Army Men: Sarge’s Heroes (N64)
Developed by: 3DO

I really like the Army Men concept. It’s kind of like taking the Micro Machines idea and applying it to action games or strategy games. 3DO has put out a number of different games based on Army Men, and this game is basically a first person shooter.

There’s not really much to say about this game except that it was a good idea with poor implementation. The game is somewhat like Goldeneye or Mission Impossible, with different objectives on each level. There is also a multiplayer game. Unfortunately, it’s just not fun, because the play control sucks. It’s impossible to turn your player around quickly, because the camera lags behind, and you can’t see what’s in front of you. They decided to go with the Mission Impossible style POV, where you can see your player running in front of you. I have not seen many successful attempts at using this view, because it always seems to result in clumsy gameplay. Sarge’s Heroes proves this yet again.

The multiplayer levels seemed pretty boring, although some of the weapons were fun. I liked what I saw of the one player game, but it was just too frustrating to sit through.

Sarge’s Heroes has some neat touches that were thrown in, such as how the enemy soldiers melt into a puddle of plastic when you use the flamethrower on them, but perhaps 3DO should have put more work into the general game controls before adding in these extra features. — Sean