A game so bad, it almost made me cry when I finished this game. *first review on gamespot*
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Ah, Army Men: Soldiers of Misfortune. When I first saw this game on the self at Wal-Mart, I knew right there that it was a bad game just by looking at it. Yet, I never did know just how bad it really was, until I decided one day to buy it just for kicks.
Trust me, after playing this, I was not in the mood to laugh at its horribleness. Rather, I was nearly brought to tears the day I finished this game. It's so bad, it would make kids cry, which is ironic, since this game was made for kids.
So, how about we play Army Men: SOM now, hm? I'll start with the main story that explains how the war in some young man's home began.
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The story begins when Timmy (the main character of this bad game) was looking around his room for his Army Men. I guess he was in the mood to play army, but now he can't, since it seems that all his Tan troopers have disappeared, as well as a few Greens.
Then, all of a sudden, a dart flew past his head, and he turned to face where the shot came from. He then found out who fired the shot, and at the same time, found some of his missing toys. Tans have come to life (in his mind), and have tried to kill him.
Not the kind of boy who enjoys getting shot, he decided to return fire, thus igniting the burning fire of war as the first few shots were fired. After dealing with them, he grabbed what Green Army Men he could find, and planned to take them along with him to his teddy bear, who would use his strategic teddy-brain to devise a plan to defeat the Tan army that has now taken over his house, including his bedroom. By the time he got there, he shrunk down in size to match that of an Army Man, and that was when his imagination really began to run wild... Or at least, that's what you would think.
And that's how it starts. Simple story, yes? Well, it's a lot simpler than that, since the whole story is told via a picture slide show with looping music in the background.
After that, you are taken to the main menu, which is oddly a bit dark (and by that, I mean it isn't a very bright screen). Besides a room with the blinds down, you get to watch Timmy (who looks like he really has to poop, according to my mom when she saw this) run around back and forth with a Tan trooper that chases him one moment, and then runs away the next, over and over again. This is the menu, and already it doesn't look all that great. Let's start playing now, and I will show you all the things that make this game what it is: A game that would make even the bravest of Green Army Men horrified.
Once you start playing, you are taken to HQ, where you will be able to play your first mission. At first, you only have one. But as you complete each mission, you will unlock the next. There are three areas to go to, and they have five missions in each area. We will begin in the bedroom, mission one, where we will begin our journey into the hellhole of war.
The first mission sounds quite simple: Find twelve supply crates that have fallen in the wrong place at the wrong time, and you have to find them before the enemy... Well, does nothing, since they don't seem to care about the supply crates. Of course, once you start playing, you will find out that it isn't as easy as one might have thought.
Now, once you get into the world, you will find that the graphics are pretty ok. Colourful and childlike, like a kid's game. But that is one of the rare parts of the game that are passable. For instance, let us take a look at the music. At first, it's ok. But after listening to this somewhat short loop for half an hour, it starts to get annoying. There are four tunes in this whole game: The menu, bedroom, kitchen, and backyard. Excluding the menu theme (since you won't be listening to that during missions), all the songs during your missions remain the same no matter what for five missions straight each area. After a while, you will beg for variety. There is also a fanfare that plays when you win or lose, but those are different.
For controls, it is somewhat mediocre. You can move forward and backwards, and you can strafe. But you can't jump, which can be a bother sometimes. As for aiming, it works most of the time for your main weapon, but with others it is not as good, sometimes being so bad it's useless. We will talk more about weapons later. When it comes to camera, it is always behind you. You turn left, camera turns left. You aim up, camera looks up. Yet, for some reason, you can't look down. This can be a problem sometimes if a Tan is below you just enough that you can't shoot at him, while he is able to shoot at you no problem.
Anyways, continuing the mission.
By this time, as you were playing around the bedroom, you would have found some supplies by now. Also, you would have noticed something rather interesting: Tan have a habit of coming out of nowhere and sneaking a few hits at you before you get a chance to return fire. In some cases, they just walk from behind an object and began to shoot at you like that. But there are also a lot of times when they just tend to poof in like magic in front of you when you get close to a certain spot. No joke. They just appear out of thin air before your very eyes (or from behind, which they tend to do sometimes) and then start trying to kill you. Unfair? Yes. But that is not all.
As you play, you will quickly notice how oddly quiet sound effect-wise this game is. Enemy fire tends to be so silent, that you won't even know someone is shooting at you until you see a dart fly by or hit you, which is another reason why the Tan seem to always be able to ambush you so often. Because they are such quiet troopers, they are always bound to deal a hit or two before you see them and blow them away. Of course, sound isn't just limited to Tan guns. Lots of things in this game are quiet (or have no sound at all, as you will soon discover). When you score a hit, the grunt a Tan makes is rather hard to hear unless you are really close to them. Even then, it isn't easy to hear. When Timmy gets hit, he makes the same sound every time, but it doesn't always work right, and sometimes comes out wrong. Some sounds are in the wrong places as well (Like a turret that, for some reason, lets out a grunt of pain when you shoot it). And then there are sounds that sound pathetic (such as the grenade-like tennis ball bomb, which makes a poofing sound instead of a big bang). There are even missing sounds, the first you will quickly spot when you do mission four (A mission where you will find the most silent bombs in the world). What's more, the tan even makes use of silent technology, making the stealthiest paratroop planes known to plastic kind. Paratroopers, by the way, are another cheap trick used by the Tan. Not only will these guys pop up when you least expect them, but until the land on the ground, they are invincible. So don't waste ammo trying to kill them before they land, because it will only waste good ammo.
Heck, there are so many problems with sound, that I think it would be easier to sum it all up rather than explain all the types of errors here: The sound in this game just sucks like a broken vacuum cleaner.
Moving on...
By now, you must have won that mission, and moved on to the next. And of course, as you progress, you are bound to find some new weapons as well. So, how about we talk about some of the many guns you will find in this game?
Your main weapon in this game is your little dart blaster. Out of all the weapons in this game, it is an ok gun that gets the job done. Of course, it's slow rate of fire (and the fact that you have to click the trigger over and over in order to fire rapidly) and its low firepower make it not the kind of weapon you would want when dealing with a large, deadly wave of Tan troops or Tan tanks and turrets.
Then there is the soda pop caps. One of the most strangest of weapons. It is also a pain to aim at times. To fire, you first have to lock on (which isn't as easy as it looks at times), and then flick the Wii remote to toss a cap. The firepower is random, sometimes killing a Tan in one shot, other times needing three to kill one man. They are also supposed to bounce around and hit other nearby targets, but this doesn't always work. Heck, I recall using one on an anti-tank trooper, and instead of hurting him, it lifted him into the air a ways before letting him fall back to Earth. Strange? Of course it is. Stupid glitches...
And then there is the powerful tennis ball bomb. Of all the weapons in the game, it is the most useful of them all. It kills most Tan units in a single blast, making it a great weapon for large groups or tanks and turrets. Sadly, it can be a bother to aim as well sometimes. Strangely enough, you are never really able to throw as far as the cursor suggests. But then, who cares? You got a weapon of mass destruction in your hands!
And last, and I mean last, is the water gun. While the other weapons have their uses, this one has got to be the most useless pile of junk I have ever used in this game. Its range is really short, it's has hardly any firepower at all, and all it is good for is getting you hurt. And it eats up ammo like there is no tomorrow!
And that is all the guns in the game. Not much, huh? Well, what did you expect in a simple game like this?
More and more missions passed, and as we move along, you are bound to see that some of these missions tend to vary from stupid to harsh. There will be times when you start questioning yourself "Why can't they do it on their own?" or "Why do I have to fill a bucket of water, and then blow up the supports so that I sink the airplanes in the wet sand when I could just use the bombs to blow up the planes?"
Well, don't ask me why. Ask the makers of this game.
Heck, another thing you are bound to notice is that your allies never help you in the game. All they do in the game is sit around, get captured, or get blown up. They never bother to join you in the fight and heat things up, making this game rather boring without any big battles to fight in.
And now we move further in the game, soon bumping into something quite new (sort of): Vehicles. They range from jeeps to tanks to dive bombers to fighters. And yet, they aren't always useful. One strange thing about them is that their health bar is always near death, and they have to rely on their armour in order to keep on trucking, although that too won't last for too long if you dart into battle carelessly. Another thing about these war machines is that in some places, they are completely useless. Why would a jeep help me if it's on the floor, and I need to be on the counter? Trust me, I tried to get it up there, and it didn't really help me go far at all. All it did was waste my time. And then there is the strange rate of fire for some of these vehicles. While the fighter and dive bomber have a set rate, the jeep and tank lack one, meaning you can easily fire a few dozen or so shells in a single minute with a tank! Looks like someone was lazy in the programming department.
You know, this little review/rant has gone on for quite some time now, hasn't it? Well, don't worry reader, for we are nearing the end soon.
After a long war, and some really stupid and sometimes hard-as-hell missions, you have finally made it to mission fifteen. After so long, you encounter a very interesting idea: Stealth. Sadly, it isn't much, since the only reason you disguise yourself Tan is so you can talk to a spy within a Tan base. And after you talk with him, you are suddenly forced to fight your way back to base rather than sneak back. What is the point of a disguise if you're not evening going to need it for the mission? Rather than sneak in, avoiding all those Tan, I could have just shot them to death and made life easier for me. Stupid, isn't it?
And to make matters worse, after you go back to base, you have to go back and KILL the spy for being a double spy. Yes, I just spoiled the mission, but then again, it's not like it matters. It's a stupid mission.
And then, after you beat the last mission, you are rewarded greatly for all your suffering... NOT.
Rather than getting a nice ending for this game. You get this picture slideshow ending that has NO music. And what's more, the way the end was written was rather disappointing too. I'd tell how it ended, but I don't want to spoil it THAT much. You'll have to play the game to see it, which I don't think you will.
So, that's pretty much all I have to say. I told you about the story, the gameplay, the items you will come across (well, ok, I missed the powerups, but I don't have much to say about them anyways), and a few other things, including the way it ends. I hope that with all this info, you have learned all you needed to know about this game. If you want to try it, go ahead. But be warned: She be a bad game.
I hope you enjoyed this review. Have a nice day, gamer!