America's Army: Special Operations

Simple Simon had the right idea. Quite aside from his understandable predilection for pie, he kept things, well, uncomplicated. Yes, that's largely due to his diminished mental capacity, but we can respect a man that knows his limits.

It's advice that could be readily applied to America's Army: Special Operations, a game that incorporates three or four different styles of game play in an attempt to get you involved in as much of the storyline as possible.

The plot that doesn't really warrant extended analysis here. Suffice to say that you play as America's army and are sticking your heavily-armoured nose into other countries' affairs. In this case it's a set-up based roughly on the first Gulf war, except with fictional nations.

So it is that you embark on the first two of the game's 11 levels and the first of its styles, that of a sideways-scrolling shoot-em-up. It's distinctly old-school as you pilot an attack helicopter in a forward action ahead of the ground troops.

As you fly through the levels, you're pitted against waves of enemy choppers and fighter jets, not to mention swarming ground troops armed with surface-to-air missiles. Equipped with an upgradeable cannon and various special weapons that can be picked up along the way, you'll need to let 'em have it to win.

The action is fast and furious as the small screen of your handset rapidly fills with enemies. But while you're more than amply equipped to handle them, the restrictive manouvering space does some harm. Not only are there buildings to avoid, you also have to dodge enemy missiles, blow bridge supports up and undertake mission objectives, too.

There is simply too much going on at once, and none of the concepts that are employed in the level feel fully realised. Someone, somewhere, has taken a list of ideas for America's Army: Special Operations and tried to cram them all in, often so that they all crop up at once.

The other levels fare little better. The third finds you lacing up your general issue combat boots as you play a foot soldier in one of the enemy-occupied towns. Rather than a free-flowing blaster or tactical stealth-based game, these levels are bitty affairs that see you struggling more with the control system than the bad guys.

These levels are full of distracting gimmicks that require you to press certain number buttons to overcome them, while the aiming system is woefully inaccurate (though often you need to just shoot around an enemy to kill him, so rough are the game's core mechanics) and the level designs themselves are clumsy, resulting in a greater emphasis being placed on just getting by rather than enjoying yourself.

Every now and again a different mode of play is thrown into the foot-soldier mix. At one point you take control of an APC and have to drive it while killing everything that moves with the cannon.

This changes the control system again, as you press on the '6' key to move slowly right, moving an on-screen crosshair up and down to direct the cannon's fire. A similar exercise is undertaken later on, when you climb into a cable-car like device and have to take out enemy commandos with a sniper rifle.

America's Army: Special Operations is big, ambitious, and confused. You jump between helicopter and footsoldier levels for little apparent reason, and there's no great sense of progression, as everything the game seems to have in its arsenal is thrown at you at once.

You can clearly see what Gameloft has tried to do with America's Army: Special Operations, and that's to involve you in as much of the storyline as possible. Instead of a cut-scene showing your troops helicoptering into the level, for instance, you're there flying the helicopter.

It's not an unworthy aim, and if all the game's worked better, it might well prove an exciting rollercoaster ride. But unfortunately, they don't.

If one of the four games-within-a-game were given a chance to breathe and the other three disposed of, we'd possibly have had a much more satisfying experience in our hands. Instead, the game tries to do too much, and perhaps as a consequence, not one of the parts proves much fun to play.