PS2 as the worst in the series, but Green Rogue on PS1 gives it a solid run for its money. This one is at least worth playing in my opinion if you’re a big fan of the Army Men series, but only once and not necessarily even all the way through to the end, and it’s not worth buying unless you’re just bound and determined to have a full Army Men collection on your shelf. If you’re not a staunch fan of the series, steer clear. My Rating - FDragon Glide is the newest game from Australian one-man developer, Sungrand Studios, and it's part of Jerrel's new initiative to develop and release games for mobile phones running KaiOS. If you're not familiar with KaiOS - I wasn't until Jerrel unveiled Dragon Glide - it's a Linux-based operating system for feature phones, phones that have the form factor of cell phones from the good ol' day (flip phones, slide phones, etc) and some very basic smart features. You won't find Monopoly Go or Call of Duty Mobile here, but it has basic internet functionality and - most important for us - a quickly growing app store with relatively rudimentary games. For most Zoomers, there's probably zero appeal here, but for Millennials and maybe some younger nostalgic Gen Xers, it harkens back to the days of Snake and Tetris on Nokia's indestructible phones. Crucially for Sungrand, though, and the reason Jerrel is developing for KaiOS, is that these inexpensive phones are EXTREMELY popular in the developing world. Africa and India, especially, have hundreds of millions of potential KaiOS users, and the market in those countries is growing pretty quickly. Dragon Glide is pretty primitive by the standards of what we in the West are used to playing on phones, but considering the budget hardware KaiOS runs on, it's pretty standard. Being Sungrand's first game on KaiOS, it's pretty simple; after all, no one's first go at anything is going to be astounding or super in depth. You play as a dragon at the bottom of the screen, and you have to move left and right to avoid the various enemy dragons constantly flying at you while also collecting the slowly falling dragon eggs. Collecting the dragon eggs is how you score points. If you get hit by an enemy dragon, you lose one of your little wingman dragons, signified by "Bonus x3" in the bottom right when you have both of your dragons (this is how you start the game), "Bonus x2" when you've lost one, and "Bonus x1" when it's just your main dragon. This isn't just a life counter; as the word "bonus" implies, it's also your point multiplier, so if you want to rack up a high score, it's crucial to keep your wingman dragons alive for as long as possible. The music is a bit bugged on my phone - not sure if that's a bug that needs fixing or if my phone is just a weaker model - but I just turn off the music, and it plays well (that's a bummer, though, as the music is great, as is the norm for Sungrand's soundtracks). There's no story here, and the game doesn't have an "ending" per se; you just try to chase the best high score you can get. It's simple, it's basic, it's primitive, but it's relaxing and surprisingly charming. I was skeptical when Jerrel first unveiled this plan and his idea for this initial game in the Sungrand Discord, but I have to admit, I'm pleasantly surprised with how the game turned out. You can get a cheap KaiOS phone from Cricket for under $50 (I got mine for $25), and while it's probably not worth it to buy a whole second phone just for primitive KaiOS games, it is cool to see the kind of games that those not privileged with having been born in a wealthy nation play. We - or at least I - often take for granted the luxuries of living in a disgustingly rich nation like the United States, Canada, Australia, Britain, Germany, etc., so it's good, I think, to humble ourselves by seeing how most of the world lives. Usually that means seeing and contemplating how people can live in cripplingly dehumanizing poverty, but sometimes it's as simple as playing a primitive game on a phone that costs less than I spend on a date. Dragon Glide isn't revolutionary, and it's not setting a milestone for mobile gaming - not even KaiOS mobile gaming - but it's pretty cool for Sungrand's first KaiOS release, and seeing how this turned out and hearing what other games he has planned for KaiOS makes me quite interested to see how his future projects turn out,s and I think that he's making a pretty wise business move by branching into KaiOS to get some of the market in the developing world. Take my rating here for what it is; I make a point to judge games with their hardware in mind, so keep in mind that I'm not going to hold a KaiOS game to the same standards to which I'd hold an Android of iOS game. My Rating - DAlso available on PlayStation Army Men, as a series, is known for mediocrity. Some would say it’s known for downright bad games, although I would usually disagree. Usually is the operative word in that sentence, though; Army Men: Green Rogue, given the subtitle Omega Soldier in Europe, on PlayStation 2 is genuinely one of the worst non-indie games I’ve ever played in my life. It’s worse than Portal Runner on Game Boy Color. It’s worse than Duke Nukem 3D on Genesis. It’s worse than Battletoads in Battlemaniacs on Master System. It’s pretty much on par with Call of Duty on NGage and Ride to Hell: Retribution on PS3 and Xbox 360. I don’t say that in an attempt to do the “lol look how mad I am at this bad game!” AVGN thing; I say that because it truly, genuinely is that bad. The premise of the game is that the Green Army has completed a secret project to create the Omega Soldier - the ultimate super soldier - by extracting plastic from Sergeant Hawk and each of his Bravo Company commandos and mixing them together to mold a soldier with the strengths of each of them. Cool concept, not gonna lie. Too bad that cool concept is ruined by horrible gameplay and a complete lack of any character development. You awaken in the jungle in the wreckage of a Green helicopter that was shot down while transporting you. You start walking and decide to murder everything you see because everything is trying to murder you - Tan, Grey, Blue, everyone. Tan makes sense - they’re always the bad guys. Blue isn’t too strange; they’ve always been playing both sides of the war, helping the Tan one day and the Green the next. Grey is weird, though; outside of Dr. Madd and his soldiers, the Grey are almost always portrayed as ranging from neutral to hating both Green and Tan but Tan slightly more (think US/USSR relations during World War II). Of course, none of that is explained in the game, and if it is, I couldn’t hear it for reasons I’ll get to in a moment. Visually, the game is mediocre. It’s not the worst looking game on the PS2, but it’s in the bottom 50% of games for visuals. The game has a slightly desaturated look to it that other games in the series don’t have. For example, Grey soldiers look like Black soldiers, and all of the foliage looks like the collard greens like that little old lady used to make for every church potluck - cooked to death and reduced to a dull, drab olive green mush (you’ll get that if you grew up in the American South). Unfortunately, the sound design isn’t any better. The music is utterly forgettable, and the sound balance is terrible; at the default values, you’ll have a hard time hearing any dialogue whatsoever over the deafening music and sound effects. The worst part, however, is definitely the gameplay. They tried to make this game with an “arcade” style, but they did it in the same way that Tesla made the Cybertruck - in the worst way possible, a way so bad that they invented new ways to make their product awful. It’s a third person shooter, like most of the console Army Men games, but it’s also vertically scrolling. The problem is that the scrolling is extremely slow, making it impossible to just rush through missions or sprint through a dangerous group of enemies. You’re at the bottom of the screen, and you control the Omega Soldier with the left stick while controlling the aim with the right stick. It’s kind of like a twin stick shooter if it sucked. It’s virtually impossible to aim with any accuracy which makes the rocket launcher almost unusable, and any game where the rocket launcher is garbage is a bad video game automatically. Speaking of the rocket launcher, there are four weapons you can pick up - the rifle, the rocket launcher, the grenade launcher, and the flamethrower. The rifle is the best for killing enemies at distance. The flamethrower is the best for killing enemies up close. The rocket launcher and grenade launcher aren’t good for anything except bosses, and there are only five or six of those, if I remember correctly, in the game’s 16 levels. If you pick up a weapon you already have, that weapon gets improved by one stage. You can also pick up grey arrow power-ups to upgrade whatever weapon you have one stage. If you pick up another weapon, though, it overwrites whatever you’ve got. Got a fully upgraded rifle which turns it into a massive minigun? Not anymore; now you have a base level rocket launcher. Get rekt, bro. That’s not particularly unusual for vertical scrolling shooters, but most of those shooters have a ship or character that is quick and nimble; the tanks in Sarge’s Heroes are more agile and maneuverable than the Omega Soldier. Despite the fact that the game is pretty small - despite being on PlayStation 2, it’s pressed on a CD rather than a DVD - it takes forever to load. You’ll be sitting at the level loading screen for a solid 45 to 60 seconds most of the time, and it takes so long to load your save files at the save screen between levels that you’ll think your game is bugged and doesn’t detect the memory card (which is why I had to use the level select cheat until level seven when I finally realized I was just being impatient). Why does it take so long to load, though? There isn’t that much data to load given the size of the game, and it’s not like the laser is too weak or slow; most of the PS1 Army Men games load faster than this. It’s by no means the worst thing about the game - it’s probably the least offensive problem - but it’s definitely jarring to have Sega CD loading times in a game from 2001. Army Men: Green Rogue on PlayStation 2 is abysmal. It’s insanely difficult, it’s hard to aim, the audio balance is way out of whack, and it’s just not fun. Like, some games are objectively bad games but are still a ton of fun - Devil’s Third on Wii U, for example - but this isn’t like that. This is a Birdemic, not a Fear Town, USA. It’s not so bad it’s good; it’s just plain bad. If you’re a huge fan of the series, it MIGHT be worth emulating, but unless you, like me, just want every game in the series on your shelf, it’s not worth buying for any price. No “But I’m a huge fan of the series!” makes this game feel fun. It may not be the worst video game of all time, but it’s hands down the worst game in this series. My Rating - FI went into Portal Runner on the PlayStation 2 with extremely low expectations. I found the Game Boy Color game to be dreadful, and while I know a PS2 game and GBC game are, by default, a far cry from one another, I figured “If the Game Boy Color game screws up what should be a winning formula for me - platforming - then what will this screw up?” Fortunately, though, what I got was the opposite of what I expected. It’s not the best game in the series or anything, but it’s genuinely fun and significantly better than I expected it to be. The story takes place immediately following the events of Sarge’s Heroes 2. General Plastro is in a Green jail, the Tan army is behaving (for the moment; you can never trust plastic Nazis), and Bridget Blue is in hiding somewhere. She’s still obsessing over Sergeant Hawk, though, with a creepy “I’ll force you to love me” stalker vibe going on. She devises a plan to get what she wants; she sends an anonymous message to Green Plastic News ace reporter Vikki Grimm, Hawk’s girlfriend and Colonel Grimm’s daughter, telling her that “the story of your career” awaited her at a not-at-all ominous location in the middle of nowhere. Having literal plastic for a brain, Vikki goes, and of course, she’s kidnapped. This naturally lures out Sergeant Hawk where he, too, is kidnapped. Vikki is exiled to a different world, one she’s never seen before. This isn’t the plastic world or the real world; this is a world of dinosaurs. She’s trapped as the portal that brought her there was destroyed, but she’s not alone; she befriends a lion she names Leo (how original). Together, they search for a portal home. This adventure ends up taking them through three different worlds. Unlike the other Army Men games on PlayStation platforms, this isn’t a strict third person shooter. You do shoot - Vikki has a bow - but it’s an adventure platformer first and foremost. Yeah, there was a good bit of platforming in Sarge’s Heroes, but nothing like this. In those games, it was a feature that livened things up between bouts of combat; here, it’s the focus whereas combat is the feature that livens things up. Whereas the platforming in Sarge’s Heroes felt pretty clunky, it’s thankfully pretty smooth here. It’s no Crash Bandicoot or Mario, but it’s good for a series that epitomizes mediocrity. The shooting is pretty solid too; there’s a very strong auto aim that, while it struggles a little with the Y axis aiming, makes X axis aiming something you barely have to do; shoot anywhere in a 45 degree arc, and you’ll probably hit it. That’s not to say there’s no manual aiming; there is, and you’ll have to use it now and then both for puzzles and to hit distant enemies. It’s just not how most of your shooting will be done as was the case in Sarge’s Heroes. Speaking of the puzzles, they’re not bad. They’re pretty rudimentary - no Resident Evil puzzles here - but they are, for the most part, interesting enough that I didn’t get bored with them. The visuals are what most impressed me. That’s not to say that it’s a visually stunning game, but it is an Army Men game even if the title doesn’t suggest that, so I expected the usual sub-par visuals. What I got was exactly what I’d expect from a mid budget PS2 game. It definitely looks better than Sarge’s Heroes 2 and Air Attack 2, and I thought it looked on par with or slightly better than Green Rogue. The sound design, while lacking the rad soundtrack of Sarge’s Heroes and Sarge’s Heroes 2, is solid. The music is good even if not great, and I don’t have much complaint with the sound. I’m fairly certain Jim Cummings still voiced Sergeant Hawk, but I can’t find anything other than “Additional Voices” for his credits for Portal Runner online, so I can’t be sure. Hawk’s voice sounded a little different to my ears, but I don’t know if that’s actually because it was a different voice actor or just something weird with his lines in the game’s sound. The difficulty modes were also interesting to me. Army Men games, especially the World War games, have usually been quite difficult towards the end of the game. Maybe 3DO took that feedback on prior games into account because in addition to the usual Easy, Normal, and Hard difficulty options, there was also an option called Dream which is essentially the below-easy difficulty that usually gets called “Story” these days. It’s stupidly easy on that setting, but if you’re bad at the game and just want to experience the story and the environments, it’s there for you. As the patron saint of Bitch Mode, I approve of this setting’s inclusion. I’m a little surprised that Portal Runner only came to PlayStation 2 (I’m not counting the handheld version; it’s a totally different game). Every other game non-World War game was on at least one other platform, and a lot of folks have a mental connection between Nintendo and Army Men with Sarge’s Heroes and Sarge’s Heroes 2. Since Air Attack 2 (albeit with a different title), Sarge’s War, and RTS were all on GameCube, and Major Malfunction was on Xbox (exclusively on Xbox if you’re in North America), it just seems an odd choice to keep Portal Runner locked to the PlayStation 2. Green Rogue was also only on Sony hardware, but it was on PS1 as well as PS2, and Portal Runner released in 2001; it was a year into the PS2’s life, sure, but there were still some games being released for PS1. Regardless, though, it’s a much better game than I expected. It’s not perfect, and the story is a little underwhelming since the main enemies you fight are dinosaurs, knights, and little green men instead of Tan soldiers, but it’s still a decent Army Men gaiden sort of story. Since it doesn’t have “Army Men” in the title - something that will never not irk me - obsessive compulsive fans don’t need to grab this to put it next to the other Army Men games on your PS2 shelf, but I do think it’s definitely worth a playthrough if you’re a fan of the series. I kind of regret waiting so long to actually play this now; this is the only game in the series that wasn’t a replay for the review. If you haven’t played this, don’t deprive yourself. You won’t be wondering why it didn’t win any Game of the Year awards, but it’s definitely not a waste of time. My Rating - BAlso available on PlayStation and Nintendo 64 Army Men: Sarge's Heroes 2 might well be the best game in the series. I'm partial to Army Men II, but unless one of the few later releases that I haven't played in years is better than I remember, Sarge's Heroes 2 is probably the best game from an objective standpoint. Now, if you go on Metacritic or Gamespot or similar sites, you'll see the exact opposite; a lot of those sites say that Sarge's Heroes 2 is worse than the original game. I firmly disagree with that, and I think that critics are generally wrong about Army Men, at least from an experience standpoint. The games may be rough visually and have unfair difficulty curves more often than not, but they're dumb fun, and that's an oft underestimated part of the video game experience. Sarge's Heroes 2 is a direct sequel to the first Sarge's Heroes. After the events of the first game, General Plastro is trapped in the real world where he was eventually plastered, or frozen in place as an actual toy soldier due to staying in the real world for too long. After a series of military defeats in Plastro's absences, Colonel Grimm convinces the acting Tan commander, Field Marshal Tannenburg, agrees to an armistice. Unbeknownst to either Grimm or Tannenburg, Bridget Blue, a spy from the Blue nation, has an anti-plastrification serum developed by Grey scientist Dr. Madd (despite being from a different universe, this is the same - or at least a parallel version of - the "mad Grey scientist" from Army Men II) and revives Plastro. After rebuilding his forces at a toy store, Plastro bursts through a portal and assaults the peace treaty signing event, thus ensuring that the war between Green and Tan would continue. Most people - at least fellow Army Men fans I've discussed the game with - seem to like the lighter story here more than the previous game's story with its overt mention of death rays and torture. I, on the other hand, usually prefer darker stories, so while I prefer this game over the first one, I found the previous game's story to be a little more interesting. That's just personal preference, though, not a point for or against either game. In the first Sarge's Heroes, the four versions were split into two "build" of the game but were relatively identical to one another outside of graphical quality. That's largely the same here, but not exactly. The Nintendo 64 version of the game came out first, a few months prior to the PlayStation version's release, but while they have identical stories, the PlayStation version was actually built from the ground up separately from the N64 version. When the PlayStation 2 version came out a year later, rather than being based on the PS1 version, 3DO took the N64 version and adapted and improved it for the PS2 release. That's probably a good thing, too, as the PS1 version is by far the worst looking of the three and actually looks worse in my opinion than Sarge's Heroes did on the system. There are some exclusive features to each version, as well. The N64 version gets an exclusive level not present in the PS1 or PS2 versions. The PS2 version gets drastically improved visuals and, in some cases, completely redone models. The PS1 version gets...disappointment. That's all it gets. Jokes aside, though, there are four weapons and six enemies that only appear in the PS1 version as well as one enemy that appears in the N64 and PS2 versions but not in the PS1 version. Most noteworthy here, to me at least, is that 3DO didn't make the same mistake with the 6th gen release of Sarge's Heroes 2 that did with Sarge's Heroes. Sarge's Heroes on Dreamcast, like the PS2 version of Sarge's Heroes 2, was based on the Nintendo 64 version. With the first game, however, that included the lack of FMV cut scenes despite the Dreamcast's GD-ROM format having more than enough space for the FMV scenes. With Sarge's Heroes 2, however, the PlayStation 2 is a truly definitive version (minus the one N64 exclusive level and a few PS1 exclusive weapons and enemies, but those are minor details); not only have the PS1 cut scenes been included in the PS2 port, but they've been remastered to look much better and run much smoother in addition to running at a higher resolution. It really makes me wish even more that Sarge's Heroes on Dreamcast had been given the same treatment. In terms of performance, the versions rank just like you'd expect; PS1 had the most instances of slowdown in my experience, with N64 suffering from some slowdown as well but not quite to the same degree, and the PS2 version winning hands down with very little slowdown and drastically improved visuals. I do have one grip with the PS2 visuals, and this is completely subjective - the zombies outside of Dr. Madd's castle don't look as cool. They definitely look more like zombies, but that honestly takes part of it's charm; in the 5th gen versions of the game, they look like they do in Army Men II and Toys in Space - shambling army men with limbs of all different colors. You can see some color variation on PS2, but they look too much like actual toy zombies and not enough like Army Men zombies for my taste. As I said, though, that's definitely a personal taste issue, not a knock against the game. As far as music goes, the Sarge's Heroes sub-series is 2-2; the music is fantastic and even better than it was in the previous game. I may not have like the story in Sarge's Heroes 2 quite as much as I like that in the previous game, but the missions in Sarge's Heroes 2 win hands down. You spend a lot of time in the real world in this game whereas it was pretty scarce in the previous one, and that is definitely to the game's benefit. The most memorable and iconic mission in the whole game in my opinion is the refrigerator level. You have to climb your way up inside this fridge, fighting Tan soldiers along the way, while you search for and destroy cans of deplastrification spray. It's a pretty short level, but that's true of most levels in the game; only one level took me more than ten minutes to complete (excluding deaths and restarts), and that only took 12 minutes with most missions averaging around 5 or 6 minutes once I knew what I was doing. That's not a bad thing, though; one of my biggest complaints with the previous game was that the increasingly long levels added difficulty through an obnoxious method with the lack of checkpoints mid-level. There are still no checkpoints in the level here, but with levels that take less time to complete fully here than it takes to reach a checkpoint one-third of the way through some of Sarge's Heroes's later levels, that's not too bad; even if you get killed at the very end of the level, you've only lost five or six minutes, not ten or twenty. For me, there are few games quite as nostalgic as Army Men: Sarge's Heroes 2. I used to play this for hours on my Nintendo 64 with friends when I was in elementary school. I even had action figures of Sergeant Hawk and General Plastro when I was a kid. It may not look or play quite as brilliantly as it does in my childhood memories, but that doesn't mean it's not a genuinely good game. The auto aim is a little more irritating and less reliable than in the previous game, and at least on PlayStation, it doesn't look quite as good as the previous game, but the visuals saw a bit of an improvement on Nintendo 64, and the PlayStation 2 version truly looks like it's a generation ahead whereas the Dreamcast version of the previous game looked markedly better but only barely a "generational" leap if at all. Whether its the local deathmatch multiplayer or the cheesy but fun as hell single player, Sarge's Heroes 2 is definitely a game you need to play. If you collect for Nintendo 64, this one is absolutely mandatory, especially if you can get the green cartridge. If you collect for PlayStation, you should snag this one just because there are so many Army Men games on the console, and they look great on a shelf next to one another. If you collect for PlayStation 2, there are still five Army Men games on PS2 - six if you count Portal Runner - but I wouldn't say it's as much of a collection must-have as it is for PS1 or N64, although the PS2 version is definitely the definitive way to play the game. Whatever retro console you prefer, give this game a play. My Rating - BAlso available on PlayStation and Windows (under the title Air Attack) Army Men: Air Combat, which is its N64 title, initially released on PlayStation as Army Men: Air Attack. I have no clue why they changed the name for the Nintendo 64 release; the later Windows port used the Air Attack name. Regardless, this is the second air-based game in the series coming out a year before Air Tactics on PC. This is the game of the three on Nintendo 64 that I didn’t have as a kid, so my first time playing this one was in college back in 2012. While it took me a few minutes to get used to the helicopter’s floatier controls compared to Sergeant Hawk in Sarge’s Heroes, I was quickly sucked into what is definitely one of the best games in the series alongside the two Sarge’s Heroes titles. Maybe the secret to a good Army Men game is to put it on Nintendo 64? Air Combat a follow-up of sorts to Sarge’s Heroes as it’s set in that universe with those characters rather than the “Sarge” in the original game’s universe. You play as Captain William Blade, the Green army’s elite combat chopper pilot, as he goes on various missions to attack Tan bases, foil Tan plots, and rescue Green soldiers. The story is pretty average and a little disjointed as the missions feel only loosely connected for the most part, but it does serve as a good introduction for Captain Blade who would go on be the protagonist in Army Men: Air Tactics on PC, Army Men: Air Combat on Game Boy Color, and Army Men: Air Attack 2 on PlayStation, PlayStation 2, and Gamecube. (which has a plethora of names depending on platform and region). The story may be the weak point as is the norm in Army Men games, but the gameplay more than makes up for it. I’ve seen some online rank it as the best game in the series, and while I’m not prepared to put it above Army Men II or Sarge’s Heroes 2, I will slot it in third place. Once you get used to the floaty feel and the strafing, the helicopter controls wonderfully, and the combat feels fluid and natural. In addition to your machine guns, you have an array of secondary weapons to use like rockets, guided missiles, napalm, etc. There are four helicopters that you will unlock over the course of the campaign, each with their own different stats. You also have different co-pilots to choose from, each of whom have a weapon in which they specialize thus boosting that weapon’s damage. Air Combat, the N64 version of the game, also has a console-exclusive additional co-pilot, Bombshell, who specializes in napalm. That’s really the only difference I noticed between the two versions; even the visuals are only the slightest bit better on Nintendo 64, and that may well be my rose-tinted Nintendo glasses. The game is pretty impressive by PS1 visual standards. There’s some good variety in mission objectives. Sometimes you have to destroy all Tan forces in an area. Sometimes you have to retrieve a particular item and bring it back to base. Sometimes you have to defend your base. Sometimes you have to rescue soldiers in the field before they’re killed by Tan soldiers. I’m not going to say it never gets repetitive, but there is a decent amount of variety that I thought kept things fun and interesting throughout my playthrough. Speaking of my playthrough, it was pretty short - around three hours from start to finish. If I hadn’t failed the last two missions so many times, it would have been about two hours. My only real complaints are pretty standard for Army Men; the camera control isn’t great, and there are some invisible collision hitboxes that get annoying. The camera is the same issue in Sarge’s Heroes, so it’s at least a familiar jank. The invisible hitboxes, while also familiar from Sarge’s Heroes, are much more irritating. In Sarge’s Heroes, there were a lot of times that I’d be trying to shoot an enemy while being as minimally out of cover as possible and having a clear line of sight with my manual crosshairs directly on the foe only to have my bullets hit an invisible piece of cover. The same kind of thing happens here except instead of with shooting, it’s with flying; I’ll be trying to skirt around close to the side of a mountain to save some time and maintain my speed, and I’ll get snagged on and stopped by...the air, apparently. Still, though, those are my only two complaints with the game. The music is pretty good, the voice acting is as nostalgically cheesy as ever, and the game looks pretty good for Army Men. For this series, that’s a pretty minimal list of complaints. Army Men: Air Combat - or Air Attack if you’re playing on PlayStation or PC - is a surprisingly good game. It’s not just fun; it’s genuinely a pretty good game. It’s not a graphical shocker - it’s still Army Men - and the controls aren’t perfect, but it’s a great game. The difficulty ramps up pretty evenly and fairly throughout the game’s 16 levels, and while I think the last two or three missions were a little excessively brutal - especially the last mission - but that’s a pretty minor thing. It’s got the general jank and shallow story of most Army Men games, but it’s genuinely fun, and my only complaints with the game are pretty minor. I 100% recommend playing it in general, and it’s a must-have for Nintendo 64 collectors and definitely a game to consider for PlayStation collectors. My Rating - B |
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
June 2024
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