The Army Men RTS Is Back

If you missed out on the joys of Toy Soldier Simulator back when it was released in 2002, you’ll be pleased to know that it’s making a resurgence.

It’s available through Good Old Games for $7.99, or as a four-pack with the other Army Men games. Army Men RTS was the brainchild of Pandemic Studios, which had an office in Brisbane along with its headquarters in the United States, and the game was built on the same engine behind Dark Reign 2.

The Army Men series was never as mechanically intriguing as WarCraft 3, which launched the same year, and it’s hard to find an RTS story today (let alone in 2002) that can hold a candle to Blizzard’s masterpiece. But it’s a fun first step into strategy games, and visually Army Men RTS holds up the best out of the series. The game ships with 15 singleplayer missions, eight player multiplayer and 8 “great battles”, which are basically a series of one-off scenarios.

With this, Dawn of War 3 out next month and rumours of a remastered StarCraft in the works, it’s becoming a quietly good period for strategy games. Now if BattleTech and Endless Space 2 could just hurry along, that’d be great.