Tryzon?s Nonsensical Gaming Trips #40
Army Men: RTS (PS2, 2002) (Also on GameCube, PC)
Well, that title clearly took a lot of time and effort to think up. ?So we?re making another Army Men game, right, and this time it?s gonna be an RTS. What kind of catchy name could we give it? Hmmmmm?..?
Not something silly like SargeCraft? Or something awesome like Death by Plastic Tanks? This is the same series from which a game with the wonderful moniker of Soldiers of Misfortune has previously spawned, so there?s a reputation to lose if you get it wrong. But no, RTS is fine, I suppose. It?s descriptive, admittedly. And it?ll fit on the side of the box easily. Who cares if it?s 100% bland and unimaginative?
Nobody else on the planet is bothered by this, but I am! It?s like if they made a new Rayman game and called it Rayman: Platformer. Why bother at all if you?re going to be so matter-of-fact about it? It just sounds like something that a machine would come up with because its creators never taught it to feel love. I hate the world sometimes.
But, much like in my Judge Dredd: Dredd vs. Death review, I won?t let something cosmetic like this spoil proceedings. Granted, this may just be the least interesting name for a game since Spacewar!, but at least that sounds like Star Wars and has an exclamation mark in it. Not to mention it has the excuse of being among the first games ever made. Ah, I?m getting sidetracked again. I thought I?d flogged myself enough to stop this happening.
Moving on at long last, you might be aware that Army Men started life as a series created by 3DO, the same company responsible for the ill-fated and also stupidly-named 3DO Interactive Multiplayer console. The Army Men games are many in number despite being consistently crap. This is certainly true of the few I?m unlucky enough to own, but I hear little good about the others either. The reason for this is that they all seem to feature remarkably arse controls that destroy what charm they otherwise possess, and they do have a fair bit of that. So when 3DO decided to publish one final instalment in their unholy franchise that seemed designed to sour our memories of those funny plastic grunts in Toy Story, mere moments before they filed for bankruptcy, it was hard to get excited.
However, they had sense enough to get someone half-competent to do the developing side of things for once, and they settled on the now similarly-dead but infinitely more talented Pandemic Studios, who hadn?t done much at the time but would go on to single-handedly produce some of the sixth generation?s greatest games. These include Star Wars: Battlefront, Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction (now THAT?s a title!) and Destroy All Humans! (another great name!). Each of those series is now a classic in my eyes, so my learning that the folk who made them also manufactured Army Men: Realistic Terminator Salvaging was an extremely pleasant surprise. Did these geniuses manage to redeem 3DO?s mishandling of the license in one well-aimed blast of hot love?
*Artist's impression of me after watching Highlander II: The Quickening*
This is one of those games that have plots by obligation, but they did at least continue the one thing that Army Men has historically got right: the cheesiness. Sarge is part of the Green Nation, and damn good at his job, which makes him drastically unlike those sods at 3DO. He?s given a secret mission to take out Colonel Blintz, a former Green guy who went mad and defected to the Tan Republic (bitter rivals of the Greens) after being shot in the noggin. Naturally, he starts using the Green?s own tactics against them, which is causing them all kinds of?er?headaches. As some sort of plastic deity in the sky, it?s up to you to rally the Green Nation?s forces and advance into and to the top floor of the house that Blintz has claimed as his fortress. When you?re two inches tall, a house is about the size of Belgium, you realise, so this is a slightly more gargantuan undertaking than it might sound.
In most respects, this plays like any common-or-garden RTS, though things are conveniently kept simple so as to suit being on a console and avoid significant bafflement. You typically start with a handful of units and a single bulldozer. If this is the case, then you?ll need to establish a base in order to maximise your forces before pressing the attack and demolishing whatever MacGuffin you?re required to. You can do this anywhere, but you?ll want to find a spot that can be defended easily and is near some resources. Buildings and units are made from plastic and/or electricity, and these are obtained by getting dump trucks to harvest items (including dead units) and then deposit their booty in a depot. Putting a depot right next to a resource hot-spot obviously speeds up how quickly you can collect precious materials, and makes life much easier in general. Both kinds of loot are often finite, so you have to plan ahead and not spend it all recklessly.
Once your base is established, you have to start creating units. Vehicles are made in garages and troopers come from barracks. It?s actually really, really weird how you literally mass-produce grunts from raw mush and then send them off to their doom. Scooping up dead pawns and recycling them into something new adds to this oddness. It?s sort of unintentionally deep; ?We?re all born to die, sir.? Don?t go thinking it?s emotional or anything, but it does make one ponder the futility of existence in a godless world run by madmen more interested in their vote counts than what?s best for the people and simply contributing towards a looming and messy apocalypse. Or is that just me?
Fences keep the enemy out but are open to attack, so dotting guard towers and artillery about is a must. A cunning plan I came up with involves leaving a medic van next to a place that gets attacked frequently; it?ll fix any damage that your turrets take in time for the next wave, or at least keep them alive until back-up can arrive. If you can clear out an area of Tans and establish a perimeter in a narrow spot, this lets you fortify much more effectively, and make breaking through very tricky for those light-brown bastards. I find setting up bases and then slowly grabbing land before delivering the lethal blow one of my favourite things about strategy games, so Army Men: RTS? focus on it makes me very happy.
Build your death fortress and murderise anything that gets too close. I love it!
The old rock-paper-scissors approach to combat is alive and well here, and is a large part of the strategy element. There are three skills that every military unit can be proficient in: Infantry is for damaging foot-soldiers; Armour is for damaging ground vehicles; and Air is for damaging helicopters. A unit?s effectiveness against the three types of opponent is clearly marked by bars, whose length corresponds to its damage. A basic grunt, for instance, is fair against all three but has no specialisation. A tank, however, is brilliant against Armour and good against Infantry, but is defenceless if a chopper appears. Every kind of unit has strengths and weaknesses, so while a swarm of tanks will probably eradicate most things they come across, even a single ?copter will wipe them out with no resistance.
The only way to guarantee success is to have a group of units with varying proficiencies that compliment each other, along with a couple of medic vans to heal everybody. Assembling this force is generally what you?ll be building up to during a mission, as once it?s assembled, it can then just trundle over to the enemy base and metaphorically take a magnifying glass to it. It?s basic noob tactics, but it?s just what you want on a console, because anything genuinely complex will be hugely confuddling.
The controls are about as good as any console RTS will ever be, but they?re not perfect. Selecting individuals during a hectic moment is still fiddly, and I wish the right stick could zoom in and out instead of picking enemies, although that is a handy feature in its own right. Still, using triangle to quickly select your previously-highlighted group of units is mighty useful, as is using circle to select everybody within differently-sized rings, so it?s not all bad news. It seems like the PS2 version of the game may be the only one to have reached British shores, which is annoying, but if you can get it, I would recommend the PC edition, as a keyboard and mouse would obviously make for a smoother experience. The added possibility of mid-mission saving (which the PS2 doesn?t feature) is just another reason to get it on PC.
I can?t help but be reminded of Micro Machines whenever I see my men fighting on top of an oven or flanking the enemy in the garden. There?s just something entertaining about tiny blokes having an all-out war on your doorstep and sometimes even fending off insects five times their size. You see different rooms as you progress up through the house, so there?s some variety there. It?s definitely an improvement over the indistinct alien landscapes and laboratories one sees in Aliens vs. Predator: Extinction.
There are fifteen campaign missions to conquer, but getting high rankings in those unlocks eight Special Operations and eight Great Battles, which are basically just more maps without the filler. There?s a lot of game here for completists, though I personally could never be bothered to earn medals in the story mode, so having to do so in order to open up more content is annoying. There isn?t even a handy cheat that would do it, but I?d feel a bit cheap complaining about that, really. Just rest assured that there?s excellent value for money present, even if the later levels start to blend together like so much melted plastic.
Firefights are very much of the 19th century variety; just stand still and fire blindly until you or the enemy fall down.
Missions occasionally feature the rare power-up, which gives the team who finds it more damage, speed or health. You?ll find them by accident, most likely, or by checking any corners of the level that don?t seem to serve any obvious purpose other than maybe hiding something helpful. Additionally, you start every match with some heroes. These are just improved versions of regular troops, but they can be devastating if used wisely. Look out, though: once they?re gone, they?re gone.
Army Men: Rubbish Tentacle Slap takes the Kessen II approach to music; take a couple of very catchy tracks and loop them endlessly. The tracks in question are appropriate, jaunty tunes that are pleasant-sounding and also kindly give proceedings a sense of scale. Some variety would have been nice, but quality over quantity, I suppose.
Three difficulty settings mean you can adjust the game to accommodate your natural inability to whatever degree you like, and the tutorials are comprehensive without being overwhelming or going on for weeks, unlike the ones in Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis, among others. It?s rather intuitive, which is actually one benefit of console RTSes, as they tend to have fewer bar charts to balance. Not that I don?t climax every time I fiddle with my finances in Fragile Allegiance, but sometimes less is more.
As mentioned, Army Men?s humour has been the only good thing about it until Relatively Terrific Salmon came along, and this is thankfully still present; the unsubtle similarities to Apocalypse Now spring to mind, along with the cartoonish style and assorted amusing moments. You are warned never to press the Select button, but doing so will have no effect other than repeating the message ?What you?ve just done can never be taken back?. Similarly, pressing L2 and X supposedly controls a revolving door at a shopping centre in California. Perhaps my favourite, though, is the level that requires you steal a mysterious artefact of unknown power from the Tans. During a blatant tribute to 2001: A Space Odyssey, this is revealed to be a life-size PS2, which acts an as unlimited source of electricity. I was actually laughing at this point, which should tell you something about the hilarity of it. A game that?s legitimately comical can have some failings overlooked.
So that?s Army Men: Really Terrible Subtitle. It doesn?t reinvent the wheel or rival any of the dedicated PC-based strategy games, but it works very well for a console RTS, and that?s impressive. Pandemic really did make up for much of 3DO?s ham-fisted delivery of older titles, and though I could hardly compare this to their best work, they still did a bang-up job. Go and get yourself a copy, and don?t forget to investigate their other franchises on the way.
An amusingly apt caption on the back of the game case proclaims loudly, ?THIS IS THE ARMY MEN? GAME YOU?VE BEEN WAITING FOR!? Believe it or not, this is actually entirely true and not the usual advertising guff. Pandemic were so magical and sexy that they took the legendarily smeggy series and gave it a swansong worthy of praise. What did they get for this? Left off the front of the box and shoved into a tiny corner on the reverse, while 3DO?s accursed logo is proudly displayed for all to see. Sweet, juicy justice.
And thus, Super Ninja Robot Man was defeated by a lowly laser-tank of doom, and the universe wept.
