Army Men: Sarge's Heroes - Bootcamp - Sega DreamcastIt's a beautiful and peaceful day on a Green World. Our protagonist, Sergeant Hawk, does his routine training in a Green base so as not to oxidize...
Sarge's Heroes is a third-person shooting video game developed and published by The 3DO Company for Nintendo 64 in North America on September 28, 1999 and April 14, 2000 in Europe. The player normally controls Sarge Hawk, a sergeant of the Green Army and fights against the evil General Plastro and the Tan Army. The story is the eternal racial war between the Greens and the Tas. This is 3DO's grand attempt to incorporate a recognizable brand into the Army Men franchise. Establish a main cast, updating the generic "Sarge" from the original series to a strongman Sarge Hawk, giving him a squad, a girlfriend and an officer at the helm. It is a very successful launch, despite the fact that Jim Cummings only gives the voice to each male character, resulting quite convincing. This game helped to bring the franchise further to the subseries Sarge's Heroes. Both armies are named after the usual colors of plastic toy army men.
There are two player modes: Campaign and BootCamp, in addition to the Multiplayer mode. In multiplayer mode from 2 to 4 players, players choose their character, faction (color) and difficulty. Then, the players select a map and fight among themselves until they reach the number of deaths needed to win the match.
The campaign of a player is the main mode of Sarge's Heroes. The player travels through various missions, completing objectives, killing enemies, destroying vehicles and rescuing plastic allies.
The BootCamp is a training level where the player learns the controls. It consists of training areas for all weapons, an obstacle course and a "real fire track".
Exclusive to the PS1 version of the game are the fully animated prerendered scenes, which the Nintendo 64 lacks, thanks to the limited space in the cartridges. Even the Dreamcast version, which is nothing more than an improved copy of the N64, stuck to the pantomime narration in the engine instead of the CGI-animated FMV films.
On N64 you don't have to deal with the clumsy physics and poor collision detection of PS1, even though N64 it's not perfect, it's just much better. DC is not much different to N64, but something worse. It's positive that the lack of verticality of PS1 and PC is not present in N64 and DC, because it adds a whole new dimension to the missions. The N64 version was not optimal in terms of its controls, but it was not as bad as Playstation 1 and PC.
Even though the Army Men games had already established a formula for their third-person shooting games with Army Men 3D, Sarge's Heroes deviates a lot, completely overhauling almost every aspect. The camera perspective, the detail, the movement, the animation; everything has been changed to allow for a faster and less deliberate pace. Sarge Hawk can also jump, which allows for a little climbing on platforms. Pero lo worst is the time it takes the camera that follows the player to adjust itself again, so that the view that we have ahead is not so disconcertingly vacillating.
If the playability on N64 is the one that has been copied on the PS1 in a very poor way, there are many substantial differences. Sarge's Heroes on PlayStation 1 and PC are not horrible or anything, they are simply the worst versions of Sarge's Heroes to play, which makes the N64 probably the best (next to DC). Even if we ignore the graphic fidelity or the level of polish that suggests that PS1 and PC was a cheap and fast port job of N64, much of what did that the N64 and Dreamcast versions were notable was eliminated in the PS1 conversion. What you get on N64, the original version of the game, is a good, long and entertaining game, compared to something the boring PS1 and PC versions. There are some reasons why you might want to try the PS1: the inclusion of pre-rendered scenes, tanks, or maybe you just want to see the designs of different levels, which makes it a game that is almost totally different. But definitely N64 is the best version of the SH game.
The worse: the N64 version has a total absence of pilotable vehicles. Only the Playstation and PC version has some tanks. That's great, but the ones from Sarge's Heroes aren't particularly useful. So its exclusion on N64 is... insignificant.
The Dreamcast version is the same than N64, only with better graphics, textures, character design and voice acting included, which is why Dreamcast is probably the best version (except that the FMV is missing here too).
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