Army Men: Air Combat: The Elite Missions

The Air Cavalry is Back with a Vengeance!

NA release: 25th March 2003
EU release: N/A
JP release: N/A
Developer: The 3DO Company
Publisher: The 3DO Company
NGC Magazine Score: N/A
Mods Used: Widescreen Code

While the name strangely sounds like an expansion pack, this is a sequel to Army Men: Air Combat, and was called Air Combat 2 on PS1 and PS2. It’s a port of the PS2 game with some multiplayer features, but the original PS1 version has levels that didn’t make it to the “enhanced” versions, so you have to choose between having more game or slightly better (but still bad) graphics.

It’s a rather ugly game and none of the objects really feel like they’re actually there. Buildings just sit on top with no shadows and many parts of the environment look strange because they’re just painted into the ground instead of being separate objects. On top of this, the levels themselves are just bland and nowhere near as interesting as the previous game on N64, with very few “real world” elements and just a sea of brown and grey and a ton of invisible walls as helicopters are apparently incapable of flying over small holes.

Even the gameplay is simpler, with really boring objectives and none of the fun the previous game has. The special weapon is now tied to the helicopter and can’t be selected separately. The plot is also just dumb, and Jim Cummings doing most of the male voices is off-putting. He’s a great voice actor and can do plenty of distinct voices, but he defaults to variants of his Tigger voice in a lot of his video game roles, so it comes across as a bit strange in this game. But that’s just a small niggle, this is just a port of a PS1 game that’s nowhere near as good as the first one.

Poor

It was decent when we first checked it out nearly three years ago, but finding it now relatively unchanged and on store shelves with a GameCube logo affixed is a true shame. Given that production costs must have set the company back a quick five bucks or so, the game is sure to rake some cash from unsuspecting shoppers. But for the more intelligent gamers in the crowd, realize that this game is very simple, very raw, very ugly, and ultimately not a lot of fun. It’s a shameless attempt to quickly cash-in on a new market — nothing more.
Cory D. Lewis, IGN

Remake or remaster?

A collection of Army Men games would be good.

Official Ways to get the game

There is no official way to get Army Men: Air Combat: The Elite Missions.