Let’s be honest: this is not a hidden masterpiece. The isometric aiming is janky. You will often fire at a wall because the perspective makes a Tan soldier look like he’s three inches to the left when he is actually behind a cereal box. The voice clips are garbled to the point of sounding like dial-up internet. And the difficulty spikes are absurd—one mission is a leisurely stroll through a garden, the next is a nightmare of enemy mortars raining from off-screen.
A 7/10. Bring extra AA batteries. For your GBA, not the soldiers. Juego Army Men Advance 2 - Turf Wars GBA
Today, Army Men Advance 2: Turf Wars sits in the dusty bargain bin of gaming history. The 3DO company is long gone. The Army Men franchise has been MIA for nearly two decades. But for a kid with a Game Boy Advance SP in the back of a minivan, this game was a pocket-sized sandbox of destruction. Let’s be honest: this is not a hidden masterpiece
The titular Turf Wars mechanic is where the game tries to stand out. Unlike a standard linear shooter, each level has "control points." You don’t just need to kill the Tans; you need to stand on their side of the garden gnome long enough to raise your flag. This turns the game into a constant push-pull. You can clear a room of enemies, but if you don’t physically stand in the corner by the discarded AA battery, the Tan forces will respawn and take it back. The voice clips are garbled to the point
And if you can look past the dated graphics and the imprecise controls, you’ll find a fast, frantic, and gloriously silly shooter that understands one simple truth: war, when fought by plastic toys, never gets old.
The sound design is quintessential GBA crackle: tinny machine-gun fire that sounds like popcorn, the plink of a grenade bouncing off a plastic tank, and the iconic scream of a Green soldier melting into a puddle of goo. It’s not immersive in the way Metroid is. It’s immersive in the way a Saturday morning cartoon is—loud, bright, and instantly comforting.