Army Men: Sarge’s War

It’s War!

NA release: 21st August 2004
EU release: N/A
JP release: N/A
Developer: Tactical Development
Publisher: Global Star Software
NGC Magazine Score: N/A
Mods Used: Widescreen Code

The Army Men games are fun and colourful games about toy army men fighting each other based on the colour of their plastic. They’re usually simple but entertaining games that have a bit of whimsy and joy to them. After The 3DO Company went bust, new publisher Global Star Software thought that that needed to change. You see, the big thing that will make a game about kids toys sucessful is to make it dark and gritty.

And being dark and gritty is all that Sarge’s War has to offer. The plastic characters will get maimed as they get shot and the hilariously bad story kills off pretty much every previous character a few missions into the game, leaving Sarge out for revenge. It’s not deep, there’s very little emotion and it just doesn’t gel well with the army men aesthetic.

The gameplay is even worse. It’s a third person shooter with a lock-on, and the camera can not cope with the lock-on at all, and often you just see Sarge’s head in the corner of the screen. It’s even clunkier than the N64 games, and at this point in the GameCube’s life we’ve seen plenty of smooth shooter games (especially if you also include the other consoles). The levels are also split into small segments with loading screens between them. Watch the dumb cut-scenes on YouTube if you want, but the game itself is not worth playing.

Poor

The basic message here friends is you don’t want this game. Not unless want to discover a new way to suffer. And if you play enough, I’ll bet you’ll even want to slit your own throat. I almost did. But the knife, thematic apropos, was plastic. Sob…
Douglass C. Perry, IGN

Remake or remaster?

Only in an Army Men compilation.

Official Ways to get the game

There’s no official way to get Army Men: Sarge’s War.