America’s Army: Rise of a Soldier
Is it all it could be?
Tags: America's Army: Rise of a Soldier Categories: Reviews, Xbox Reviews
Posted by Mark "MadMup" Zwolanek on Feb 9th, 2006
| Title | Players | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| America's Army: Rise of a Soldier (title page) | 1 | ||
| Developer | Publisher | Genre | Online |
| Action | No | ||
America’s Army
You have to hand it to the Army. What better way to reach America’s youth and make the Army seem cool than by making a videogame? I can see the meeting now – “Those wacky kids are already playing games where they shoot each other, let’s put some uniforms on ‘em and teach ‘em some Army stuff along the way.” Pretty smart, really.
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The game starts out with the player setting up a character, even including hometown and nickname. (I chose “Letterman” hoping it would be humor-related. Turns out a “letterman” is also someone who’s good at sports. Huh.) This nickname is what your squadmates call you throughout the game, which was a pretty good way to personalize the game without having to have five million names on the disc.
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Players will start off in a Basic Training of sorts. While there are no pushups and situps, there is an obstacle course to familiarize players with the controls. The meat of the training, though, is to learn the different weapons and how to use them. To show mastery and open up the next areas, players must take a test with each weapon and meet a minimum score. From there, a path of missions based on that weapon and its use will open up. The grenadier path will have your character called upon to hit targets using the grenade launcher at crucial moments, whereas the sniper missions will have your character scouting the path ahead and taking out enemies from afar. Successfully completing missions will open up new missions.
One thing that America’s Army does well is simulate the feel of a firefight. – at least, how I would assume a firefight feels, anyway. The confusion, noise, smoke, and yelled orders can be disorienting at times, but it feels realistic. In fact, realism is this game’s main aim. Shoot a friendly target and you’re in big, big trouble. From the outset of training, recruits are told to “forget what you’ve heard about headshots, your main goal is to stop them, so aim for the body, the largest part.” This is no Unreal Tournament.
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America’s Army is primarily a first-person shooter, but it also RPG elements. Experience points are given depending on how well the mission went. Those points can be distributed among several different areas like bravery, leadership, first aid, and marksmanship. More points in a particular area mean the character is better at doing something, whether inspiring his squadmates to continue in the face of difficulty or being faster and better at patching up a wounded soldier.
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Missions can be replayed over and over to try earn more experience which is a good thing, but also reveals the game’s biggest weakness. Every time a level is played, it unfolds the exact same way. The enemy fighters will emerge from the same clump of trees at the same time, those pickup trucks loaded with explosives will come from the same direction at the same lull in the action, and so forth. For a game that tries so very hard to give a sense of realism, the mistake of linear gameplay is huge. More focus on the randomness of fighting and changing plans to fit the situation would have elevated this game to a higher level.
Online play is included and is, for the most part, a different animal than you’ll find with most other FPS shooters. Since squads are teamed up to accomplish goals, it seems more…polite. There’s more emphasis on teamwork and less on trashtalking. It’s a welcome break, frankly.
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Overall, a decent game, but not a great game. The graphics are fine, but not outstanding. At times the sand and the fatigues get a bit muddy, but it isn’t a problem most of the time. The game is very similar to the newly-recruited privates it portrays: it gets the job done but it isn’t flashy.
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
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+ Overall sense of realism + Team-structured online play + An interesting learning tool about aspects of Army life |
7.0 |
| What Doesn't | |
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- Way too linear - Computer-controlled squadmates would have a difficult time in a barn-shooting contest - Isn't free like the PC verion was |
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| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| If you're anti-wasteful government spending, you MUST buy this game so as to not waste the money that went into its creation. Otherwise if you're into military shooters, give it a try. | |
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Tags: America's Army: Rise of a Soldier
Posted by Mark "MadMup" Zwolanek on Feb 9th, 2006 and is filed under Reviews, Xbox Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
