"Some good points in the game, but a terrible community."

America's Army is a game, developed by the American Army (oh rly?), to highlight battle, and military forces. A free download, but is it worth it?

Gameplay
Basically, before you can get into any online action, which is what this game is all about, you must complete training. This is a supposed realistic touch to the game, however soon becomes boring. You have to under go sniper training before you can use the sniper rifle in multiplayer, and the same applies to assault rifles, and machine guns.

Theres also some basic 'shoot house' scenarios which must be completed. However, this is the basic.

Secondly is the special forces training. This consists of around a 20minute lecture (yes, you sit in a class and watch someone talk), take an exam, then take part in a sneaking mission. And by sneaking mission, i mean, a completely boring, 1 hour affair of crawling round at ultra low speed in the dark.
The bonus of completing this is the fact that it earns you the M4 assault rifle.

When you (finally) get into the game, theres a large amount of maps to choose from. To give the game credit, most maps are well thought out, however one or two maps often see your whole team boxed quickly into a few small rooms. The maps are generally quite big, and without any sort of usable map, it takes a while to get used to.

The main part of the game is the missions that take part on these maps. They are very varied, from obtaining a briefcase in the middle of a town centre, to escorting/attacking a VIP trying to escape from hospital.

Speaking of hospitals, if you want to aid your team by being a medic (and earning extra points) you have to sit through more lectures and exams. And pass.

When in the game, your team is split up into squads, and can bring up radio commands using the number keys. This is well thought out, as there are a lot of responses, and it works quite well in the game.

The ranking system in the game goes off something called 'honour'. Basically, rack up points in games, the more honour you get. Honour doesnt count for all that much, but enables you to pick desirable kits sooner than other players at the beginning of the game, such as leader positions, or special forces.

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Weapons
Very varied, and very well drawn out. Some weapons include; M16, M4, AK74 (scoped and unscoped), SPR, Pistols, Grenades, Smoke, Flashbangs, Thermite Grenades, M249 SAW, RPG etc etc. All in all, there's a very good amount of weapons, and all are accuratley set up. Weapons can also jam, causing you to have to fix this jam. Very realistic effect,and happens very randomly.

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Sound
Very realistic. A major strongpoint. Weapons sound completely authentic, soldiers shout, grenades make authentic noises. You can even hear your solider breathing when zoomed in through iron-sights or a scope. Very good point of the game.

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Graphics
Very good explosive effects, and all bodies have the 'ragdoll' effect. All buildings are drawn very well, as are the uniforms, maps etc etc. You might need a high-end spec pc to run this game fully, but the graphics are extremely efficent.

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Controls
Average in every way. However you can control the speed of your running, crawling and crouching which is a nice touch. Sometimes movement is just a bit too jerky however.

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Community
Sorry, just had to bring this up. Firstly, hackers. This game comes with Punkbuster. Punkbuster is a programme that identifies cheaters and automatically removes them. There's often much debate about how effective PB is, however, it is poor. Without a doubt, AA has a large amount of hackers. If you thought CS was bad at times, this is much worse.
Admins also pose a problem. Theres only a handfull of official servers, meaning most are clanservers, containing an admin. Kill that admin, or kill a few of his clan, and you'll get kicked from the game. Understandably, the admins reserve the right to kick in a server they pay for, but disabling all of your text and putting you into 'mute' mode, or most of the time just banning you, is usually unacceptable for something so trivial.

Unfortunatly, as a community game, with no singleplayer, this is the games biggest stumbling block. No fault of the designers, just a general big problem with the game.

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Download?
Yes and no. At first, you will probably love it, but give it a week or two, and the unbearble community will most probably drive you away. Maybe worth a try, but as they say, you get what you pay for. And this is free...

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 11/28/05