Army Men: Sarge's War

Added July 30th, 2004 by Rishi

Introduction:

I had never played an Army Men game before, but I had heard about the series and that the first Army Men published by 3DO was a success. The original Army Men was a strategy game where the player took control of plastic soldiers. However, 3DO didn’t end there; they continued to make more Army Men games in hope for more profits on a game they thought to be a gold mine, they lost focus on producing quality gameplay. To put short, the rest of the Army Men games were far from a success and eventually it lead to 3DO’s closure in 2002. Was there a new hope for the Army Men series when Take2 bought the rights to the series? Yes, Take2 could have re-branded the game and brought back what Army Men was all about, quality gameplay. Did they do this? No, rather they seemed to push the series into the bottomless pit it was lying next to, never to be seen again.

Gameplay:

Sarge's War is no different from the previous storylines of the series. Again you take control on the Green army which is having a war with the Tan army. The Tan army has got its hands on a powerful weapon which could destroy the Green nation forever. Sarge’s mission, almost like a super hero’s is to almost single handily save the Green’s from a fate of doom. At the start of the game you are placed into the middle of a losing battle with most of Sarge’s team wiped out. Sarge decides he will take on the Tan army alone and makes a “milk run”. So you run around trying your best to stay alive using the skills you picked up from the training session. The Tan soldiers are pretty easy to kill though they do try to make use of cover and grenades.

You get the same equipment as from the past games in the series; I found the weapons to be dull and not very unique. The aiming in the game is terrible, you will find yourself holding down the left trigger nearly throughout the whole game since that’s the only way you can get good shots at the enemy. Unless you’re using a sniper rifle where you have to use the right trigger to zoom in and can kill anyone with one shot no matter where you shot them. Well, I’m willing to let the poor physics go because after all it is a game based on toy soldiers. Sadly, the games problems don’t end here; wait till I get onto the controls and graphics.

Sarge’s War seems to me as a stripped down toy version of the great game Medal of Honour. Sarge’s War is a game in which every mission expects you to run around with you guns blazing. On the whole it would not be very challenging to even the average gamer. The game does provide opportunities to use cover, but you probably would be better off using the auto lock trigger and blasting away at the enemy. During the run and gun mayhem, you come across generously frequent supplies of weaponry and health. These include such weapons as an assault rifle, shotgun, auto rifle, sniper rifle and flamethrower. Sarge also features visible damage where holes appear in his body; this can be either patched up with enemy remains or the standard health pack.

The game has 12 levels in total which are broken up in smaller sections. The lengths of these sections vary and you also have secondary objects which I guess makes the game less linear. The game is quite short, probably taking a week at most to finish, but I’m not complaining, the sooner it ended the better. There’s no online play and the 4 split-screen multiplayer support it has is far from entertaining, but I guess it can keep kids under the age of 10 entertained. The multiplayer game modes and death match, team death match and some sort of capture the flag.

Graphics:

There’s not much to say for the graphics, like I mentioned before, being an Army Man game you can’t expect it to have amazing character modelling and detail since Army Men toys in real life are pretty plain. The Environments reminded me of Medal of Honour, especially the first level. Graphically they could be called average. Although, I liked how you could run into any building if you needed to reload or cover yourself from enemy fire. However, I found problems with the games coding, for example when I selected grenades, it still looked like I was holding a gun at times, somewhat like those glitches you see on counter strike. I felt the game should have been more to ratio of a little plastic army solider in a big world, but in fact the environment has been made to suit the size of the little men. Kind of what you expect from a budget game which I believe had a launch price of $15 in the US.

Audio:

Sarge's War's audio is ordinary as well, with bland sound effects that are continuously repeated and the background music which doesn’t really compliment gameplay. Not that you will pay much attention to the audio since you will be running around shooting, so I guess the only sound you will hear is of the bullets exiting from your weapon. The voice’s of Sarge and other soldiers is decent and there are some good explosions. As for weapon sound effects all I can say is that they are different from each other.

Controls:

Where do I start, this game has some of the worst controls I have ever witnessed, firstly, the left analogue stick is used for movement, while the right is pretty useless as it just moves the camera. It takes time to get used to, but even then you will find the movement and camera sticks to actually conflict with each other if used together. So I just didn’t use the camera stick. Another major flaw is how sensitive the controls are for both movement and aiming. You will find it very difficult to be precise with your movement and I would like to see someone hitting a moving target with the sniper on this one and just imagine how sensitive the controls get when you zoom in. At least you have the ability to lock on to enemies by holding down the left trigger; otherwise this game would be hell.

Replay:

The game is not very long and with there being not much of a storyline and very linear gameplay, I very much doubt it will enter your Xbox again, that’s if you even get yourself to finish it. The multiplayer may make you come back to the game a few times, but in all honesty if you’re looking for multiplayer fun this game is far from the best you can get.

Summary:

This is a below average game with nothing new brought in from the pass series other than more proof that the Army Men series should rest in peace. I wouldn’t recommend wasting your hard earned money on renting or buying this title. Although, if you’re a parent whose is looking to get your child a cheap game that will be easy enough for them and provide mindless fun then you can consider purchasing this. For the older gamers, my advice is keep away!