Army Corps of Hell

If you're tired of repackaged or remade franchise games for the Vita, do yourself a favor and go to hell. Army Corps of Hell is blasphenomenal.

For $40 minus one cent, Army Corps of Hell is a difficult recommend, but when it drops to $20 or lower, I believe it would be a welcome addition to anyone's Vita library.

Army Corps of Hell has a strong base, which revolves around controlling minions like you might know from Pikmin or Overlord. Well designed enemies make for challenging games and make Army Corps an addictive experience. It could have been more than its concept, but it convinces even in this form.

Weirdly memorable. [May 2012, p.82]

Engrossing pick-up-and-play action. [Apr 2012, p.115]

A good game, despite its flaws. It has good ideas and is a type of game we rarely see in consoles, and even less frequently in portable ones, but it gets repetitive soon. If you are looking for something different this is a game for you, with a charming personality. But it is not perfect, and the only really memorable aspect is its great soundtrack.

All of this is well and good, but where the game starts to suffer is from lack of variety.

It may not be the best-looking game in the Vita's launch line-up -- and it's definitely lacking in the variety department -- but the frantic gameplay and the insane death metal soundtrack help take the sting off. Go ahead, go to Hell.

Army Corps of Hell has a great premise, some intense boss fights, and a fantastic soundtrack. Unfortunately, the repetitious gameplay bogs the experience down, making this a trip to hell that you're not going to want to keep returning to.

Army Corps of Hell is full of intresting ideas. Some issues on the gameplay side and the repetitive structure prevent players from having fun from the beginning to the end.

The gory, tactical action will definitely gain this game some hardcore followers, but an overall repetitiveness, failing back touch controls and a weak graphical representation keep Army Corps of Hell from becoming a mainstream success.

Army Corps of Hell captures the devilish combat of its setting but is too repetitive to sustain that appeal.

A game that starts you out with a bang from the very first menu, but starts to fade down the stretch. The bland environments, serious lack of depth in the enemy department, and the repetitive nature of the combat don't do it any favors either.

Quire refreshing, but gets boring quickly, never really progressing that far beyond its initial ideas. [Issue#217, p.80]

Army Corps of Hell starts off interesting but after just a few short hours you reach that uneasy realization that the game is not changing and the experience gets very repetitive. I can appreciate that it's a new IP for a new platform, and I encourage that, but this one falls considerably short of greatness.

Even with the rehashed environments, enemies and boss battles, Army Corps of Hell still manages to deliver satisfying bursts of strategy action.

Pretty funny and even entertaining at first. Unfortunately it also gets boring pretty fast. Army Corps of Hell lacks variation by recycling the same environments over and over again and lacks a certain tactical depth you'd come to expect from an RTS. [March 2012, p.65]

Somewhere between Overlord and Pikmin, Army Corps of Hell uses the gameplay mechanics of this last title, but wrapped in a Hell-inspired world. A devil character throws its minion into battle instead of himself. Unfortunately, the game is visually quite poor and soon becomes boring in between the boss battles.

A visual presentation that looks more PSP than Vita, doesn't help matters. It makes a killer first impression-and certainly earns points for offering something different on launch day-but such limited appeal may not be enough to send gamers to Hell.

At times, Army Corps of Hell is an adrenaline rush of swift tactical fighting. It's also, however, incredibly repetitive and far too drawn out.

I actually wish I had stopped playing after about, oh, five hours. Up to that point, Army Corps of Hell is a novel experience. After that, it burns out all that novelty. And not in awesome heavy metal hellfire, either.

A tough sell at $39.99. At that price, we expected more depth to the experience, plus additional modes. And yet, we can't help but smile as a large and horned monstrosity squashes several goblins flat, only to get decapitated moments later, its head sailing through the air, leaving a bloody trail in its wake.

A novel experience and one of the few launch games with a real budget that isn't an updated port or half-sequel. And Pikmin fans desperate for anything that copies the series will have a good time for a little while. Yet Army Corps of Hell comes up short in the end, probably thanks to a lack of time or money.

The tactical combat can be exciting at times, but it soon becomes repetitive-as do the environments and the music.

Army Corps of Hell is a title with strong potential. The problem is with a certain repetitiveness in the gameplay that fails to take off the latest project by Square Enix.

Army Corps of Hell will most likely drown in the flood of other launch titles for Vita. It contains lots of fire, heavy metal and demons – but all in all it catches my interest for about just as long as it takes to listen through a Judas Priest album. And I'd rather spend my time doing that, to be honest.

If you can overlook the somewhat unyielding game design and slump in visual quality, there's a satisfying strategy game to be found with hours of potential replay value. However, it's hard to ignore the fact that the Vita has an oustanding launch roster, most of which outweigh Army Corps of Hell in almost every aspect.

The biggest problem is a lack of variety in the stages and enemies. Aside from the odd boss fight you're just hewing your way through the same old scum with the same old tactics. Couple that with the fact that this offers less story than a homemade sextape and this gets old, fast. [March 2012, p65]

This is an ambitious mix of Pikmin and Overlord plus loads of heavy metal. Unfortunately it lacks everything that made the aforementioned games so special. If it wouldn't be for the interesting bossfights this corps could stay in hell.



I'm disappointed to say that I didn't care for Army Corps of Hell as much as I had hoped. A lot of the early stuff released about the game prior to the Vita looked pretty great, but I find the execution lacking. It's not entirely devoid of fun, but it's hard to get a great deal of enjoyment out of this when other, very similar titles, have done so much more with the idea.

Army Corps of Hell is a decent mix of different ideas which is unfortunately not making the most out of PlayStation Vita.

Army Corps of Hell is a disappointing effort. The story is utterly meaningless and gameplay lacks depth and challenge. The visuals are in no way better than an average PSP title and stages soon become a repetitive chore. Too bad for a good heavy-metal soundtrack which deserved a better game.

With a killer soundtrack and deep metal influences, Army Corps of Hell brings a barren action-strategy genre to the PlayStation Vita, but does so in a way that would make even the hellish of characters bored.

It's easy to make a game that feels like Monster Hunter, but it's nearly impossible to make a game as good. After playing Army Corps of Hell for much longer than I should have, I know that SE could have definitely put a little more time into this game to make it a contender in PlayStation Vita's massive launch line-up.

Initially amusing, but it wears out its welcome quickly thanks to a lack of variety. [Mar 2012, p.95]

Army Corps of Hell feels more like a low-key Mini title; certainly not a full retail game being sold in stores for close to $90! The highlight of the game is probably the thrash hardcore metal soundtrack and even this won't appeal to everyone. Best to avoid this hellish title, at least at full price.

Army Corps is Pikmin in hell. [May 2012, p.77]

Army Corps of Hell is ironically repetetive and boring as hell. The game also looks pretty bad and one of the only good features is the soundtrack. Still, it doesn't help the game get a better rating.

Hellacious. [Apr 2012, p.107]

It's repetitive, monotonous, and just plain boring. [Issue#119, p.94]

It's nice to see someone is making a new Pikmin game, but this half-hearted clone has neither the variety nor the imagination of its considerably cuter inspiration.