America’s Army: Operations (PC) – published by US Army
Sniper, Paratrooper and Ranger packs
The Sniper, Paratrooper and Ranger Packs add new weapons and maps to the game, and fix the interface and some of the more annoying bugs, but it’s still more of the same. This game will keep you interested for a while, after all, it is more real-to-life than a lot of the other FPS games available, and it is rather kitschy and fun pretending to be a soldier in the US Armed Forces, but you’ll be back to playing Counterstrike in next to no time.
I was hoping the sniper pack would add a few more maps, but all it does it allow you to use the sniper rifle in some of the existing maps, and there’s only one sniper per team per map allowed. Depending on how good you are at using the rifle ultimately helps your team, but I really don’t think it adds any other playability to the game. It’s easy enough to get killed in this game, so it really doesn’t matter if it’s a sniper bullet to the head or friendly fire, once you’re dead you have to wait around for the end of the match.
The paratrooper patch allows you to parachute into a couple of new maps, and it is fun trying to drop as close to the objective as possible without getting shot or landing face first, but once you’ve landed it’s much of a sameness. The ranger pack just adds a few more maps as well, and while they’re incredibly detailed, again they don’t really add that much more to the gameplay – you still run til you see an OpFor and shoot them before they shoot you.
While welcome and necessary additions particularly in terms of fixing bugs, these patches don’t add all that much extra to the game, and this can be seen through the dramatic drop from an average of over 2000 players to 400 in 4 weeks on gamespy. It’s not a bad game; it looks good, plays better, and is free, but its uniqueness is starting to wear off.