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There's an AA2?

YEs there was. It was when they dropped Mac support.

Pshaw! They are using iPod Touches for data input and such nowdays.

Is America's Army fun?

Also is it available to people who are not, in fact, American?

I played the first bits of it in the training. Couldn't figure out the controls for the parachute jumping and failed over and over so I quit and went back to something much more fun...Ghost Recon!

Well its nothing more than a glamorized recruiting tool afterall. I remember at my college back when it was big, the US army had an entire mobile arcade with it on campus for the club rush day. Was a pretty big showing they had that year, I don't remember seeing it as big after that. Heck, this year they weren't even there, not even a tiny table with pamphlets.

In a way Ghost Recon kinda became the stand in A.A. till now. If you remember how much buzz they were putting in it around the new armor suits and tactical weaponry with Warfighter. Like they were trying to show off the future US toys to get kids excited. Then you look at the story/etc...going from a nameless group called the Ghosts where to focus was on the unit, allowing you to play as any of the squad members, to now the clean cut soldier "Mitchell" and focusing on the "Army of One". A name that goes hand in hand with US war films/etc btw. Makes me wish I hadn't told those recruiters guys at the club event that I didn't play A.A. but Ghost Recon. Maybe word that Recon was better reached the brass...its a conspiracy man!!

Course now with CoD4 dethroning the modern warfare title from Recon and folks moving on...here we come back with A.A.

Btw, it arrived in the last few days. It's out.

sturner wrote:

Some1 wrote:

Is America's Army fun?

Also is it available to people who are not, in fact, American?

The emphasis was always on realism. There is no respawn in a AA Game. Once you are killed, you wait until the next round.

Sure you can play A.A. We just have to kill you afterwards.

It's a game, and it is open to all.

Just note that you must complete training in order to play. That training is centered around the skills needed to game as well as teach you basic real life combat skills.

And Medical skills!

Mr. Happypants wrote:

I had some down time yesterday so I loaded it, after several attempts getting the account auth'd I finally got into Training. I remember this from the first one, it's pretty un-exciting but necessary and I'd gladly wade through it all. If the damned thing didn't keep hanging, crashing & generally being fubar! Ugh.

Would it really have been that difficult to add loading bars, so you at least know close it is to oh - being loaded?  I'll try a few more times, see if it behaves any better otherwise it's 3.5GB of drive space freed up!

America's Army 3 hotfix patch planned

A hotfix patch is in the works for America's Army 3 that's designed to address some of the issues gamers are most commonly encountering. According to a post on the game's forums, the issues are largely network-related. The post reads: "The vast majority of issues you may have experienced has been a result of the huge demand on our network which has unfortunately impacted training qualification and game server performance."

According to the post, the hotfix will be released shortly "so that you can enjoy the game over the weekend. Once the patch is available, your AA3 game will be automatically updated through Steam or the Deploy Client."

In other AA3 news, the game's original developers were laid off abruptly yesterday, with dev work now being handled in Alabama. Voodoo Extreme managed to copy an AA3 forum post from one of the laid off dev workers before it was deleted. Some excerpts:

I would like you to imagine trying to build a game with an impossible deadline, steadily declining workforce (via firings), A hiring freeze, constantly being fed misinformation, having the "higher ups" completely ignore your weekly plea for either A) more time, or B) more manpower, working a ton of unpaid overtime, pouring your heart and soul into a misadventure only to have the uniformed community scoff at you for uncontrollable variables..... RIGHT when you've just lost your job.

There are problems with the release beyond the devs control. In fact, the bureaucracy is so convoluted that you can't even begin to imagine the breadth and scope of B.S. the devs had to deal with daily. in short, imagine being the subcontractor of a subcontractor of a contractor to the government. Sure Millions of dollars may have been poured into this project, but how much do you think made it to the actual DEV team, the people MAKING the game, after it was filtered by the bureaucracy?

There are problems with the release beyond the devs control. In fact, the bureaucracy is so convoluted [..]

http://www.firingsquad.com/news/newsart … chid=21784

Mr. Happypants wrote:

I had some down time yesterday so I loaded it, after several attempts getting the account auth'd I finally got into Training. I remember this from the first one, it's pretty un-exciting but necessary and I'd gladly wade through it all. If the damned thing didn't keep hanging, crashing & generally being fubar! Ugh.

You're probably less frustrated with all the crashes than you would be if they made training more realistic: "everyone load up gear and weapons we're going to the range; no wait, not ready, take it all down its class time; done? good, put things back together because the range is back on."

Go Army!

jerwin wrote:

Some1 wrote:

Is America's Army fun?

Also is it available to people who are not, in fact, American?

I couldn't get past the Leavenworth scenario.

Then try Twelveworth, or 5 1/2 in Woolworth's. [/Duck Soup]

The release of America’s Army 3 did not go exactly as planned. It’s generally not a good sign when a development team is relieved of its command, as happened to the civilian developers of AA3 the day after it launched. The result, unsurprisingly, was a big old mess. The servers were woefully unprepared for the demand and many gamers were completely unable to register/sign in for the game, us included. Once we did get in, we found that the server overload resulted in all kinds of authentication issues with the training sections. In practice, this meant that we could complete a training section only for the game to tell us we hadn’t a few minutes later. Which, I’m sure you can agree, is not a fun process. However, the new dev team made contact with the community claiming a hotfix was on the way and so we decided to hold off on the review until after the game had been patched. The good news is that, post-patch, the game is better. The bad news is that it’s not by much.

For those unfamiliar with the franchise, the central premise of America’s Army is realism. You must complete authentic US Army training procedures before taking your newly-acquired skills online. At least, that used to be the case. Now, presumably in a concession to those with a low threshold for exhaustive training sections, you can jump straight online and into the action. I wouldn’t advise it, but you can. However tedious some of the training may be, it does come in handy on the battlefield. If you don’t know how to equip your grenade launcher or heal a wounded teammate, you’re not going to be much cop in the heat of battle and so it definitely pays to complete the training. At the beginning you can only partake in a few basic and MOS (Military Occupational Specialties) training sections, with more unlocked as you score points online. The developer has even tried to incentivize the training by throwing some equipment unlocks your way once you complete certain tutorials. For example, one tutorial will provide you with a red dot sight for your assault rifle, which proves pretty useful when you venture online.

The online game will probably not endear itself to fans of action shooters like Battlefield or Call of Duty, due to its focus on realism. You won’t be calling in an airstrike after five kills in AA, instead you’ll be moving tactically with your squadmates to your assigned objective, desperately trying to avoid getting dead on the way. Run straight down one of the main streets in a level like Alley and you’ll last about as long as Nick Griffin in Finsbury Park Mosque. You need to move carefully in AA, staying close to cover and, crucially, your squadmates.

Teamwork is the key to success in the game and, all credit to the developer, America’s Army encourages co-operative play better than most online shooters on the market. Firstly, this is a round-based game with no respawning, which immediately forces you into a more thoughtful approach to the game.

-> p.2

So, just the game for Hudson. Not.

America's Army 3 [PC]