America's Army 3.0 Impressions - preview/review
(hx) 11:18 AM CET - Mar,27 2009
- Post a comment PC.IGN has posted GDC impressions
of America's
Army 3.0, an upcoming version of America's Army that will
completely revamp the game with all new maps, weapons and graphics.
Here's a taster:
The game looks incredible thanks to Unreal Engine 3, and many of the
animations of soldiers, such as the combat slides and dives when your
soldiers start taking fire or prone leaning and combat rolls look
extremely natural. The designers specifically focused on a number of
other movement facets as well, such as shifting between combat and
tactical stances when you're advancing and having your soldier flick
the safety as he starts to run to prevent rounds from being
accidentally fired. The designers also spent extra time making sure
that elements like bullet penetration, overpressure from grenades
thrown into closed spaces and approximating eye adjustment to light or
dark spaces was included to add to the realism of being in the field.
I jumped into a match on the Bridge map, which was ported over from the
second America's Army game. While I went through a quick tutorial with
the designers, I was also shown the medical system that players will
need to use to heal their teammates. If you take damage, which is
location specific, you have a chance of becoming incapacitated and
bleeding out. Fortunately, if you're dropped by an enemy, you have the
chance to direct them to your position, and they'll be able to
potentially heal your wounds. If it's a minor injury, they can slap a
bandage on you and get you back on your feet, but if it's a significant
wound, your teammate will have to take the information presented to
them and make the right decision about the medical treatment. If they
guess wrong, they could accidentally hurt you. Otherwise, they'll be
able to proceed to the next step of binding your injury and getting you
back into the fight.
This is an important factor to learn not only to help your teammates,
but also to incapacitate enemy soldiers. The Army doesn't try to kill
people it doesn't have to, and a soldier wouldn't go up to an injured
enemy and put another round in them on the ground, as players of other
multiplayer games would do. That would result in murder charges when
that soldier got back to base, and would be a clear violation of the
LDRSHIP standards. Instead, you attempt to treat the enemy's wounds,
zip tying them in the process so they are no longer a danger to
yourself or your squadmates. Doing so will not only remove that player
from the round, but will also black out their voice channel so they
can't tell their teammates where they are or what's happening to them,
so there's also a strategic purpose in humanely treating your
opponents.
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