I've always wondered about America's Army, but as it's not available anywhere on DVD and knew it was a big download, I just never got round to getting it. Until now.

After two sessions downloading it, as it's well over 4Gb, it was finally downloaded and ready to run. I had high hopes for this game, being the official game of the U.S. Army, but apart from some of the training and educational aids, I was actually quite disappointed.

My first mishap was that with AA2, it is said that you do your training offline, then proceed through online missions. With AA3, you have to train online and then continue online. You can do the training offline, but you will always fail regardless of how well you did in fact do - as the game has to be able to connect to the AA3 server to calculate your score.

I believe that it was a big mistake using the Unreal 3 engine on a game such as AA3. This is an eye-candy action FPS engine at best. It does not bode well with a 'realistic' real-world-based tactical infantry simulation. Also, as with most games that put too much emphasis on realism, it becomes less than realistic. In training for example, you have to go prone and then do a roll under a raised log. If you don't lay just right and face just the right way, you'll roll but won't go under. The questionable control scheme can actually make what would be really simple tasks in real-life, very tricky.

Graphically, the scenery is nice and overall the game looks quite good. Close-up however, it's not great - for what you might expect from an Unreal 3 engine game. The weapon models are good but nothing spectacular, and people look adequate but not what you'd expect. Some animation errors on faces, where the mouth blends in with the nose are laughable.

I completed my training and wanted to move on to the more advanced training, which I did in one area. However, to unlock more training you have to go online and gain points in order to do so. There are many active servers, but for a complete noobie like me, where you get thrown in at the deep end online in 'real' missions full of experienced players - you don't have a hope in hell's chance of getting anywhere. Even being an experienced FPS player doesn't really give you an advantage here, as as I said before - even simple tasks are made harder by questionable player movement, as well as animation and clipping issues.

I thought the aim of the game, pardon the pun, was to be realistic? Well if potential soldiers play this game and see an enemy take 3x three-round bursts of an M16 in the torso area and still manage to kill the player - how long do you think it will take to empty the recruitment office?

You only get five different mission areas, but as each has three mission types, is seen as having 15 missions available. The maps are good, but not that big and I would much rather have seen the CloakNT or Source engine used for the ability of large areas with detail, while still feeling much more immersive and forgiving on PC spec needed.

Overall, I loved the training and educational aids, but the online game is pretty repetitive and not for newcomers. Not really worth a nearly 5Gb download, with little replay value unless you don't easily get bored with few maps and always getting killed. Sure, you can play the game with realistic elements, but as it is a game those aren't the be-all and end-all to win battles. Experienced players will always know level flaws and ways to exploit game bugs. My biggest grievance most certainly being the choice of game engine used.

This game was one of the greatest, most realistic tactical shooters back in the day... when they tried adding vehicles and co-op missions it went to hell...all of it. IMO

Unfortunately I never got to see the older version of it. If there wasn't co-op play before, was there only training available?

no...all force on force... you always played as the Americans and the enemy was the rags... great tactics, suppression, objectives, and fireteam layouts.

Yeah, definately better back then, crap now.

America's Army died with the 2.6 patch, before that it was probably my favorite team based shooter ever.

I gave AA3 a shot and while it is good for a free game it's still nothing like it was when I really liked it.

As I haven't seen AA2.x in action, can you give me a few key features that made it better for you over AA3?

Faster pace and less "random cone" for the gun fire is the easiest way to sum it up. There were a lot of small changes that caused the former and I guess the latter is one of those but they completely changed the way the game played with that patch and then just made it subsequently worse with the next 2. I slowed down playing it a lot after 2.6 and by 2.8 I pretty much hated the game.

You are kidding, right? The game play was no different from CSS or DOD:S or COD/Mw2 in that all you did was spray and pray. Even the realism community gave up on it, primarily because they could not mod the game to fix the issues that prevented you from experiencing tactical immersion.

No I'm not kidding... don't need to show me a video of 2.8.5... I've already said anything after 1.8 sucked, IMO... I was in for 10 plus years and to me AA1.0 to 1.8 was the best most realistic first person shooter EVER.

IMO