Army Men: World War Preview

As the title of the game implies, 3DO has taken the Army Men series to the next step in the evolution of battle, and have gone for a full-scale world war between the Green and Tan plastic armies.

You control the Green army through 25 missions in its effort to overtake the well-fortified Tan army. The missions take place within six different types of environments such as beaches, war-torn cities, and rural country settings. One of the missions we tried out was a level that was set up like Normandy, where you must race from the beach and find cover as the Tan army lays fire down from fixed positions. This level demonstrated the frenzied action of the game, as well as the subtle strategy that it takes to get through the game.

As fans of the previous Army Men game know, a big part of the fun of playing the game is in the different types of weapons you get to use. Army Men World War follows up on that fun with a ton of new weapons and returning favorites like the howitzer, flamethrower, bayonet, grenades, mortars, bazooka, .50 caliber twin machine gun, and assault rifle. All of the weapons can be found and used within the single-player and multi-player modes. Multiplayer modes in Army Men World War will include cooperative play and deathmatch, as well as capture-the-flag modes. When playing cooperatively, you'll have to learn how to work together to take out enemy units in the most effective way possible.

Visually, Army Men World War, even in its current state, looks vastly superior to its predecessor. The object-filled, hi-res environments look very nice and offer a good amount of variety. Many of the animations and textures weren't in the version we got a chance to play, but the army men themselves and the various animations that were already in place did look fairly good.

While still early in development, Army Men World War seems to be shaping up to be quite a sequel. We'll have to wait 'til we get a more complete version of the game before commenting more, but judging from the preliminary version we got to play, we think fans of the original Army Men 3D should definitely be excited.