GDC 09: America’s Army 3 Impressions

At 4:30 PM I walked into the W hotel to get a look at America’s Army 3, the newest title for the America’s Army series. I’ll be honest, it’s not a series I had much interest in; but now I cannot wait for it to be released. I played the original America’s Army a little a long time ago, when my PC setup was more capable of processing graphical content and it was interesting. Now with the third title in the series, it looks like things have changed a lot.

Designer Michael Aubuchon walked me through many of the changes in AA3. He told me that they took a lot of feedback from the community and stat tracking and leveling were the first additions and tweaks they worked on. The depth of the stat tracking and achievements are staggering. One example is the game will track the accuracy you have with any weapon in the game, down to shots fired.

I played a two on two game with some of the America’s Army staff and playing through this build of the game showed a lot of potential for this next addition to the series. AA3 is using the Unreal 3 engine and it looks polished. My only real complaint is the facial features on the characters seem a little last generation. There are a good amount of options for the face, but they don’t look as realistic as the rest of the game.

Aubuchon showed me the ballistics system for the weapons, and the environment reactions they have. Bullets react to the environment as they would realistically. They also showed me what they called “cover and concealment.” Cover was explained as protection, while concealment is simply your opponent can’t see you. They proved this by shooting through a flimsy wall of a house. With the ballistics tracking on, I saw the bullets reacted to each wall it penetrated, changing the direction of the bullet’s trajectory.

The other impressive technical part of the game is the sound. The sound effects are stellar. There is a proximity sound of the bullets dependent on how close the round comes to you. When I was playing with the AA team, it became much more apparent of how important the sound is in the game.

America’s Army 3 is a game that shouldn’t be missed, especially since it’s a free download, and soon to be on Steam. With all the additions and tweaks that are being applied to the title, the improvements to this game will make it even more popular.