Small Soldiers is a new movie that's out now and uses 3D computer animation to make some toy soldiers come to life. I can pretty much say that it is a movie intended for a younger audience, so seeing this game, I didn't expect much. Most children's games aren't much fun for the older game players. Hearing it was a 3D fighting game, I gave it a try. Now, in this game, you first start off building your team of 5 soldiers. I found this part of the game to be entertaining by itself. What you get to do is actually make your soldiers from scratch. You get a bunch of choices for arms, legs, head, and torso. You can mix and match and come out with some really weird combinations. Next you choose the color options of what you want each body part to be. This part can also make some real unusual looking soldiers. Next you choose your memory chip you want to use. Memory is used for the speed and amount of moves your soldier has. You can then pick your moves, and there are quite an assortment of different ones to choose. Last, you can choose taunts for your soldier. After you assembled your freaky looking team, its time to fight! You have different fighting areas, such as a kitchen, bedroom, tree house, bathroom, workshop, etc. Each are in full 3D and rotate according to your position. You then engage in battling your opponents. As you get farther along, more fighting areas become available. One neat part that I liked is as you die, pieces of your body fall off but you can pick them up and use them against your opponent. It's kind of funny trying to fight without both your arms or missing a leg or two.

Graphics: 17 / 20

This game does support 3D hardware and resolutions up to 800x600. I wasn't expecting much graphics wise but I was shocked at how good they did on this game. The design part of the game was in 3D so you could see what your soldier looked like while you were building him. There was full rotation of your soldier during this process so you could see all sides. When it was time to battle, I was amazed at the 3D used. It reminded me of virtual fighter's view with the semi spinning camera. Once the match started, you could move in all directions in the room, jump on stuff, and pick up objects to use as weapons. Everything was highly detailed and it ran smooth too.

Sound: 9 / 15

Sound was just some sound effects and voices repeated over and over. I don't care for the sounds when they use .wavs and midi type music. It shows lack of quality and the wavs take up a lot of extra space. There wasn't anything different in sound than any other 3D fighting game.

Gameplay: 22 / 30

The gameplay was good, this game had a unique style to it and played more or less good. I really hated not being able to really set up your control or keyboard properly. I think there was sort of a way to do that but it was really confusing. Other than that, everything was pretty easy to use and it was an easy game to learn. Moving the soldiers was only a bit hard because it took a while to get used to the movement. Moving up and down isn't really implicated in many other 3D fighting games. Everything else was no trouble.

Fun Factor: 15 / 20

Unfortunately, for me, this got pretty boring after a while. It may not for other people who enjoy these games so I couldn't tell you if you would get bored. I can tell you I got bored because it was pretty repetitive and seemed like your doing the same fights over and over with just different soldiers. The scenery also gets boring. I do believe people who enjoy these games won't get bored fast. Some people enjoy endless hours of fighting.

Multiplayer: 3 / 5

Same old multiplayer as in all other 3D fighters. One on one and I think co-op were the only real things you could do with two or more people.

Overall Impression: 7 / 10

I was surprised with the graphics and soldier design aspects and disappointed at sound and lack of hours of fun.