America's Army 3 Review [PC]

The release of America’s Army 3 did not go exactly as planned. It’s generally not a good sign when a development team is relieved of its command, as happened to the civilian developers of AA3 the day after it launched. The result, unsurprisingly, was a big old mess. The servers were woefully unprepared for the demand and many gamers were completely unable to register/sign in for the game, us included. Once we did get in, we found that the server overload resulted in all kinds of authentication issues with the training sections. In practice, this meant that we could complete a training section only for the game to tell us we hadn’t a few minutes later. Which, I’m sure you can agree, is not a fun process. However, the new dev team made contact with the community claiming a hotfix was on the way and so we decided to hold off on the review until after the game had been patched. The good news is that, post-patch, the game is better. The bad news is that it’s not by much.

For those unfamiliar with the franchise, the central premise of America’s Army is realism. You must complete authentic US Army training procedures before taking your newly-acquired skills online. At least, that used to be the case. Now, presumably in a concession to those with a low threshold for exhaustive training sections, you can jump straight online and into the action. I wouldn’t advise it, but you can. However tedious some of the training may be, it does come in handy on the battlefield. If you don’t know how to equip your grenade launcher or heal a wounded teammate, you’re not going to be much cop in the heat of battle and so it definitely pays to complete the training. At the beginning you can only partake in a few basic and MOS (Military Occupational Specialties) training sections, with more unlocked as you score points online. The developer has even tried to incentivize the training by throwing some equipment unlocks your way once you complete certain tutorials. For example, one tutorial will provide you with a red dot sight for your assault rifle, which proves pretty useful when you venture online.

The online game will probably not endear itself to fans of action shooters like Battlefield or Call of Duty, due to its focus on realism. You won’t be calling in an airstrike after five kills in AA, instead you’ll be moving tactically with your squadmates to your assigned objective, desperately trying to avoid getting dead on the way. Run straight down one of the main streets in a level like Alley and you’ll last about as long as Nick Griffin in Finsbury Park Mosque. You need to move carefully in AA, staying close to cover and, crucially, your squadmates.

Teamwork is the key to success in the game and, all credit to the developer, America’s Army encourages co-operative play better than most online shooters on the market. Firstly, this is a round-based game with no respawning, which immediately forces you into a more thoughtful approach to the game.