Army Men: Sarge's Heroes is a third-person shooter where players take the role of soldiers in 3D battlefields.[3] It has the feel, pace, weapons and level design of classic arcade shooters like Ikari Warriors (1986) and Guerrilla War (1987), and also features elements of GoldenEye (1997), Command & Conquer (1995), and platform video games.[3] In Their World (the setting for the plastic soldiers) The Green Army, led by Colonel Grimm, has members of the Bravo Company, its best troops, and Grimm's daughter Vikki, a top reporter for the official Green Army newspaper Green Star News, captured by the Tan Army, led by General Plastro.[4][5] The Tan Army have discovered portals to Our World (the human world), which lie weapons such as magnifying glasses that can melt soldiers.[4][5][6][7] On the Green Army's base, the game's first mission is the leader of the Bravo Company that did not get captured, Sargent Hawk, getting Grimm, his mentor, to an escape chopper. This is all the while the invading Tan Army and other Green Army soldiers attack each other, where Sarge also helps his fellow men.[3]
The Nintendo 64 and PlayStation versions have 14 missions with up to five objectives each, the Dreamcast 16 missions with three-to-four objectives each, totaling to 40.[4][8][9] Tasks vary from finding and rescuing the Bravo Company and Vikki, and disabling a "bug zapper" gate, to capturing blue spies, killing Tan Army soldiers and destroying the portals.[8][9][10][11] The camera defaults to a steady and slightly over-the-shoulder third-person perspective of the player character.[4][12] Other options are to view the character from the front or first-person, activated with the press of a button.[5][13] The 3D spaces can theoretically be traversed at the player's own free will, but the missions can be completed by following a path with no requirement for backtracking.[9]