Its been three years since the first Army Men game was introduced. Now we're choking on piles of Army Men games. It seems nobody can pimp a franchise better than 3DO. Now they are hoping to get another Ho for their franchise called Army Men Advance.

In this version of Army Men your mission sends you to a seek and destroy mission as either Vikki or Sarge through seventeen varied levels. You spend most of your time on foot shooting tan soldiers, but on other levels you get in a tank or boat for some vehicular combat. This aspects makes things stay interesting.

If only the gameplay held up to the varity of missions. Rather than making each level a decent length of shooting and stuff, instead the developers have placed switches and keys that will have you going back and forth over small levels. The first to levels have you going back and forth all over the place.

The Controls are pretty well mapped on the GBA, but prove different in heated combat. The D-pad controls both movement and aim while, holding down the R shoulder button will lock your aim and allow you to strafe. L switches between main weapons, including machine guns, bazooka and flamethrower, and B tosses grenades.

The hardest part is when you got enemies approaching from all sides, especially in some of the cramped indoor environments. You'll find you self at many times having to turn, run and then turn around again to simply fire at an enemy.

Another complaint is how dull firing at enemies sound. You listen to the same few sounds for gunfire and the same sound for killing an enemy. Even the background music sticks to traditional snare drum and flute arrangements. Also visually Army Men is very plain with nearly deserted environments. The enemies all look the same, save for a change of hat and explosions look rather weak. This is hardly "advanced." If you call this advanced then I don't what what technology is really suppose to be like.

I still need to give the game some credit. The mission briefing screens are a nice touch and the objective screen is thorough and available at all times from the pause menu. You'll never be confused about what to do next. Game objects are labeled and an on-screen announcement is triggered when you complete an objective.

Another frustrating thing about the game is that there are no in-stage continue points, which can be a big pain in the ass during some of the bigger levels. Say if you get shot, and die. Boom, Game over, start from the beginning. Also there is no battery save, there is only a password save, which really pisses me off, I mean who is going to carry a piece of paper with them just to play a crappy handheld game.

Even though the game does have some strong points, its still not enough to make the game worth the purchase. If I were you I wouldn't buy the game. If anything, you should rent it, but that's it and that's still not worth it.