The Final Word game review

Army Men -- Studio 3DO

John Lasslet (guest contributor)
This game takes you back to the days when you played with little green and tan army men. Going back to those days you can remember burning smashing and feeding those poor innocent little green soldiers to the dog. In the game itself you play as Sarge, the noble leader of the green army men. You play many missions of varying kinds with various degrees of difficulty. Some involve you having to transport troops in a truck from point "A" to point "B" while others can be as complex as having to lead two or three different squads of troops against a base full of Tans. As you go through the missions you can find different weapons, such as grenades, mortars, bazookas, mines, flame throwers, ands auto-rifles. You can drive an assortment of different vehicles depending upon your missions objective: tanks, troop trucks, jeeps, and half-tracks. Regardless of the different vehicles or weapons your main objective remains the same: eliminate the "tans" by any means possible.

The missions start out somewhat simple and to a point even boring, but as the game progresses they get more and more complex. The missions are what draw you in and they keep you progressing through the game hoping that the next will be even more interesting and complex then the previous one.

The graphics could be better but they are suitable enough for the game. The graphics remind you of an actual scenario when ou used to play with little army soldiers. The 3-D support isn't much of a huge factor but it is there. Though, if the graphics were more enhanced in the first place the 3-D support might make a difference.

The playability and controls are where the game is lacking though. The aiming gets off every once in a while even if you are right on or not. Also maneuverability is lacking. One thing that could have been done is adding a crawling maneuver. All in all though, the maneuvering is pretty realistic, Tanks are pretty hard to move around things and so are the other vehicles. Trying to get away from the tanks is a task-and-a-half, because even if you can position yourself in a corner away from the tank it can still pummel you to death with it's cannon.

The biggest plus for the game is the AI factor. The enemies don't just run up to you for the most part. They actually stand a distance away and shoot. Also, if they see you posing a threat they will run away. A good example is if you are in a tank... They won't just stand there and shoot at you in the tank (which is a pointless endeavor because a tank is virtually impossible to destroy with a rifle), they will try as much as possible to run away. The troops that are on your side are also somewhat intelligent. They will shoot at the enemy and run away from an impending threat.

The biggest minus, in my opinion is the fact that you cannot control the troops as much as I would have liked. All of the troops act a single squad, and you can't tell any independant troop to do something special. Another downfall of this is that all of the troops that you get usually come with the same weapon, a rifle; which puts them in the position of being an easy target with very little defense ablities. You are given the responsibility of protecting yourself and the troops. Not an easy task unless you are up for it.

On a scale of 1-10 I would have to rate this an 8...

[No standard numeric score given.]

(12/98)