Perfect graphics. Pretty weird. Really has nothing to do with Army Men and certainly not being in an army.
Then they released a million games. The only games they released that were ever genuinely good were their helicopter games, and their original 2D top-down PC games. The RTS game was pretty great, too.
The rest were all the same: The player, as a lone green soldier, would fight the entire Tan army by himself. The faceless character of olde, "Sarge", was replaced by a guy named Sergeant Hawk and this new Sarge got a big, goofy cast to go along with him. Though this toned down the game's semi-serious mood, they were kind of loveable.
Then 3DO decided to kill all of them in Sarge's War. Every character that appeared in an Army Men game aside from Sergeant Hawk himself was killed. Well, 3DO came up with the idea and some other company finished it after 3DO filed for bankruptcy as they should have.
Before that, Army Men RTS decided that they would screw around with the Army Men theme by making weapons and other accessories metal-colored, rather than the colors of their armies. This looked really stupid and was totally unnecessary. Army Men RTS still rocked, but this discoloration carried over into Sarge's War during all that character-killing-off.
Sergeant Hawk was the only survivor of Sarge's War, though a bunch of molds for the dead characters were revealed in the end, suggesting they could be rebuilt and everything could seriously go back to normal. The 3DO characters were stupid, but were characters nonetheless. Having them in future games that didn't suck would've been okay. But Global Star Software said "TO HELL WITH THAT!" and decided that they would kill off Sarge, too.
They didn't have to kill Sergeant Hawk. They could've just ditched 3DO's characters entirely and forgotten about it. Instead, they decided that they would make an intro movie wherein Sergeant Hawk is brutally executed. The video has Sarge in a microwave, and the rest of the video is an entire minute of Sergeant Hawk grunting and groaning as he slowly melts and finally explodes and dies. It's really gruesome to watch and does not fit in with the happy-go-lucky theme that existed before Sarge's War, or with the rest of Major Malfunction. I can't believe they even bothered to put it in.
Then when the game actually starts they're like "We lost contact with Sarge some time ago" (they never call him by his actual name) and that's about it. The whole intro was stupid and awful and I thought it deserved a really long paragraph. You know, they had to spend money just to make the terrible intro, money that could've been spent on making the game less crappy. I found the intro hard to watch, which is stupid to say.
Anyway, now to ACTUALLY talk about Major Malfunction. Luckily, MM makes use of the XBOX's capabilities. The Army Men go back to solid colors, rather than having grey guns like in the final 3DO games. In fact, the game doesn't rely on textures to color the Army Men at all! Instead, they rely entirely on a high polygon count. This makes them look like ACTUAL Army Men.
What am I saying? "Them"? There's only one Army Man in the entire game! There's an Army Men helicopter that's green but isn't even the same shade as the protagonist! Other Army Men only speak to the main character via a radio.
That means that, despite the name "Army", the player is completely by himself. This continues the trend of the stupid 3DO Army Men games! The biggest flaw of the 3DO Army Men games- No, not the terrible AI or the crappy controls- was that the Army Men games never put the player in an actual army. Y'know, those things come like 50 soldiers in a bag for $2, but apparently the Tan were the only ones getting any bags of soldiers. One guy would just kill all of them anyway, good thing they're so cheap.
But I digress. No I don't, I'm saying exactly what I mean. The Army Men license has been abused and horribly misused ever since they started making 3D games. Even after the license left 3DO, accessors only managed to continue this trend of awful games!
The worst thing about Major Malfunction, besides one Army Man and a helicopter that isn't even the same shade of green, is that there are no Tan. The player is a lone Green Army Man fighting against other toys. It's awesome that the Army Men finally get other toys included in their series, but what the hell! The Tan are completely gone and there's only one Green guy actually doing anything.
Art-wise, the game has the Army Men thing down perfectly. The graphics are great. Everything has a good amount of detail. The art direction is amazing. I already mentioned how the Army Man finally looked like an actual Army Man thanks to updated graphics and the right art concept.
However, the game fails in every other department. The sounds are lame. There's no spoken dialogue, just some Sims-like gibberish by some of the characters. Hearing this gibberish and having to read the dialogue that goes with it is just frustrating. I never skip it though because I always fear they'll say something like "YOU CAN ONLY ADVANCE IF YOU PRESS A-B-B-X REALLY FAST!" The dialogue has jokes but not many. It tries to be informative but just gets really annoying. Ultimately, without the written dialogue, the game would otherwise be completely lifeless. The player gets no friends, and his enemies have no personality. And there are no Tan Army Men WTF!
The controls don't make the game very fun. The platforming is sometimes hard to get down right because of weird camera angles that can't be adjusted and a lack of depth perception. The engine is at least properly built so that it's relatively easy to get around. The levels are vast, look really good, and are designed pretty well to include lots of interesting, relevant objects that add variety to the environment.
Combat is boring and would've been a lot better if the battles were more exciting. Even the old PS1 Army Men games, with the player by himself against a million completely retarded AI, managed to be more exciting. The player can only roll around when he's locked onto enemies, no jumping. Speaking of which, he HAS to be locked onto enemies. I was disappointed to learn that the camera doesn't move freely like a third- or first-person shooter. The player shoots really slow and so do the badguys. It's all pretty lame. The AI aren't as stupid as the stuff 3DO came up with but they're not really that clever, either.
Ultimately, the game is super-disappointing. First off, it's just insulting. The player is the only Army Man in the whole game, good or bad, aside from some guys he talks to on the radio. The helicopter isn't even the same shade of green as he is! They killed off Sarge in a really brutal way. They didn't even have to include Sarge in the game at all so why did they bother? The platforming is kind of off and the combat is just plain lame. The player gets no friends. The game maintains all of the worst things of 3DO's Army Men games.
The only actual good thing about the game was the art direction. Levels look great and have lots of relevant objects in the levels to give the levels structure. The player FINALLY looks like a REAL Army Man, thanks to good use of the XBOX's power to have high-polygon models and shaders. The art direction is great, which is most readily apparent in the main menu. The menu is 3D, including all kinds of neat stuff, including actual Army Men toys lying around on the desk the menu is centered around. The enemies in the game are based around actual toys, such as Legos and GI Joes. If the toys were mixed in with Army Men, it would've been okay, but because the other toys in the game consist ONLY of non-Army Men, they're really lame.
But looks just can't save the game. It sucks. That's not to say you can't enjoy the game. I actually manage to put the game down and then play it again, unlike most games that are much better-made where I'll put them down and never touch them again. Still, it sucks. I can't stress that enough. They needed Greens, they needed Tans, they needed armies battling it out!
But they have FAILED this task and so are CONDEMNED! And that's why they haven't released another game in three years.
If they'd just make an Army Men game that was actually like a big toy war in a giant world, they'd actually make good use of the license.