Army Men RTS

Army Men RTS images more below...

Review of Army Men RTS

3DO continues its variations of the ever-popular Army Men series with a real-time strategy game. The other games, as you know, have certain pre-set missions and you were only able to play with the resources provided, etc.

This new variation allows the player to manipulate the environment to ensure the correct manpower, etc. to succeed. Your objective is set, but how you get there is up to you. If you’re familiar with the Army Men series, you know that the missions do get progressively harder as you move on. The same goes for this game. What is nice is the range of weapons and equipment available increases with each completed mission. The key strategy is to have the base not only fully operational to collect plastic and build reinforcements, but also defended from the Tan army as it tries to put the Green army out of business. Along with that is a mission to destroy a target without losing all of your men in the process.

This is a learning process that will find certain strategies better than others as the game progresses. Definitely the big key is to have enough plastic to keep building reinforcements. That means having enough dump trucks to collect the plastic. Another key is to build enough medics to keep everything healthy. Each item be it a soldier, the base, or even the fence post for the barbed wire, has a health meter. Once it disappears, it becomes a blob of plastic. The medic restores the health of everything it is near.

The graphics are excellent in this game. There is some improvement over past Army Men games, but they were excellent before. This gives a limited camera angle, and you have full control over the camera to look at anything in the playing field for that particular mission. The distance from the soldiers is still pretty large, which means the soldiers and vehicles are relatively small, but the detail is incredible. In addition, there is no slowdown or problems if there is a tremendous amount of activity going on. You see the individual soldier or vehicle doing its intended job pretty intricately. You see Sarge firing his pistol at the enemy; mortar men set up and drop the mortars into the tube, etc. There are even cockroaches (considered an enemy) whose legs move like an insect should. All the devices, objects, etc. on the screen are easily identifiable. There is no evidence of a polygon anywhere in the rendering of the players, etc.

Controlling the movement is easy and relatively intuitive. To help, there is a boot camp mode to teach the player the finer points of how to create the base camp and move the soldiers to their objectives. Once this is mastered, then it’s on to the campaigns and earning medals and unlocking secrets. Get far enough and a secret unlock code will be up on the screen. Write it down; once its past, you can’t get it back. You don’t control any single soldier or item as far as firing, but what you do is ‘order’ the vehicle, soldier or group to head toward an objective, and what objective to concentrate fire on. They then follow the orders until they get new ones. Otherwise, they will sit there or defend themselves until the next movement order.

The sounds are excellent. All the combat sounds are realistic. Each named character has his own unique style and comments. The generic soldiers or vehicles each have their own voice to respond to your orders. Of course, there are animated features to explain each mission with the voice-overs of all the familiar characters.

OUR PLEDGE: We promise that we have fully played 'Army Men RTS' before writing this review. The scores given above are our honest opinion and were not influenced in any way by the manufacturer or distributor of the game.

This review was written by Tom Downey © Absolute PlayStation

Have You Played Army Men RTS ?

If you have owned 'Army Men RTS' long enough to have formed a solid opinion on it, then click here to write your own mini review of Army Men RTS.

Alternatively, if you would like to read what other gamers who already own Army Men RTS think of it, click here to view all of our reader comments and mini reviews of Army Men RTS.

Want To Know More About Army Men RTS ?

• Army Men RTS Website
• Army Men RTS Review
• Army Men RTS Reader Review
• Army Men RTS cheats
• Army Men RTS Chat Forum

ARMY MEN RTS

89/100

Review Summary:

"Like all of the Army Men games, this is an addictive game. The new wrinkle, real time strategy, adds a nice new dimension to the series. The ability to manipulate the environment and not have to follow a set path to the mission is a welcome change, and this definitely adds a thinking dimension to the game to establish a defense, re-supply and offense all at the same time. If you like the Army Men series and are looking for an interesting change of venue, this is one game that I would highly recommend."

Score Breakdown:

Graphics  15/20
Playability  46/50
Sound  9/10
Lastability  19/20

Our Recommendation:

This is a fantastic game that we think you will enjoy playing for quite some time.

ARMY MEN RTS

Army Men RTS was created by 3DO and is a Strategy Fighting game.

ARMY MEN RTS FEATURES:

· Classic Real-Time Strategy: Build, Manage and Battle.

· Developed by Pandemic Studios, creators of Dark Reign 2 and Battlezone II.

· Fully 3-Dimensional world that players can view with a changeable camera.

· Easy-to-learn custom interface with intuitive controls and a comprehensive Tutorial.

· Multiple ways to play including reward-based Campaign Mode, Special Operations, and ‘turn-key’ wars with Great Battles.

· Unlock secret “intelligence Files” with good performance!

ARMY MEN RTS OPTIONS:

• DVD Media
• 55 KBytes required on Memory card per save (min)
• Up to 1 Players (without Multi-tap2)
• Uses Dual Shock2 Pad Buttons
• Uses Dual Shock2 Pad Analog Sticks
• Uses Dual Shock2 Pad Vibration facility