This is my second reflection on my game play time with America's Army. I sat down to play, reluctantly, at 7:53am. I said I would give it two hours. I must complete the shoot house to graduate from BCT (Basic Combat Training). I need 10,000 points to get out. I tried repeatedly.
8,100
6,700
7,600
5,600 (Will I ever get out of here? I can't tell the good guys from the bad guys!)
7,100
8,200
10,500 (Finally!)
So now I can go on to additional training. But wait! The menu says they are all still unavailable to me! Turns out my results from the shoot house were not recorded. Here we go again....
7,900
7,000
4,800 (Oh dear God!)
10,400 (Oh thank you God!)
Somewhere in these latter attempts I realized that I am supposed to press "F" after viewing my results in order to Save the results or to Retry the game. I found this out by mistake -- the "F" is the general purpose "Use" key and is used to skip instructions, pick up your gun, open doors, and apparently, open menus. Knowing this in advance would have saved me a lot of time which was spent reloading the game.
This sucks.
My son tells me it's my own fault for being too cheap to buy a "real" game. I should have sent the kid to military school.
But at least I am out of BCT. On to Airborne training. First stop is the Tower Jump. I completed this on my first try. Not sure how.
Now I need five (oh no!) live jumps. After almost an hour of trying, I have yet to complete one of them successfully. I have never been told what I am doing wrong, only that each jump is "totally unsat". I cannot seem to land in the circle. The "A" key is supposed to steer left, but doesn't appear to be doing so.
I guess that's my criticism with this game (I don't know if it applies to other games as well): I don't really know what I am doing right and what I am doing wrong. And what should I do to improve. Is it really appropriate to fail a task without knowing why, or to complete a task without knowing how? That certainly wouldn't fly in education.
I will continue to maintain a semi-open mind about this...but only for two hours per week.
I think you have a great game for critique. It sounds like the game is doing a lot wrong...but don't let it make you too crazy. It might be interesting at some point to switch to a different game, perhaps another military game...if you want a suggestion, I'll ask around and find a really good one, you might even be able to use a demo. Might make for some really interesting comparisons.
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