Army Men: In Space

The first game was awful. The second game was awful. There seems to be a pattern forming here. One which the developer has no intention of breaking with the third title in the series. Once again you play Sarge, the plastic soldier, keeping the world safe from alien invasion. The 'In Space' part of the title is a little misleading as only the last three of the 11 levels are actually set on another planet, the rest are played out on the familiar locations of bathroom floors, picnic rugs and the like.

You can control other units, but Sarge is the only one able to use the power-ups (fly swatter, magnifying glasses, etc) scattered around to your advantage. And it's just as well as it's rather hard without them. Even the first level took more than several attempts to finish and tactics usually devolve into either rushing the enemy with all your troops or inching across the map taking out targets individually. You can divide your enemy into squads but don't expect them to survive long if you're not taking care of them, as the AI is absolutely abominable.

Soldiers can spend minutes getting around a simple piece of scenery and sometimes even each other. One mission even saw me sacrifice a truck full of refugees who had found themselves stuck fast to a sponge just to finish the damn thing. Thank God it's so short, then. There are the now obligatory skirmish and multiplayer options thrown in, in an attempt to extend the longevity, but they stink just as much. Quite why 3DO continues to flog such a rotting, maggot-infested carcass of a horse is anybody's guess. The only explanation I can think of is that the programmers are being eternally punished for their sins after some botched attempt at invoking the power of Satan. Or something.