America's Army

"Wow. Just Wow."

This is one of the best games I have ever seen. It is focused on teamwork, and is very good at it. The detail is simply amazing, and best of all, its free! Now for my individual ratings:

Graphics
The gun graphics are really what blow the mind. The are so detailed,down to even that you can see when you switch from Single to Burst mode the small switch that controls it, down to there being no visible bullets in an empty cartridge, and the belt fed SAW when it has only 4-5 rounds left that you can see the bullets coming out of the cartridge, down to the very well made muzzle flashes. Everywhere you see bullet tracers, red and green, which you want to avoid and can use to retaliate against the enemy. The characters were left untended unfortunately, because the faces are always 1 emotion, even in death. The body placement is good though when people are killed, and looks realistic.(at least when a body part isn't suspended off somewhere it shouldn't be, like both legs being suspended off a table in death when they should be limp. The maps are also not much to look at a lot of the time, but that's ok, because you should be killing terrorists, not looking at the scenery! Overall Rating: 9

Gameplay
As I said, this is a teamwork game. There are usually 10 members a team, and the team that is a team (usually) always wins. Also, once you are immersed in the game, you feel like you're really in the game. You think like a soldier might, and that was the army's purpose for making this game. Cheating is combated well in AA, where installing any files to the system file folder (where most cheat files must be placed) will make entering a game unavailable until you reset the system files(therefore deleting the cheat program) with a convenient cleanup file included in the game. Overall Rating: 10

Sound
They really paid attention to sound in AA where other games fail. Everywhere, tracers and bullets fly everywhere, real explosion and shot sounds, and the obvious panicking whoosh of a bullet that just missed, the ping of the grenade pin, and the shout of ''Frag out!'' really put you in the game. I like the fact that they actually game you something to listen to that sounds real.
Overall: 11

In the end, this is a very good game that I would definitely spend money to buy if it was necessary.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 04/22/03, Updated 04/22/03