Playing every PS1 game - Army Men games

Army Men is a series of games that cross the genre gamut from pseudo-RTS to arcade flight sim to third-person shooter. Despite this variance, all of the games share two distinct ideas - one being that they revolve around those little moulded-plastic soldier toys from your childhood being brought to 3D (or 2D) life, and the other is that none of the games are actually much good.

Or are they? A short burst of googling reveals that a whole 10 Army Men games made their way to the original PlayStation, but due to what I can only assume is a (to be honest, fortunate) clerical error, I only have four. I’m going to go through them in alphabetical rather than chronological order, as they were all released within about 18 months of each other anyway. Interestingly, the series was invented by 3DO (yes, that 3DO), but their console had already died by the time they finished making the first in the series. It appeared to be a bit of a money spinner one way or another because they then managed to churn out 18 games in four years across six consoles, with a further six games made by different developers until the series finally got a mercy killing in 2017.

Army Men: Air Attack

A game where you don’t really play as an Army Man at all, but rather one of a small selection of attack helicopters. “But isn’t there an Army Man inside the the helicopter?” I hear nobody say. Wrong, because in a game which confidently carries the tagline “real combat, plastic men”, you are actually playing as the physical solid plastic object of a toy attack helicopter. Glad we’ve got that cleared up.

Yes, that is actually a 3D modelled Thomas the Tank Engine.

Air Attack has 16 short levels and a few multiplayer equivalents. All but level 4 and level 16 (the final level, that is) are pathetically easy and usually over in a few minutes. I guess it’s supposed to be a bit of a kid’s game, but it really is quite difficult to screw up some of the levels. They’re all pretty similar. Go from A to B, and either pick up object C and bring it back, or destroy objects D and E then fly back. Shoot at tan-coloured tanks, helicopters and soldiers along the way. Everything is played at an actual ‘toy soldiers’ scale; most levels are set in a back garden with gigantic cola cans and crisp packets acting as obstacles. I guess the idea is to recreate how you might have actually played with these things as a lad.

Many levels take place in a sand pit.

Pre-level, you get a choice of type of helicopter to use - starting off with a pretty rubbish one on level 1 then unlocking progressively sturdier choppers as you go - as well as a sort of ‘sideman’ who ostensibly boosts the attack power of one of your weapons. The default starter weapon is the infinite-ammo machine gun, which actually turns out to do a good enough job to take you through the whole game, so the decision becomes rather moot.

There’s trouble in Toy Land.

The only real extra dimension to the gameplay is the usage of a winch (dropped down and pulled up with the circle button) to pick up health powerups, ammunition and key items, as well as drag pebbles and the aforementioned fizzy drink receptacles to drop on enemy tanks and pavilions and watch them explode. You can get through the whole game in a couple of hours, which is what I did.

Your objectives for the insane final level in full.

It’s not rubbish, but it feels like more of a multiplayer competitive game with a single player campaign included than the other way around. Probably would be a bit of a laugh with a mate.

Kept my attention for: An evening
Did I finish it?: Yes
Overall: 4/10

Army Men: Air Attack 2

Knocked together and released 12 months after Air Attack, the sequel was also released for PS2, though the edition built for the grey box’s younger brother looks like just a higher resolution version of the same thing (and is also responsible for this monstrosity of a promotional image).

Look familiar?

If you told me that this was an expansion pack (or as they say in the 2020s, DLC) for Air Attack, I’d believe you. It’s very much more of the same game, with no new gameplay dimensions to speak of. What they have done, and this does earn the game a bit of credit, is tried to improve on some of the more obvious shortcomings of its predecessor. It’s no longer pathetically easy, and they’ve achieved this feat primarily by increasing the amount of damage your chopper takes before exploding into plastic giblets.

Plot development is delivered by means of truly nightmare-inducing 3D rendered FMVs.

The default machine gun has been nerfed to the point of near-uselessness, but on the flip side it can be upgraded with powerups to fire two, three (four?) volleys at once, which increases it’s effectiveness. I like this change. There’s also a more serious attempt at a plot.

It’s not actually a real dog.

The problem is that it’s just the same game. It’s not as much of a cop-out as Adidas Power Soccer 97, but it’s not exactly what you want to play after just slogging through its predecessor.

Kept my attention for: An hour
Did I finish it?: No
Overall: 4/10

Army Men: Operation Meltdown

Released six months after Air Attack, this game goes a way toward answering the question which crept into my mind when playing the previous two, which was “I wonder what this game would be like if you could get out of the helicopter?”.

There is a vague element of stealth which I can’t work out is actually intended or not.

I think ‘Air Attack but on the ground’ is a good way to describe it. The level maps, while obviously smaller in scale, have similar concepts, and the enemies and objectives are pretty much the same, too.

The environments don’t actually look that bad.

I say the levels are similar, but the big difference between the maps are in theming - Operation Meltdown bins the ‘miniature toy soldiers in the household’ environments for a more traditional World War II setting. It’s only really a visual difference. The aim of the game is to jankily plod through levels as a stereotypical one-man-army to get to objective A to open up objective B, and maybe pick up item C. It sounds obvious to say that, but there are no particular set pieces or narrative twists and turns to negotiate; much like Air Attack, it’s just a shooting gallery.

Cheers then.

The controls are godawful. You can run forward and backward, and turn veeeeerrry slowly. There is no sideways movement, unless you count a clunky sideways roll. Precision aiming is presumably done with the R1 button, which brings the camera up close behind your character’s shoulder. I say ‘presumably’, because there is no kind of targeting reticule packaged with this view, meaning you have to rely on spraying your rounds like a madman to use them as tracer bullets. Turning while running is an exercise akin to taking the Titanic through a ski slalom. So ‘dynamic combat’ is a case of running in a vague arc, stopping, turning in place, running a bit, repeat (while getting filled with plastic lead).

Here’s your precision aim mode bro.

There are a lot of different weapons and modes of combat, but it’s all just too janky. Operation Letdown.

Kept my attention for: An hour
Did I finish it?: No
Overall: 3/10

Army Men: Sarge’s Heroes

I want to believe that this game’s title is a play on Kelly’s Heroes, the Clint Eastwood war film which I encourage anyone to watch if they haven’t seen it. In the film, Eastwood’s brooding, hardboiled, fearless hardman (if you couldn’t have guessed) assembles a crew of misfit GIs (including Telly Savalas and Donald Sutherland) to go off and commit a dangerous Nazi gold heist in 1940s France. That’s basically the idea behind Sarge’s Heroes too, if you’re a bit sloppy with the details. The concept is following a similar motley band of army men, commanded by ‘Sarge’, fighting against the tan army or whatever.

Rifle ammo is no longer infinite, and actually runs out quite quickly.

Mechanically, it’s quite similar to Operation Meltdown. There are, though, a few big issues I want to discuss about Sarge’s Heroes. Firstly, the game’s hook is meant to be the idea of playing as both Sarge and members of his crew to complete the various tasks and missions. It’s in the promotional material, it’s even in the damn Wikipedia page. But…do you? I’ll admit I didn’t get that deep into the game before giving up (more on that in a bit), but I only ever played as Sarge. Watching playthroughs of later levels on YouTube also only show gameplay of Sarge, no matter what the level. So what gives? Google doesn’t reveal much, so I guess it’s a bit of a mystery.

If it moves and isn’t green, shoot it.

The next thing is this: Sarge’s Heroes was released in 1999, a year before Operation Meltdown. So why is it…better? The controls are still terrible, but not as totally hopeless as those of its successor. You can actually strafe left and right, turning is quicker, and you can drive vehicles. The theming is also the ‘toys in the household’ setting rather than WW2. Something doesn’t make sense…

The game actually includes a full-fledged demo for Air Attack.

But this mystery is one I’ve actually worked out. Operation Meltdown isn’t a sequel to Sarge’s Heroes - it’s a sequel to Army Men 3D, which came out six months prior to Sarge’s Heroes, and is one of the titles which I did not download. Looking up footage of Army Men 3D proves this as they appear to be much the same game. Mystery solved!

An allegory for the series.

Yeah, Sarge’s Heroes is below average. I don’t know why they didn’t adapt some of the (slight) improvements into Operation Meltdown; my guess is the games were worked on by separate teams. In the main, though, Sarge’s Heroes is still too janky and punishing for me to persist with it too long. 3DO would pump out another five Army Men games for PS1 by the end of 2001, after which the mediocrity continued onto the PS2.

Kept my attention for: An hour
Did I finish it?: No
Overall: 4/10