Gaming America's Army 3 Review

http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/pc/2009/07/12/americas-army-3-review/1

The latest version of the US Army's official game is here, and we sign up to see if the entertainment and gameplay fun is worth the indoctrination into America's Army.

 

Like a sucker, i saw this for free on Steam........now i want my 5gb of bandwidth back.

I resent the space its taking up on my hard drive.

 

No offence but this review came off as a bit of graphics whoring. A lot of it, actually.

And what's up with that comment on weak gunshot sounds? Have you played rainbow six, call of duty or crysis lately?

I was going to mention battlefield too but they improved a whole damn bunch with Bad Company.

 

I downloaded it, thought it wasn't too bad actually...

I wouldn't have had it if I had to pay, for a free game, its fine.

 

I hope you're okay with giving your personal data to the US Army when you play.

 

You mean they don't have it already?


I actually started to download it last night as I saw a few of my friends were playing it, but paused it after it occurred to me that it would probably be crap. Thanks for confirming my suspicions, saves me a few GB of bandwidth.

 

uh, if you're over 18, male, and live in the US, they most likely already have it. it's called "selective service". and if you live anywhere else, they don't care.

 

Good: Tightly balanced multi player with some interesting gameplay modes.

Good: controls and movement are tight and fast, making the game much faster paced than AA 1 or 2. They aren't wooly or inaccurate, but as with AA you need to either get used to steady time or you can use the breathe key to steady instantly - ala CoD4 sniper skill.

Good: The wound / medic / capture dynamic is excellent. You get wounds as you did in AA1 and 2, but instead of just being able to stop bleeding Medics can now revive incapacitated players, as in BF2. This adds to the game play nicely because if you want someone you killed to stay dead you have to approach and cuff the downed player... or just camp the corpse.

Good: Cover and ballistics work well. Walls which look like they should stop bullets do, and ones which don't provide very limited cover. You can actually have decent firefights using cover, unlike BF2 where cover was just something that hid you from sight, and rarely stopped any incoming ordinance.

Bad: Buggy as hell and the bugs aren't being fixed quickly because they fired the dev team on the day after release.

Bad: Every single animation in the game looks unpolished, it's as though the animators have made the first attempt at the animation and then a manager has said "that'll do, move on to the next". Everything is scrappy and unpolished, from the dive and slide animations to the crouch walk.

Middling: Sound kind of sucks. Only one sound for any action so if your whole squad slides into cover or reloads it sounds liek an echo. Probably because of management again. Sucks to work for the Army, sounds like.

Middling: The graphics themselves are very detailed, but unfortunately there is a really nasty bloom shader in use that has to be edited out with some ini hacking. If you actually go to the trouble of editing the ini files you can get the game to look like it's been made on the UT3 engine. It's a pity it looks so grubby, because it uses very detailed lighting, and the volumetric smoke means that smoke grenades are actually realistic and useful.

Middling: All the automatic guns need some skill to use. Unfortunately skill means you just need to learn to point at an opponents hips before you stand on the spam button. There also seem to be some serious bugs involving hit detection. Everyone who's played for a decent amount of time has seen two players unload clips into each other at point blank range with not one hit.

Middling: The damage system is a bit flakey. To make people feel god about joining the army your kevlar vest will absorbed three or four shots before you start to take damage. So you can have these odd situations where you are hitting someone and not killing them. This is perhaps related to the above bug.

Boring: Yeah it's a recruitment tool, we knew that in 2003...


Overall, it's a good team based shooter, but it's been let down by poor management. IT plays a bit like Raven Shield in Multiplayer, but the actual trigger bashing and combat lasts longer. The game takes a while to get used to and it's best to play something like Ranch in Activated objective until you start getting kills. I'd avoid the urban maps until you get the hang of the game as you can die very quickly if you don't know exactly what you're doing. Then you can be sitting for up to 10 mins in spectatormode watching someone camp, as is America's Army's want.

 

Im actually suprised someone reviewed the game...
If any thought was given they would know that not only was the game released early (Speculation from the tracker forums and devs suggest the army forced the timetable up) but the entire launch itself was a disaster. By disaster I mean the entire authentication servers (for accounts and training saves) as well as the deploy client were both overloaded by the drove of people who play game wanting to try 3.0. Even due to this the entire dev team was reported fired and a patch was made by some new randoms (just like in the updates circa 2.5)

The game itself just needs the bugs completely worked out of it before it deserves any kind of review.

 

I haven't play AA since one of the earlier versions, my main gripe being the plethora of haxors messing up the gameplay or random Admins banning you if you happen to have a good few rounds saying that you have to be cheating. I may take another look to see if that situation has changed.

That said I think any game that is free automatically deserves a score of 6. A score of 5 or less I take to mean don't even bother with but I mean, c'mon, a game that is free has to be at least worth a look.

 

WTF?

So it's OK to play soldiers in games, but when real soldiers get you to play soldiers in games it's 'despicable' and 'morally fishy because they are trying to turn you into a killer?

You conceded that the game stresses that a single bullet often kills, and that real armies don't have run & gun rambos, and that you can't simple run over a medpack to cure the 47 bullet wounds that you are carrying... I'd say AA3 deserved come credit.

It was a lazy review, presumably based on prejudiced views of both the military and this franchise. It probably isn't a great game, but I don't think the author tackled it with the right attitude.

 

I enjoyed AA2 a lot, but I found AA3 to be awful. It was far less accessible and felt clunky. I guess I'll be sticking with CSS and TF2.

 

I stopped reading after that. I mean really? Could we get a simi un-biased reviewer?

 

I am not a big fan of AA3, I much preferred 2, neither are great games, but 2 at least felt a bit more immersive as well as the fact I could actually use a SNIPER RIFLE instead of a shitass assault rifle with a scope.... 3 just feels janky compared to 2, and the launch was atrocious for a steam game.

 

It's not that he's biased, it's that he's a complete idiot.

How is this different in ANY way than CoD, Medal of Honor, Rainbow Six, or any other semi-realistic shooter?

Answer: IT'S NOT!

 

I dont agree with the review but then again we all have our own opinion. The games buggy as hell but more fun than most FPS, teamwork is the key foundation of AA3 and they have done a amazing job to force teamwork! Go rambo and ur as good as dead, if you have not played online with a server full of AA vets then you not going to have a clue as to how doggie these dog fights can get!

Just for some info, you dont get anything in the game that a real American army soldier would not get, do the training and use real weapons witch each have there own pros and cons! Another thing is that the main objective of AA3 is not to kill but to complete objs!!! 10 points for a kill, 120 - 240 for a obj! you even get ROE if you kill a downed enemy.... so how can this be a killing game, its based on MORALS and teamwork.....



Great game with limited support......who cares its free right???

 

+1

 

Hi all, ive been a bit-tech reader for years but never got round to signing up to the forums etc.

This review finally made me take that step lol.

I have never read such a shambles of a review on Bit-Tech before. I hope that he takes a good look at it and learns from his mistakes. How the hell is this game going to turn young Americans into killers , any less than the other games like COD4,GTA etc etc?????

Also , i wouldve waited down the line a bit until the game gets a few patches , yes it was released in a bad way but that was down to the US Army firing the devs (doh!).

One thing i do agree with is the graphics , it couldve been a bit more polished. I think the gameplay and teamwork is good fun tbh.

Im not going to call him an idiot because i dont think he is. I hope he takes what other posters have said on board for his next review.

AlexTia

 

i thought that opening bit was sarcastic....

Haven't played 3 yet, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say it suffers from the same things the previous games did: Sniper whoring and hackers.

 

Clearly there needs to be some sort of special font or smiley or something to indicate irony on the internets...