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Army Men: Sarges War Review - PS2

The long running Army Men series is notorious for being one of the worst game series ever. There were a couple of them that made decent rentals, but they were still bad enough to persuade you to steer clear of actually purchasing them. The latest game in the series, developed by Global Star Software, is Army Men: Sarge's War. And, like its predecessors, it's just another chip in the messy plastic mould that is the Army Men series.

If you don't know already, the Army Men series is based upon one of your favourite childhood toys: the little plastic army men. Greentown, home to the green, good army men, has been offered a peace agreement with the evil tan-coloured forces. Greentown swiftly accepts, unaware of the havoc about to be wreaked by the deceiving tan army. The peace meeting is hailed with bombs, and Sarge, being the only one out at the time, is all that is left of the green army. Discovering that the tan army is preparing the ultimate doomsday device behind enemy lines to destroy Greentown once and for all, Sarge sets out to stop them once and for all and save his home. The game's storyline starts off fairly well, littered with cut scenes that push the events onwards - but a short while into the game these cut scenes drop off and the story seemingly becomes somewhat less of a priority.

Gameplay

Before beginning Army Men: Sarge's War's main campaign, you're given the opportunity to be taught how to get the most out of Sarge in the game at bootcamp, from moving to jumping and from shooting to hurling grenades. The bootcamp mode is quite well designed as it teaches you many techniques that can be used on the battlefield and not just the stripped-down basics. It all goes downhill from here, though.

The game's missions are poorly designed. Your objectives require you to perform basic and monotonous actions, such as blowing up artillery with time bombs foolishly left lying around by the tan army, and destroying supply trucks by firing at explosive barrels conveniently placed next to them. Hardly any of the objectives seem to contribute to or have anything to do with the doomsday device being concocted by the armour-clad leader of the tan army, Malice, and feel as though they're only there to draw out the fairly short game and create extra missions. During each mission, you have both primary and secondary objectives. The primary ones are those that justify the completion of the level, while the secondary ones - which involve collecting tan flags and intelligence - aren't important unless you want to collect all of the medals, which aren't satisfying anyway.

The game appears to be based on a World War II theme; towns are packed with rubble and destroyed buildings, tan planes fly overhead in order to drop bombs upon your surroundings and some of the levels are cleverly set in sandcastle and beach (continued next page)