America's Army for PC: Video Game Review

America's Army is a fairly well known online First Person Shooter (FPS) which has been around for quite a long time. America's Army 1.0 or "Recon" was released July 4th 2002, making this the 5th year aniversary of the game. In these 5 years there have been many major updates to the game, and 1 full makeover. The graphics of the current version America's Army 2.8.1 "SMU GH Map Pack" are top of the line graphics. America's Army still runs on the Unreal engine as it always has, making it a very realistic game.

Before being able to play online each player must complete training consisting of Rifle training, as well as an obstacle course. Because the game does run high graphics a decent PC is required to play without lag, but it is well worth it. The number one attraction to America's Army is the fact that it is free. The game can be downloaded from the site "www.americasarmy.com" because it is generally reguarded as a "recruiting tool" for the US Army.

Of course a free game comes with its draw backs as well. Hackers (cheaters) are much more common in America's Army because they don't have the risk of getting their CD key banned. America's Army does run PunkBuster which assigns unique identifiers to each player, but it is free to get a new one, unlike in most pay games. Therefore the America's Army community has stepped up and made multiple Anti-Cheat organizations, which focus on the elimination and catching of cheaters and hackers. These organizations write PunkBuster configs written specifically to scan, and catch cheaters before they can do anything in a server. These organizations also publish ban lists daily which, when a server uses them, prevents those hackers which have already been caught from playing. There are three major Anti-Cheating organizations, they are Airdale Ops Network (AON), Anti Cheat Inc. (ACI) and America's Army Server Admins (AASA), all three are committed to stopping hackers and promoting a more realistic and fun experience for the America's Army players all throughout the world! Although there are quite a few hackers in the game there are not enough to damper the gameplay.

Along with many players comes many competitive leagues. HTGN, CAL and TWL are some of the many leagues teams can participate in, and many leagues give away large prizes to the winners. Overall America's Army is a great game, and has been evolving ever since its first release over 5 years ago, and it is likely that it will continue to evolve through its next releases!