July 4th, 2009

America’s Army 3, a Game to Play in Teamwork

On the July 4 of the 2002 was the date when America’s Army has been first released, and with the major new revision called America’s Army 3 it proved to reveal a reliable, playable state of the team-based game. Your role is that of an American soldier with optional boot camp missions serving as instruction and primer to Army life, these missions enabling you to unlock equipment such as special sights and better gear. The details are incredibly well rendered touching the reality in a perfect note, while displaying the latest uniforms and gear of a real army.

The game has five maps, and some of them are simply updated versions such as Bridge and Pipeline. On the maps there are alleys with three lines to delimitate north/south and close quarters, ranches seen as rural levels to delimitate fortified farmhouse that has its basement as a bunker. Each map provides multiple effective game modes, including “take and hold” mode for gaining control over several points of the map, “secure and extract” for capturing the flag, “activated objective” for defending certain points at no matter costs. Many of the modes do not require killing of the enemy in order to offer the success, this is not so important, but the mission itself seems to be the key to success.

The game provides six rounds in a match, rounds lasting about four to five minutes, teams being able to switch positions and tasks after the third round, this thing giving them the opportunity to make it even. Working in team is the aspect that is emphasized by America’s Army 3, where seizing an objective through your mission will give your team four points, compared to one point that you might get at an individual shot down enemy. Teamwork is highly rated as the game offers a built-in VOIP support that enables communicating between each other.

The gameplay involves a lot of tactical moves that need to be cautiously made from cover to cover, from crouching to laying down to the best position for firing or using the grenades. The weapon graphics presents a well rendered model accurate to those of M-16s. The sounds represent exactly the actions that you as a soldier are performing, including even the way you breathe when you pull the trigger. The game doesn’t offer options to regenerate health, but has the feature of a medical choice rendered by the medical kits each soldier carries upon himself. Whenever you are hit laying down on the battlefield another soldier can come to resuscitate you, here you can use the medical training that you had in boot camp, or you can as well bandage your wounds I order to stop bleeding.

America’s Army 3 presents a more mature player base with a touch toward reality and a tactic that few of the other console shooters display. The game being offered free to the players contains the satisfaction of a job well done in a teamwork effort.