America's Army 3 out on June 17!

Hello all,

For those who don't know America's Army, it's a medium-paced realistic FPS developed by the US army. It is quite realistic and although teamwork is not enforced (you can go Rambo if you want), it is strongly encouraged both with point rewards and will considerably higher chances of success.

The things I like about AA are that you usually die on your first or second shot, weapons behave quite realistically and the cooperative missions (humans vs. AI at odds of somewhere between 5 and 10 to 1) are extremely well done. Oh, and very importantly, it is FREE. The catch is that AA is a recruitment tool for the US army.

EDIT -- The "recruitment tool" remark shouldn't keep you from playing, it simply means that the game has links to US Army websites. No personal data is sent to the US Army when you register or play.

Current version of AA is 2.8, and the new version 3.0 is coming out on June 17. You can check a video teaser here.

If you never played AA and want to have a go at the current version, which is a great game, go to the AA login page. Just create an account, download the game (again, it's completely free), and jump right into the action (well, you have to complete basic training first...).

 

I am looking forward to 3.0 too! I always like playing AA, but it is definitely a game where you need friends or a team to play with to get the full effect.
I have had an account for several years and I THINK I registered it for the upgrade properly, but not sure if I just signed up a brand new account or not!

 

Wow, so fast? Thats pretty tight.

 

Sweet! Been playing since 1.6, mostly on and off...will have to get back into it.

 

Cool, this is good news indeed.

 

How does this compare to Call of Duty? better multi-player, more realistic etc?
At the moment the only FPS I play are COD 4 and Team Fortress 2, I'm not sure if I should get into this..
Also there is no way I am joining the army.

 

It is much more realistic. More like CS in the sense that you only respawn at the end of every round. Don't worry about it being a recruitment tool; it is just one in the sense that it is a way to promote the Army and its values, there won't be a recruiter knocking on your door.

 

I am one of the big fans of AA, I even joined one of the good clans but than i abandoned it because of low player count and all noobs tking. But now I'm ready to play AA 3 again. I already reserved my login name

But I was thinking about the size of the game. More than 6GB?

 

I hope it's not that big, but I wouldn't be surprised. 2.8 was already 3 GB. I just hope they offer direct downloads this time and not through that molasses client they are now using.

 

Amen! It is infuriatingly slow!!
The game is more like CS, but without quite so many ***hats!
Oh and it really isn't much of a recruitment tool. It is not like you will be playing it one day and suddenly say to yourself, "gee, I should really join up!". lol.

 

It will be released on steam

 

There's no way I am installing THAT on my system just to get a free game faster.

I am really sorry I mentioned the "recruitment tool" I have edited the first post.

 

lol, no worries HerrKaputt, you don't have to edit anything, you are actually correct. It is a "recruitment tool", but just not necessarily how some folks interpret it. Delta CT explained it well though. I was just trying to alleviate the concerns of some of the more excitable gamers.

I don't mind Steam for some games, but I do prefer to have most of my games as standalone instead of stuck in/to Steam.

 

AA had incredible gameplay back in the day. I really spent a ton of time with the game.


Americas Army is neither as arcadey as COD, or CS, but neither is it as realistic as Ghost Recon or SWAT.

The game, requires teamwork, or you will die(and not respawn until the end of the match). It's not a run and gun game either. Some people call it a camper game, as you have to take cover. 2-3 shots and your dead. You have to use the best of smoke grenades and normal grenades. and you have to advance slowely. It's an intense game.


This is not just a small update. this actually updates to the game to Unreal Engine 3 which is amazing.I am looking forward to trying it.

I hope they have implanted a 3d person view, and that you can customize the look of your soldier. It needs that.

 

It can be an incredible experience if you have the proper teamwork. If not, it can easily turn into the most frustrating game ever, because of the long time for each round (default 10 mins but some 3rd party servers lower it).

Good to hear there is an alternative to the Deploy Client...I haven't had any issues with Steam so far, fingers crossed.

 

Hmm, I might have to start playing AA again.

 

Update: today is the day! I don't think it has been released yet, but if you don't have/want Steam you can wait for the Deploy Client version which is just a fancy installer.

Hooah!

 

i personally prefer steam...

steam is a game downloading / launching client, and AA3 non-steam will come with one also. the steam platform has been around for a long time, is successful, and its stable. the AA3 download / launch client may or may not be buggy. who knows.

pick your poison i guess. i like steam better.

PLUS:

steam lets you pre-load games before they are released, including americas army. i preloaded the game a few days ago. the second it is released, i will be able to play, and i won't have to deal with the AA servers handling a massive number of downloads all at once... it will likely be a PITA to download the first 24 hours or so.

 

Steam collects and sends back lots of information about your computer and the usage you make of it. I am against that by principle.

Plus, Steam requires you to be online.

It's true that without Steam you cannot pre-load the game, but I won't have time to play it until the weekend anyway.

 

The only information STEAM collects about your computer is hardware and very little software information to help better support games released on STEAM in the future, not to mention it provides interesting insight into specs of steam gamers worldwide.

STEAM & Valve = awesome (except L4D2).

 

I agree, and every time they collect information they send out a survey that you can easily refuse...

I also love them, except L4D2 also lol.

But I dont want to keep all of my games on steam because they *COULD (if they wanted to) close your account and you wouldnt be able to play them at all anymore...

 

To be honest, I prefer hard copy's of my games as well, but nothing beats the integration of the STEAM community into games on STEAM.

You can chat, browse the web, and join friends games without ever exiting the game.

 

you do not need to be online to play steam games.

you will need to be online to save your progress in training / play the main game in AA3, whether using steam or not

 

i have it but cant play.
steam says servers are to busy to decrypt.
ne1 else have this problem?

 

Ditto. Been trying for two hours.

 

I got through by changing my download settings to Africa and Cambodia, Try that!

 

mine decrypted a few hours ago (right when it launched) and was ready to play almost instantly... i feel like the "encryption" was basically nothing...

just got home from work and some errands, i'll let yall know how it goes!

 

hmm... preloaded a week ago
just finished decrypting now, and for some reason it started updating again... its at 60% now and moving at a snails pace...

 

I decrypted it and downloaded the patch or whatever it was, but I can't make an amount and it freezes a ton. I'm just gonna leave it alone for a while and hope it gets fixed.

 

I had AA3 preloaded. I started up steam, and it still says a preloaded copy is locked on my machine. Do I have to do something special?

 

Thanks, it worked, although after it decrypted it started downloading whatever the heck it needed to. Took long and eventually froze steam so I restarted and put the server back to a US one.

 

Im letting mine update. yay for having to wait for a week and then another 2 hours and 9 minutes for it to update when its launched!

 

Mine won't even UPDATE! It just says it's locked in pre-load state, unreleased. If it doesn't do anything soon, I'm gonna dump files and have it reload.

 

wow ive got a problem with mine now. It finished updating and everything, 100% ready, but when i click on launch game... nothing happens!?

edit: well i fixed the problem. I added steam.exe to the list where vista doesnt stop applications that use too much memory on start up.

I played for like 1/2 an hour. And omg this game is so bugged, i dont think they even playtested it once at all. I did 2 of the basic training missions, and when it starts the third, it just throws me out and goes back to the main menu, without having saved and of ther previous missions that i have done. When i try to join a multiplayer game, it just loads... then throws me back to the main menu again.

edit: well ive able to play a multiplayer game for 5 mins, after that it just throws me back out to the main menu. And i think it happens to everyone else also, they also said that the training doesnt work. So it must be to do with the servers and stuff.

I am dissapoint.

 

I pre-loaded a few days ago. Then I just finished validated today...and now I am waiting to pre-load some more. -_-

Anyways, I hope this game is fun. Does anyone have any other comments on this game after trying it?
Tim

 

The forums speak for themselves, although the american military probably took them down since i cant access them.

The whole dev team has been fired after one day. Major authentication server issues, and major bugs everywhere.

It improved when i played this morning, i was actually able to do the training :O

 

As the guy above me already mentioned the game was a big fail on the developers side and US Army. The America's Army studio has been closed down and the staff that directly worked on the game fired. The game has a lot of serious issues and almost unplayable. I managed to finish the training, but I had to go through each at least 4 times, because even though I got expert qualification every single time the game would still say I failed, that is until they fixed the issue. Regardless of that the multiplayer is so unstable that you either can't join a server or the server crashes.

 

It sucks they were fired, the game was decent. I guess with all the taxes the military would have enough money to pay for the developers.

 

So who's supporting it now? Anyone who knows what they're doing?

 

The update that was released helped some (my game will actually launch now) but still tons of problems. This game is going to take a while before it is ready to play

 

Is it possible to still play the older version of AA??

 

I am really disappointed in this game as well. I tried playing it, but it just has too many problems. I guess I will just stick with CS:S for now. Hopefully they will update AA3 to fix some of the major issues.
Tim

 

I am also very disapointed in this game.
I havent gone very far in it but it is so strife with problems that really annoy so I cant enjoy it.
IE. In the first training, I pressed Esc to change the mouse sensitivity (as you do) and there was no way to resume the game... I have to quit that exercse and reload...

 

Yeah. the menus are laughably buggy. the rest of the game is approximately as buggy.

and the training comes pre-completed for you now, so everyone can just right into the fray (bad thing for AA)

and there are serious issues with the moving mechanic, and leaning... firing is OK afaik.

 

I'm not going to touch it for a couple weeks.


I hope that they can fix it...

 

I uninstalled it and I plan on giving it several months. I'll pick it up again around november.

 

Ok, it obviously seem like the answer is "no" but it this game WORTH the download?

 

it's working a lot better for me now, no more problems with the authentication servers anymore
havent spent a great deal of time with it though, so i can't say anything for sure
turns out my fps problem was due to my CPU throttling

if your ISP doesn't have anything bandwidth caps, i don't see how it could hurt to download the game considering it's free

 

Thanks for the answer

Does the have xbox 360 controller support?

I find it interesting what you said i though someone said up here that the whole crew that made the game was fired

LUCKILY i dont have any bandwith cap anymore, thank god.

 

Has anyone looked in on this game lately? Just curious to see if they have ironed out any of the "kinks"?