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Game Information

Release Date: March 2, 1999
Developer: 3DO
Publisher: 3DO
Platform(s): PlayStation, Windows
Genre: Action
Players: 1-2

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Synopsis

Perhaps one of the most innovative games to hit the market in a long time, ARMY MEN 3D provides fun gameplay for people of all ages. You can travel by foot or use one of the four available vehicles: a half track, a jeep, a cargo truck, or a tank. If that's not enough, ARMY MEN 3D offers a wide variety of weapons, from machine guns and mortars to bazookas and flame throwers. Don't think you'll be taking on the enemy alone, though you're in control of an entire unit of troops with one thing on their collective mind: destroy the Tan army. What bring this game to life are the animations flame throwers melt units, bazookas blow vehicles into bits, and tanks flatten plastic units. If you get a hankering to toast your friend, battle him in the Two-Player Split-Screen mode in a game of Capture the Flag. ARMY MEN 3D sets a new trend in gaming that will hopefully will be followed in the near future.

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Gameplay

Once the game is started you will be prompted to a tutorial to teach you how to play and what is really a show off to what 3D is all about (keep in mind the release date). The tutorial will take you through several different stops where you will learn how to move, change weapons, shoot, throw grenades, drive vehicles, and call in back up. Once you have finished the tutorial it'll take you to a menu with several different options to choose from: Campaign, Options, Multi-player and Quit.

In the campaign, there are fifteen or so missions to complete each with a different tasks. At first you are thrown in what seems like a forest, but turns out to be the edge of a Tan armies highly-fortified base. Your mission here is to free the several Green hostages they have whilst crossing a large minefield and avoiding machine gun fire along the way. Other missions throughout the game are much longer and harder as you make your way through it. Some task will be very easily with just reaching one end of the battle and some will be much harder requiring you to destroy several tanks with just you and your squad. As usual with these Army Men games, your entire objective is to destroy the Tan army.

In multi-player mode you and another play can play against each other with only one game mode being team deathmatch or, play a co-op style game mode where you have objectives to complete. These range from freeing some hostages, killing a high-valued target, bombing a weapons factory, and stealing tanks just to name a few. These are also playable with a few others online.

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Graphics

Although being one of the first 3D games, it has a lot of issues and bugs because of it. Since there was so much time being put into being three dimensional, the environments, characters, vehicles, lighting, shading, and weapons have almost little to no detail whatsoever. The ground always looks like an ugly brown muddy field, the sky is a plain blue with no sun, the game is rather dark even though it is always mid-day, and the explosions from tanks and mines along with bullets from the weapons look like long yellow strings, basically like noodles. Since the characters have no design really, it's very hard to tell what an enemy and what a bush is or just spot in the ground is since they're all a brownish color. That being said, the game doesn't really lag ever since there isn't really any detail in it, even with all the explosions going on. Definitely had a lot of potential, but it seems as if it was rushed out the door unfortunately.

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Controls

Controls are rather simple, but not for a good reason. They almost feel incomplete because they will not work most of the time and you are stuck with the same camera angle the entire time. You can't zoom in, you can't look around unless you move your entire character, you can't change weapons until you run out of ammo, and you can't reload (automatically does once clip is empty). If none of that is an issue, the game is pretty simple. D-pad controls the character and the triggers shoot. That is all you really use here.

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Ratings

Gameplay: 6.5/10
Graphics: 4/10
Controls: 7/10
Overall: 7/10