Army Men II
- January 01, 2000 00:00 AM PST
The original Army Men shot a sure thing in the foot. While playing with plastic soldiers was an inviting concept, that 1998 hybrid of real-time strategy and action featured long campaigns with infrequent save opportunities, no 3D modeling, incongruous and generic backgrounds, and an awkward interface.
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Now 3DO has released Army Men II, and though it's an improvement over the original, it's still got a long way to go.
First, the good news: Those interminably long campaigns from Army Men have been replaced by twelve shorter ones of two or three scenarios apiece. For example, the Front Yard campaign requires that you first terminate a rogue colonel, then find a hidden portal home. (Unfortunately, a performance evaluation--with scores for enemy killed and items discovered-still isn't provided after you complete a mission.)
You can now save at any time during scenarios. And despite jerky animation and grainy graphics that want for detail, I was more impressed with the choice of backgrounds, enemies, and objects. Army Men II throws you up against such opponents as cockroaches and "dead" plastic soldiers reassembled from scrap parts to resemble zombies. Battlefields include such homey locales as the front yard, kitchen surfaces, and tool chest.
However, many backgrounds remain generic, like the forests in the second and third campaigns, and even the more imaginative locales are largely noninteractive. For instance, why couldn't your troopers use a bazooka to open a water faucet and sail across a filled sink in a baking pan?
In addition, Army Men II's movement routine spends a fair amount of time shooting blanks. I watched the player character, Sarge, and three troopers get so badly entangled trying to leave a dead end that each soldier had to be walked out separately. Even small obstacles can cause your men to run off in the wrong direction, tumble about in an infinite loop, or come to a complete halt.
In addition, clicking on terrain to move your men doesn't always work. On roughly one of every six attempts, my men simply halt if I click on a new location while they're moving, or don't start moving if standing still. While I've tried Army Men II on several PCs, with both Microsoft and Logitech mice, the problem remains.
Finally, the AI is rudimentary. Your opponents simply use whatever weapon they have in hand and whatever preset tactic is operational--whether to move and attack or wait and defend. When you encounter an ambush, rest assured that it was designed into the scenario, because the AI doesn't adjust to changing conditions with fresh strategies of its own.
This is not my idea of having a good time with an RTS lite.
The game is both different and significantly better in multiplayer mode, with support for IPX LANs, modem, and serial play, plus net play via Mplayer. Here, up to four players compete for a single, strategic goal: capture the flag, king of the hill and so forth. Many configurable options allow you to customize the game to your taste, including fog of war, medical tents, and randomized power-ups-those boxes containing such goodies as mines, disguises, and air strikes. (Not surprisingly, this randomized play is unavailable for standalone use because the computer AI is insufficient to hold its own against a human player.)
Army Men II does have shorter, more numerous campaigns, a save-anywhere policy, and occasionally amusing backdrops with appropriate obstacles and antagonists. But its poor movement, AI, graphics, and a general lack of imagination remain a legacy from the original release. Fight your battles elsewhere.
