Photo gallery: Army Men: Sarge's WarThey say that war is hell -- but trust me, you'd rather be burning in the fiery pits of Dante's worst nightmares than play through Army Men: Sarge´s War. When publisher 3DO went out of business every gamer over the age of conception hoped and prayed that we had seen the last of the Army Men games. Alas it was not to be and now the first of its kind has appeared on the Xbox.
For those not familiar with the Army Men series, or for those who just blotted out ever playing them from their mind I´ll give you a brief re-cap. Do you remember when you were a kid and your parents bought you some green and tan coloured plastic soldiers? You scuttled out to your garden and created a full scale war with your little heroes. You reveled in their battles and always had a favourite little soldier.
Skip forward a few years and we have the Army Men games intended to capture that feeling of war on your console. You control the Sarge, a tough-speaking, take-names, and kick-ass kind of guy and take on his quest of revenge for the death of his green army buddies, his town and his plastic gal. At no point will you feel sorry for the Sarge for losing these bits of plastic – he only needs to find their molds and he´ll be able to bring them all back.
The game is a third person shooter set in a large scale back yard of war and destruction. The Sarge is like a plastic killing machine who runs around picking up new weapons and basically blowing the living hell out of anything that moves. Occasionally you can get some explosives (always handily placed near the object you want to blow up) and take out gun turrets, cannons or barricades.
However, the main problem with the game except the control system (more of that in a minute) is the sheer monotony of running around and killing little tan soldiers. You can only do it for so long before you have the urge to switch your machine off and do something a lot more interesting instead. Occasionally you will get to use a machine gun turret to kill soldiers but again it´s not that exciting.
The graphics are bland and seem mostly to consist of a few plastic buckets in sand and the occasional vehicle. The enemy soldiers are dull-looking, tan-coloured idiots with guns (what I find weird is that the guns aren´t plastic) and occasionally there is a grenade-launching or secret-stealth soldier lurking around waiting to kill you but mostly it´s you, your latest weapon and shards of destroyed plastic as Rambo, sorry Sarge, kills everything in sight.
The control system is terrible. Really it is. Most of the time you are lucky if you actually hit anything and the lock-on system has a habit of locking on to anybody but the one shooting at you. So you run around blindly firing your assault rifle and hoping that you hit something – when they die you can steal their ammo and considering how much you will use up attempting to kill them at least you can replenish and kill some more – not that you will want to.
Simply put, this game lacks everything to make you want to play it. I realise that it is probably aimed at the kids but to release something so monotonous, dull and boring is a crime against gaming. Avoid. Avoid. Avoid.
