"Most realistic and most fun shooter out there!"

Overview:
Americas Army, or AA, is the game created, developed and released by the American army, hence the name. This game was intended to show what's it's like in the military and act as a recruitment tool, so it's the most realistic shooter out there, closer to a sim than an FPS. It's groundbreaking in the fact that it's a professional game released completely free (Americasarmy.com will get you the download) and players always play as the American army, so you are shooting at an enemy player who looks like a terrorist, while to the player you look like a terrorist. Now, on to the actual reviewing.
The good:
Graphics: This game looks great. The weapon models are the most detailed I've ever seen, the reload animations are not a matter of taking a clip out and putting a new one in, they reproduce exactly how the reloading works. The only problem is you need a 128 meg graphics card to see the game in all its glory, and onboard graphics will probably only run it with the lowest settings.

Sound: The game also sounds great. A lot of work was put into making everything sound authentic, from the click click click of your gun when out of ammo, to the voices to the crunching you make running across the snow.

Gameplay: The gameplay in this game is also great (Notice a theme?). The game is played between two teams, assault and defense. Assault is charged with performing an objective, whether hacking into a computer, planting a bomb, rescuing a POW, or escaping an ambush, and defense is charged with stopping them. As mentioned before, the game is very realistic, and takes into account things such as your position (standing, crouching or prone), your health, your speed and whether or not you are using your sights to determine your accuracy, and whether or not you are under fire, which means players used to running around with all guns blazing will soon die after they run into an opponent, expend all their ammunition and get dropped by their opponent taking his time and lining them up with his sights. Furthermore, bunny hopping is not possible, as each jump reduces your accuracy a lot for a bit, and after 3 you can't jump for a long time. The problem with the gameplay is the learning curve. Enemies and friends look similar from long range, and friendly fire causes you to lose honor, which is good for stopping intentional teamkillers, but bad for newbies. If you lose too much honor, you can't play on most servers until you rebuilt it on training servers. Plus, the simulation feel of the game means it's hard to kill people, so you have to be accurate, which is hard for newbies.

Honor: There is a system in this game called honor. Honor approximately measures your skill in the game, it increases slightly when you kill an opponent, perform an objective and lead your team to victory, but decreases slightly when you get killed or you lead your team to defeat, and decreases a lot when you shoot a friendly. Honor is used as bragging rights, but also to increase your chances of getting a specific weapon, so a high honor player will have a better chance of getting the only sniper rifle than a low honor player, although it's still possible for a low honor player to get a special weapon. The bad side is it's hard for newbies to raise their honor at first and easy for them to lose it, and also honor has lead to honor whores, who join the winning team, and go hide somewhere and get lots of honor and do nothing for their team.

Training: To even play the game, you have to pass basic training, which is essentially a tutorial. It means that when you start to play, you'll know how and players who just want to come in and screw around will probably not want to go all the way through training. There's also additional training for Special Forces, rangers, snipers and airborne troops, which unlock new classes or maps for you to play. The bad side is training is hard, which makes sense, but it's very frustrating if you keep almost passing a training mission and fail.

Cheating: Cheating in this game is virtually non-existent. AA has recently hired Punkbuster to help them catch cheaters. If caught cheaters have their accounts deleted, which means they have to go through basic training again before they can play, redo all the special training they've passed, and begin at honor 10 and work their way up again.

Support: The dev team releases a new patch about every 6 weeks, which aside from fixing bugs, releases new maps and features. Each map has incredible replayabilty (I spend 70% of my time playing 3 maps) but if you do get tired of the current line the patches should give you more to do. The bad side is there's no possibility for modders, because a modder could make a map of the army killing civilians or something.
The Bad:
Connection: There is an authentication server which checks to see if you are qualified to play (You've passed the required training missions, you have enough honor, etc) and it also records how much honor you gain or lose. However, this server occasionally crashes, and then you can't play until it's back up again. It doesn't crash often, but it is annoying. The good is that the game wouldn't work without the auth server, and each new patch attempts to fix the problem.

Singleplayer: The only singleplayer available is the training missions, so if you have a very slow connection you can't play this game. The good is if you have a fast connection the multiplayer is great.

Total score:
10/10
This game is truly excellent, with the only real problems being bugs that pop up rarely and should be ironed out before too long. And best of all, it's free! Go! Download now!

This review was on version 2.0, when later versions get released this review might not be completely accurate

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 11/17/03