America's Army is one of those shooters that has earned a reputation for being a competent franchise that's solid, but without flash. Going into my preview of America's Army 3, I wasn't entirely sure what to expect, except perhaps some updated graphics and maybe some new gameplay maps and weapons. However, as soon as I sat down with senior executive producer Marsha Berry, texture artist Brandon Foster, and designer Michael Aubuchon (pictured above), I knew I going to see a lot more. After having sat through the hour-long demo, I can honestly say that I expect that this new shooter is definitely going to win over a lot of new fans.
While the graphics were a bit rough due to the early-beta nature of the game I was seeing, it didn't look bad at all (probably thanks to the game's use of the Unreal 3 Engine). In fact, while the character models seemed a bit basic, I was particularly impressed with their body language and movement. A small but really fun feature was the ability to change body positions while the character is running: in the middle of a sprint, players can press the crouch or prone button and their character will slide into a croud or dive to a prone position. It was a small thing, but it was also one that was fun to play around with. Plus, it just looked really cool.
The developers of the game actually listened to a lot of feedback about the previous two America's Army games and wound up implementing a lot of features that were asked for. This was readily apparent in the game's inclusion of detailed statistics and achievements, shown to me in a particularly complicated-looking UI window.
Achievements are earned in a number of ways: you can undergo training exercises/missions, which result in skill points and items being unlocked for your soldiers. As you increase your experience, you can create a more specialized soldier character over time. As opposed to previous entries in the series, you will have more statistics to level up this time. This time, all of the seven core values of the army will be featured: Loyalty, Duty, Respect, Selfless Service, Honor, Integrity, and Personal Courage (LDRSHIP). Each of these attributes will be affected by in-game behavior; one example is that if you stick around to the end of a hopeless battle for your team, you'll be rewarded with points in Loyalty and Selfless Service.
One of the game's other interesting aspects was the fact that when a player gets injured in an extremity, their performance can be affected. If you get shot in the arm, your accuracy can go down, a shot to the leg will reduce your movement speed, and head shots (unsurprisingly) result in your immediate death. The final thing that really stood out was the game's use of physics: bullets can ricochet off of and penetrate through different materials. During the demo, tracers would appear highlighting a bullet's path, and it was really quite fascinating to check out how their trajectory wound up changing when they hit different objects.
Finally—a feature that I hadn't seen before in a shooter—was the ability actually get 15-30 seconds or so to plan out tactics in advance. Before each mission, players get to look at a top-down map of the area and mark out paths to take, while fireteam captains will actually be able to choose where they want to spawn based on a set of pre-determined points.
As Opposed to America's Army 2, the game will feature an enemy army equal to the United States in terms of technology and firepower. Players will face off against the fictional country of Czervnia. The way Czervnia's presence will work on the multiplayer maps is that the game will utilize a swapping paradigm that has everyone playing as the Army, but players on opposite sides will see each other as Czervnian troops. However, there won't be a single-player campaign aside from the game's training missions; the majority of the game will be multiplayer matches, just like last time.
Of course, I got to spend the last fifteen minutes or so of my preview actually playing the game, and I had a blast preventing my opponents from crossing a bridge in a bombed-out city. That said, the game didn't seem to do anything groundbreaking or new, but the fact that there were all these interesting new features built into what's already a solid shooter made it feel much more fun than many other games in the genre. America's Army 3 is due out sometime in 2009, with an expansion giving players the opportunity to play as medics due out soon after.
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