America’s Army: Rise of a Soldier is a lot more like an RPG than a FPS. This is both good and bad. The good part is that the RPG elements make the game more of an investment than a simple shooter. The bad part is that the FPS parts are seriously lacking and make for a pretty shoddy experience.
When you start out, you create your character who is a new recruit going through basic training in the Army. You can alter his portrait, home state, and nickname to give things a more personal appeal. After that, it’s off to training where you learn the ropes of everything in the game.
Every aspect of the game has its own type of training followed by a series of missions. You have to complete a certain number of missions in one section of the game before you can move on to the next, so the game has a kind of linear progression. You can, however, go back to any mission you have played and attempt to get a higher score which will yield more points to put towards your skills.
The skill system in the game is fairly simple. The better you do in each mission, the more points you get to upgrade your various skills. Some skills help you shoot better, others help your team out. This a nice system that provides incentive to do well in each mission, as well as adding a tiny bit of replay value to the game.
America’s Army was originally a recruiting tool for the U.S. Army to show kids what it was like to be in the service. Despite the obvious flaw that video games are the farthest things from reality, the game did rather well. America’s Army: Rise of a Soldier also has a veil of reality, but when you get right down to it, things are made for fun first, realism second.
Unfortunately they didn’t quite capitalize on either. You can bandage yourself and others in the field after grievous wounds, returning you to full health. Grenade launchers don’t do squat to the enemy, but hand grenades will hit you when you are behind cover. The game is constantly in limbo because of either bad design or bugs, and the overall experience is quite a frustrating one.
What gamers appreciate most about America’s Army is the Multiplayer aspect. In the Xbox version, you can go online and play with up to 15 other people. Your online presence is more than just how good your aim is; your exploits in single player affect what roles you can take in Multiplayer. While it’s not revolutionary and plays much better on PC, it helps a little to alleviate the pain caused by the rest of this console catastrophe.
