I was setting myself up for Army Men to be a craptastic game. But it actually isn't! The Army Men franchise has been around for a while now, and has established itself next to the other, bigger, franchises in the video game world. I'm fully not surprised that those little green guys found their way on to the Game Boy Advance at launch.

In Army Men Advance you play as either Sarge or Vikki, and you have to fight the Tan army. It's an old story, but then again, Mario has been fighting Bowser for many years. I've gotten though the first two missions so far. The graphics are OK, but they aren't near as good as some of the other GBA games'. The characters animate fairly well. My biggest problem with the graphics is that the bullets are little white squares. It probably wouldn't have been that hard for them to make a little bullet sprite. On an up note, there is no slowdown whatsoever. I was in a fire-fight with around 8 Tan enemies and everything was smooth.

The play control is solid. A shoots, B tosses a grenade, L switches weapons and R strafes. They respond quickly and rarely will you find yourself cursing the controls.

The sound, frankly, is awful. There is no background music. The sound effects are fine and they fit extremely well. But no music is just plain wrong. It's not like the game is pushing the limits of the system and can't handle sound.

But my major gripe with the game is not it's sound. The game uses passwords to track progress. I think this is becoming a trend in Game Boy Advance games and I sure do hope it stops right now with this batch of launch titles. Having to write down passwords and carry a sheet of paper is a pain in the ass. Especially with a portable system.

I feel that if 3DO had spent a little more time on the game and released it a month or two after launch, Army Men could be a fantastic game. Instead, it's one of those titles that is OK, and that certain people should buy if they are Army Men fans or if they want to just pick up and play a fun, decent game.