The Army Men games like to use different genres – starting with an RTS, then delving into 3rd person shooters, and now a vehicle shooter – but the green plastic style, lumped with the “living in a giant’s world” concept, keeps the games feeling like they belong together. Air Combat takes on the Desert Strike style of game, but keeps things simple.

But that simplicity is what makes Air Combat a lot of fun. Take the winch as an example: in Desert Strike, you have to carefully line it up to pick up objects. Here, you just lower the winch and it grabs onto anything, allowing you to move objects around with ease. The autoaim is also incredibly generous, although if you don’t pay enough attention, you may find yourself blowing up your own men.

Along the game you’ll steal some great looking weapons from the Tan Army – a tank, a UFO, a bear that shoots lasers out of his eyes… Sadly, you don’t get to use any of these (not even the UFO, which would work in a similar way to a helicopter), and it’s something that could have helped add a bit more variety into the game. Even so, it’s still a good laugh.

Fun

The series’ trademark sense of humour is thankfully backed up by some decent gameplay. The difficulty curve is such that you’ll easily pick up the controls, but it can soon become so frantic that you’ll run into problems after completing just a couple of the 16 missions.

Alan Maddrell, N64 Magazine #46. Review Score: 83%

Remake or remaster?

A remastered Army Men collection would be great.

Official ways to get the game.

There’s no official way to get Army Men: Air Combat.