Don_DickleTIL the US Government once released its own video game to inform, educate, and recruit prospective soldiers.
A few things about America’s Army:
It may (I am 90%, but not 100% sure of this) have been the first PC, online, FPS to feature ragdoll physics for dead players.
It employed a… rather baffling way of doing team conflicts:
You are always on Team America, and the opposing team is always Team Generic Terrorists.
What this results in is… you have your M4. You are shooting at bad guys with AK74su’s. But… from the opposing team’s POV, its the same.
So, if you kill someone… you can now pick up an AK74su. Even though from their POV they dropped an M4.
And so on, with rough equivalents as an SVD and an M110, an RPK and an M249.
These ‘picked up’ weapons would basically morph into having the ballistics of the Eastern Bloc weapon at the point they were picked up.
Very weird, I’ve never seen another game do that.
The game also had a good number of training courses, many of which were initially bugged as all hell.
I remember the SERE course failing me consistently, showing that I had been detected by guards who are apparently able to see through boulders or 30 feet of a hill (the camera would show you how you were spotted like a ‘deathcam’ and it was quite obvious it was often total bs).
Also, in certain training missions it was possible to shoot your instructor.
This would result in you being sent to the brig: Log in to your account, and for a week, all you get is a view from inside a prison cell, no game menus or options at all, rofl.
jqubedAlso, in certain training missions it was possible to shoot your instructor.
This would result in you being sent to the brig: Log in to your account, and for a week, all you get is a view from inside a prison cell, no game menus or options at all, rofl.
Hilarious! I guess adding permadeath to the game would’nt’ve helped with the recruiting mission, but this feels like it’s in the same spirit.
The game had a whole system of ranks and qualifications based off actual Army ranks and skills.
You had to do pretty comprehensive medical training before you could be a field medic, you had to qualify as a marksman to be able to use a DMR, you had to pass the SERE school before I think night time missions and NVGs could be used, had to complete parachute training before levels you’d paradrop into, etc, and these would become available as you reached a certain number of kills or successful missions or what not.
Basically, it had a persistent progression system, and it was quite in depth…
… And if you did things like tons of team killing, or killing the instructor, not only would you end up in the brig… you’d have basically all of your progress reset.
Its about as close as you can get to permadeath in a round based, pvp shooter.
delirious_owlRoE RoE RoE your boat, gently down the stream
All these ideas are genuinely cool as hell, I can just imagine how a modern game would ruin them by having players pay to get out of jail early or to get access to stuff that’s supposed to be unlocked.
How extensive was the medical training really?
I recall it being fully simulated. You had to walk into a class room and sit down and watch a like 45min (maybe? Idk this was over a decade ago) presentation on an overhead where an instructor went over a combat life saver course. You’d have a test to answer with multiple choice questions that you had to pass at the end lol