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"Real Combat. Plastic Men."

Introduction

This is one review I have not been looking forward to. Army Men: Sarge's Heroes has one of my favorite concepts of any video game, but fails pretty miserably to put that concept I love into a game that cannot be loved. In the end you are going to have a whole lot more fun reliving those days as a kid and blasting away at sandbox and dirt forts with your BB gun than trying to play through this game. Here is a game where it is more fun to do the actual thing than stay inside and play it on a video game. But in this game you are put in the boots of "Sarge", the hero combatant of the Green Army that must rescue his buddies after the Tan Army captures and places each one separately deep into enemy territory. Now I'm not sure what 3DO had in mind with this spin-off series of games after the success of the other Army Men games on PC. Those games were awesome! But this series tries to put a name on a hero that doesn't really work out and by the time this series dies a slow and agonizing death with "Sarge's War" you are actually back to the beginning of all the problems that this game started.

Story 5

Yikes. There really is not much of a story to speak for here. Basically all you are told is that the Green guys are good and the Tan guys are bad. Then a brief video has the Tan Army attacking the Green Army garrison and this is where your buddies are assumed captured and you have to go rescue the colonel. The story will have you go through various missions to rescue your buddies whether they are in the plastic world or in the real world. The blue portals will still be there at the end of missions to go through in between each world and you fight through sandboxes, prisoner camps, and even on top of Christmas presents. You don't have to be in the know to figure out what is going on this game. Basically it is geared toward a younger audience compared to the PC games before it and the only difference is that the Gray Army is on the Green's side and the Blue Army are still spies for the Tan Army. The ending is not surprising, but I do not understand why Sarge doesn't get a promotion after literally defeating the Tan Army single handedly.

Gameplay 5

I might as well say it. The controls are no good at all. The controls are simple enough, but the response is very slow and since this is a game set in the third person with enemies behind cover and all around you there is not much you can do to avoid being hit. It is very possible that a Tan guy with a flamethrower can sneak right up on you in plain sight. You can go into a first person mode to aim, but the movement is still slow and you are still going to get hit before you can get off the first shot. Everything seems to go in slow motion for Sarge. The weapons are standard for any GI who has come out of a plastic bucket or bag. Your buddies represent the standard posed soldier from the mine sweeper to the flamethrower, but there is the exception for a shotgun. The scattergun is definitely a must in close combat situations. You also have a sniper rifle for some cross counter kitchen warfare, but most of the time you have the M16 rifle with unlimited ammo. Falling off of ledges will kill you as well as getting caught on fire is pretty much a death sentence of liquidation. The rest of my gameplay woes are really graphic woes, but the control is the main problem of the gameplay.

Graphics/Sound 7

The graphics really hurt in this game. Even the expansion pak does not help Army Men: Sarge's Heroes. The reason for this is the amount of distance involved in the game. There are plenty of wide open areas and the farther away something is the less likely you are going to be able to tell what it is. The Tan guys will appear to be tiny yellow specks of blocks that take awhile to shoot and of course they will still be able to shoot at you. It's not just the distance that is a factor but the frame rate as well. There is a lot going on in this game and I think that is what contributes to such a slow maneuverability and poor visuals. Not much detail is put into anything really except the main characters and the cut scene videos contain plenty of weak movements by these main characters. Sound and music are fine. You get a few grunts out of Sarge, but everything else is put into text boxes. The guns are fun to shoot and there is plenty of stuff to blow up. What I really enjoyed, however, was the music. The music for Army Men: Sarge's Heroes definitely stays true to the original games of the Army Men series and each level has a unique track to it.

Replay Value 7

Army Men: Sarge's Heroes plays long enough and can be very difficult with the controls and maneuverability the way they are. Once you beat this game however, it is unlikely you would want to play through it again. There are cheat codes to put in to make the game much more fun as well as mission select so that have you going back to replay the single player mode. There is also a multiplayer mode for some splitscreen mayhem. You can play as a particular character and pick up power ups throughout the maps to take out up to three friends. It's not Goldeneye 007 multiplayer, but hey, it is still a multiplayer.

Final Recommendation 6/10

Plastic army men were a huge part of my days as a kid. I could have some major battles in my backyard where the battles could stretch for days and hours. Even today I still find some soldier that has been MIA in the yard and some that have been through a lawnmower a time or two. Those were some awesome times. So it was no surprise that I would be eager to get my hands on this first introduction of one of my favorite outdoor activities now on the Nintendo 64 console. In fact I really did like this game simply for the reason that it represented my imagination so well. However going back and playing this game makes me cringe. I cannot bring myself to play this game again because what I forgave in controls to pass a rainy day I cannot forgive now. Army Men: Sarge's Heroes lacks in a lot of ways compared to what 3DO originally brought to the table with the first PC Army Men games. And with the Sarge series, it goes down hill way fast. I can say that Army Men: Sarge's Heroes 2 worked out some of these control issues although I never really got around to buying it. So I do not recommend you buying this game. I do recommend anything of the series on PC because there is where the true fun of backyard warfare comes into play.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 08/08/08

Game Release: Army Men: Sarge's Heroes (US, 09/30/99)