Once upon a time somebody had a reasonably nice idea. “Let’s make a game about those little green plastic soldiers we all had when we were kids!”, they said. “It’ll be cool to be able to re-enact all those pretend battles we used to do!”, they furthered. Well, it wasn’t a bad idea, and so was born the Army Men game, which was OK, but no more and no less than that.

Presumably the game must have been popular somewhere though, for a sequel duly followed, and another and another, until most sane people started to cry, “Why are they releasing more of this stuff? I didn’t play the first version, what makes them think I’m going to play the fifth iteration?”

And so we come to the present day and the news that yet another Army Men game is to be released. Ho hum. OK, I’ll put hand on heart here and say I’ve never actually played an Army Men game in any more than demo form, so maybe I’m missing out on a classic selection of games, but somehow, I don’t think so.

Maybe I’m being a little unfair singling out the poor old Army Men, as there are far worse games, but whilst some publishers just rely on churning out the same game year after year we’re going to be getting deeper and deeper into the pool of mediocrity. I urge all of you to vote with your wallets and try out some of the more original games out there, such as any of the Katamari games, Shadow of the Colossus, Trauma Center: Under The Knife or Pheonix Wright Ace Attorney.

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