Also available on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Windows There have been a few games over the years either somewhat or directly inspired by Army Men, but none have been so open about it as The Mean Greens: Plastic Warfare. The title is dumb - the Greens are the good guys, so what’s “mean” about them? - but the game itself is pretty reminiscent of what Army Men might be if the series were still around today. Well, it is in some ways, anyway. The Mean Greens is a multiplayer only third person shooter. The original release featured no real tutorial or offline play with bots, but that has thankfully since been added in updates. There’s still no true single player mode, though; it just has the exact same game modes as online but with bots. I know that I’m in a minority of gamers in that I expect a true single player offering with games, but that’s especially true with Army Men games (and those directly inspired by it). They’re toys, and it’s not technically an Army Men game; other than “Green good, Tan bad,” you don’t have an established canon to worry about sticking to, and the fact that they’re toys in the real world gives you a ton of creative flexibility. I can’t help but see the decision not to include any kind of a single player mode as anything but lazy. As a multiplayer shooter, though, The Mean Greens is, for the most part, pretty good. Imagine Sarge’s Heroes 2’s multiplayer but online and in HD. The level designs are absolutely fantastic and genuinely blew me away with how fun they were to fight in. The controls are okay; the aiming feels a little bit jerky, and while adjusting the aim sensitivity can help with that, it never feels quite as smooth or fluid as Gears of War. The real problem I have is the weapons. In most games, you get some basic weapons at the start, and as you play, you gradually unlock better weapons or upgrades for those weapons. The Mean Greens doesn’t do that. There are five weapons - assault rifle, sniper rifle, shotgun, bazooka, flamethrower - plus grenades, and you start off with everything. You have finite ammo for each, but whenever you spawn, you have everything. Nothing upgrades or anything, either. On the one hand, new players don’t get spanked by veteran players purely because of equipment. On the other hand, there’s little incentive to keep playing. “But having fun should be incentive enough!” Yeah, it absolutely should. But we all know from over 20 years of Call of Duty that our lizard brains are immensely gratified by arbitrary progression. Without XP or upgrades or unlocks or levels, the game just feels...a little empty. Also the grenades suck. They’re about as effective as lighting an M80 firecracker and throwing it at someone in real life. You randomly get assigned to play as either a Green soldier or a Tan soldier in team based games like team deathmatch or capture the flag, and that’s cool. I’m also a huge fan of the fact that free for all matches assign you a random color. Sometimes you’re Green, sometimes you’re Purple, sometimes you’re Red, so on and so forth. With no storyline or lore, that loses a little of its coolness, but if you just mentally superimpose Army Men lore where Green, Tan, Blue, and Grey are the major powers but there are lots of minor powers like Purple, Orange, Red, Cyan, etc.; it becomes a really neat aspect. It doesn’t make up for the so-so controls and the fact that nine times out of ten your default M-16 is the best weapon in the game, but it is definitely a cool touch. The Mean Greens: Plastic Warfare, for what it is, is a decent game. It’s virtually impossible, at least from my experience, to find a match online these days, but fortunately, playing offline with bots is still totally doable and has the same core gameplay. It’s a shame that the weapons are so unbalanced and the controls feel so sluggish and jerky because that really holds it back from being a genuinely good game. If the controls were better, this game would be fantastic for those of us nostalgic for the good ol’ days of Army Men. With the controls what they are, though, it’s stuck at “decent.” That’s a shame, too, because the level design proves that a ton of care and effort were put into this game, just not enough into refining the controls. It’s normally $10 which is a fair price, but it’s important to know if you buy it that you’re probably going to be playing mostly if not exclusively against bots. I definitely recommend it even at full price for fans of Army Men because it’s definitely a fun “what if” for the series, but for those with no special love for Army Men, wait for one of the frequent sales that drop it to between $1 and $3. I have fun with this, and I’m glad I’ve got it on my Switch, but this isn’t a game that is going to wow anyone outside of the level design. 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
June 2024
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