Real combat, plastic men: remembering Army Men RTS
I’ve never been a big RTS player, but I was an adolescent boy once, so I’ve often turned the house into intricate battlefields many times with the help of my bucketloads of toy soldiers. Many games tried to tap into this aesthetic over the years, but for my money, none has done it better than Army Men RTS, a game I cannot in good conscience recommend playing now but would definitely suggest remembering if you’ve enjoyed it back in the day. Oddly enough, most of the Army Men series mostly focused on a shooter experience after its first few games, which I, as a once-adolescent boy, always found baffling. After all, you always played out big battles with the little toys, not individual heroes running and gunning through a battlefield—and the series probably wouldn’t have resonated with me if it hadn’t been the real-time strategy game I first encountered sometime around its 2002 release. But resonate it did. Fighting through the fence and across the garden to get into a massive house through the basement—where the owners went remains a mystery—and then up all the way to the attic to find the mad Tan general made for a fantastic romp. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcoaQatcG7A There are many fun winks and nods to adult culture, with the game’s main plot charting Heart of Darkness or Apocalypse Now with the protagonists tracking down a general gone mad, the level names all referencing classic works of war, and an especially fun moment in the living room when the endless energy supply of a plugged-in PlayStation 2 console is given the monolith treatment from 2001: A Space Odyssey, Also Sprach Zarathustra included. (It is placed on its side so that it towers over its environment, and as someone who didn’t have a console for a very long time, it was a real disappointment to discover that it is not the intended way to use it.) And much like with Monopoly Tycoon, the soundtrack is the part of the experience that aged the best, a fantastic mix of orchestral army music with almost John Williams-esque childlike toy joy. It’s well worth a listen even if you never played the game. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DKkXqcnn8A And if you never played the game, it is honestly better if it stays that way. While there are some great ideas derived from the premise—like the notion of destroyed units leaving a small plastic blob behind that you can collect for a fraction of the resources, something that doesn’t apply to vehicles and electricity, potentially forcing both sides into a devolution in a long game as they fight through scraps—the game has many fundamental issues that simply stop it from being a good FPS. The pathfinding AI is absolutely abysmal (especially where the resource-collecting dump trucks are concerned), and splash damage is way too powerful, meaning there is no viable counter to an early-game grenadier rush on smaller maps, and all late-game conflicts boil down to tank-spamming affairs. Shockingly, the game also lacks a proper skirmish mode in its retail build, even though the capability is clearly there, as you are able to play against AI in multiplayer. While there are workarounds, little ol’ 2002 me was stuck playing the pre-designed PvE battles in the pre-baked scenarios and the static opponents of the main game. And, trust me, getting anyone to play the game today is a bad idea—I speak from experience when I say that even a strong RTS player struggles against the stinky cheese strats detailed above, so it’s really just the nostalgia that makes it worth revisiting the experience. But if you were there shortly after the millennium, then, my goodness, the bells and whistles of the music and the beautiful flamethrower of one of our heroes will still make your eye glisten. So, a farewell to arms, and to Sarge, Vikki, Thick, Shrap, Scorch, Riff, Hoover, Bullseye, and the rest of Bravo Company: it’s time for you to go back to the toy box. As I close the lid, I continue to hope for a remaster or reimagining later down the line—and not the Soldiers of Misfortune kind. The post Real combat, plastic men: remembering Army Men RTS appeared first on Destructoid.
I’ve never been a big RTS player, but I was an adolescent boy once, so I’ve often turned the house into intricate battlefields many times with the help of my bucketloads of toy soldiers. Many games tried to tap into this aesthetic over the years, but for my money, none has done it better than Army Men RTS, a game I cannot in good conscience recommend playing now but would definitely suggest remembering if you’ve enjoyed it back in the day.
Oddly enough, most of the Army Men series mostly focused on a shooter experience after its first few games, which I, as a once-adolescent boy, always found baffling. After all, you always played out big battles with the little toys, not individual heroes running and gunning through a battlefield—and the series probably wouldn’t have resonated with me if it hadn’t been the real-time strategy game I first encountered sometime around its 2002 release.
But resonate it did. Fighting through the fence and across the garden to get into a massive house through the basement—where the owners went remains a mystery—and then up all the way to the attic to find the mad Tan general made for a fantastic romp.
There are many fun winks and nods to adult culture, with the game’s main plot charting Heart of Darkness or Apocalypse Now with the protagonists tracking down a general gone mad, the level names all referencing classic works of war, and an especially fun moment in the living room when the endless energy supply of a plugged-in PlayStation 2 console is given the monolith treatment from 2001: A Space Odyssey, Also Sprach Zarathustra included. (It is placed on its side so that it towers over its environment, and as someone who didn’t have a console for a very long time, it was a real disappointment to discover that it is not the intended way to use it.)
And much like with Monopoly Tycoon, the soundtrack is the part of the experience that aged the best, a fantastic mix of orchestral army music with almost John Williams-esque childlike toy joy. It’s well worth a listen even if you never played the game.
And if you never played the game, it is honestly better if it stays that way. While there are some great ideas derived from the premise—like the notion of destroyed units leaving a small plastic blob behind that you can collect for a fraction of the resources, something that doesn’t apply to vehicles and electricity, potentially forcing both sides into a devolution in a long game as they fight through scraps—the game has many fundamental issues that simply stop it from being a good FPS.
The pathfinding AI is absolutely abysmal (especially where the resource-collecting dump trucks are concerned), and splash damage is way too powerful, meaning there is no viable counter to an early-game grenadier rush on smaller maps, and all late-game conflicts boil down to tank-spamming affairs.
Shockingly, the game also lacks a proper skirmish mode in its retail build, even though the capability is clearly there, as you are able to play against AI in multiplayer. While there are workarounds, little ol’ 2002 me was stuck playing the pre-designed PvE battles in the pre-baked scenarios and the static opponents of the main game. And, trust me, getting anyone to play the game today is a bad idea—I speak from experience when I say that even a strong RTS player struggles against the stinky cheese strats detailed above, so it’s really just the nostalgia that makes it worth revisiting the experience.
But if you were there shortly after the millennium, then, my goodness, the bells and whistles of the music and the beautiful flamethrower of one of our heroes will still make your eye glisten.
So, a farewell to arms, and to Sarge, Vikki, Thick, Shrap, Scorch, Riff, Hoover, Bullseye, and the rest of Bravo Company: it’s time for you to go back to the toy box. As I close the lid, I continue to hope for a remaster or reimagining later down the line—and not the Soldiers of Misfortune kind.
The post Real combat, plastic men: remembering Army Men RTS appeared first on Destructoid.
