Also 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 - F |
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
|