This guide evolved during the beta development of the game. Due to the timeline in which I wrote it, most of the information in this guide will seem very dated. I feel it is still a great source of information.

Click on the install button below to get started!
https://steamhost.cn/app/203290/Americas_Army_Proving_Grounds/

UPDATE: The only thing that tells me this game is still playable is that 3 people on my friends list have played it recently. The website is down and re-routed to the GoArmy.com website as a recruitment tool. I would not be surprised if this game is added to my dead games list in a year or so. It looks like the last update was deployed last year in May of 2022.


Ratings are appreciated!

In short, a takedown is a melee action in America's Army : Proving Grounds that renders a victim helpless. Takedowns can take two very different forms. The most common is the choke, which occurs when someone successfully performs a melee attack on a crouched or standing victim. The less common and even more entertaining takedown is also known as a beat down, which occurs when someone successfully performs a melee attack on a prone victim.

In most cases, takedowns occur when someone isn't aware of someone else's presence. Awareness may also be summed up in two forms, visual and auditory. You will not always see everything that is going on right in front of you much less what is off to the sides, and unless you turn around often you are certainly not going to see what is sneaking up on you until it's too late. This makes hearing what is going on around you much more important.

I should say that most of the time players just don't hear someone coming up behind them. Don't be that guy! I don't play with fancy gaming headphones either, but I'm always aware of any audio in my vicinity, because I crank up my little set of amplified desktop speakers to maximum volume while playing this game. If you want to be a decent player in this game, you really need turn up the volume.

Something else you'll want to consider is that another enemy may be observing you take down one of their own. In this case, that enemy has the opportunity to perform a takedown on you, breaking your takedown on their squad mate. I've been on both sides of this scenario. You can't always check all your blind spots before performing your melee, because you could lose the opportunity if your target turns around.

The default key for performing a takedown is left-ctrl, which is very difficult to use while maintaining control of your avatar's locomotion if your takedown fails. I reccomend rebinding it to the E key. This will help you stay in control of your movement and reposition yourself for another try more easily if the first attempt fails.

If it isn't obvious already, you need to be almost directly behind a target to successfully perform a melee attack on them. If your in front of them or too far off to the side of them, the animation will occur and it will fail, making you look like you were trying to give them a hug instead.



Ironicly enough, a hug is one of the nicknames the players have given to the term takedown. If you want to call it a hug, that's fine, just make sure you do so from behind.

As before mentioned in the section on avoiding takedowns, hearing is equally important when performing them. The fact of the matter is, if you don't know where your targets are or where they are going, your not going to get into the position to do a takedown. The next two sections will coach you on movement to help you get into position.

You'll want to quickly figure out what corners to hide in and which routes hostiles normally take so that you can expeditiously position yourself behind an enemy.

In the case of a blindspot, once you are there, be as quiet as possible and listen for movement. Sometimes your potential victim will be aware of the blindspot and come around the corner with the trigger down. Most other times they will walk or run right past you, and the chase is on. Make sure your listening for multiple targets though, because you don't want to get shot in the back because you ran right in front of your victims battle buddy.

In the case of a flanking manuever, it's always going to be risky because obviously the enemy squad could always split up and go both directions. In this case I often choose the route least traveled and find a blindspot to hide in for the first minute. If no enemies roll through, I then try to get behind the enemy lines going the other direction.

Something you'll want to consider when you find yourself behind an enemy line is that every second counts. This means you don't want to zip up your victims right away if your in an area hot with hostiles, as they could turn around literally any second and then your initiative is lost. Do your takedowns on as many of them as you can, and if you get all of the targets visible in your area, fall back to zip up your victims. If you have friendies down in the area, pick them up before securing, because zipping up a hostile will alert other hostiles to your proximity.

** This section is now obsolete as the game is officially out of open beta. **

During open beta, the achievements for takedowns were bugged. I'm not exactly sure at this point what the issue was but what I had observed and submitted as a bug report is that the confirmed takedowns were not always being added to the achievement count.

I first noticed this after a hardcore match, so I had assumed that hardcore servers were the issue, however I then noticed the same problem on normal mode. At the time this was apparently fixed, I was sitting at 96 out of 250 takedowns for the Blackbelt achievement, and in attempting to fix the problem any progress towards the achievement had been reset to 1 out of 250. The other takedown achievements already earned were not lost as a result of thepatch however, so I still had all the takedown achievements up to Red Belt earned.



You can check your actual number of takedowns on the launcher, under Soldier Stats, as shown above. You can also check your statistics on the website[aapg.americasarmy.com] after you log in. Your takedowns are displayed under Career, as shown below.



So you see the game servers are actually tracking statistics on everything you do in game. The statistics on my own profile confrimed my suspicions, that I have actually earned the Blackbelt achievement twice over by the time my progress was reset.

So after that patch I had assumed the bug was fixed. Unfortunately it was not. I payed closer attention and I had come up with a hypothosis on what was actually going on. The quick explanation is that you only get credit for one takedown during a match if you achieved one, regardless of how many you actually performed. Let's say you got 11 takedowns which so far is my personal best, you would only get 1 tally on your achievement progress after that match. On top of that their is often a long delay in syncing the progress towards the achievement with the servers.

After observing all this I decided it was time for another bug report, but I was unable to submit one as unfortunately thier bug reporting system was down. So I decided I would be content with earning it again and again just to make the achievement official, and continued to work on the achievement at a slow pace until finally it seemed to be broken completely. Suddenly my progress on steam was stuck at 179/250 and stayed there for about a month of playing.

Update!

It looks like they finally figured out what was going on however and got it patched. As of May 29th, 2014 I finally earned the blackbelt achievement after playing just a short match.



So for all you soldiers that acquire this achievement later on, be relieved that you didn't have to earn it close to 4 times before actually achieving it as I did. The totals on my career page after getting the achievement informed me I was at 968 takedowns with an 11.8 ratio.

Please note that many of the achievements seemed to be bugged during this stage of development, not just the Blackbelt achievement. I focused on the Blackbelt achievement issues due to the creation of this guide. If you find that your progress towards an achievement is stuck in the same spot on Steam, check your progress on that achievement in game as detailed above to see where you should really be at.

The career profile for your soldier is linked in the AA:PG Game Launcher. Currently, it's linked as "Stats*" on the left hand side of the launcher. When you click on Stats it launchers your web browser to the following web address:

https://www.americasarmy.com/login **

You can obviously check the stats by simply navigating to the America's Army web page instead. As it is a website, it will likely evolve over time just as the game has, so I'm not posting a current screenshot.

Once you are logged in, your career profile will be displayed. I'm posting mine below as an example, but keep in mind that my stats have been officially wiped so they are no longer very impressive.

https://www.americasarmy.com/soldier/61865/career-stats **

On Oct 1st 2015, America's Army : Proving Grounds, or AA:PG, went out of open beta and is still Free to Play in the Steam store.

** In the introduction, I posted an update letting everyone know the website is down and is re-routed to the GoArmy.com website. This section appears to be obsolete.

I started the Hard Core Proving Grounds Group and dedicated it to those who want to play on hard core servers and can never find one. The group is public so take a second to join up if you want to be invited into live hard core matches!

This group (and an unpublished guide that I deleted) had focused on acquiring the Valorous Service achievement in America's Army : Proving Grounds. The achievement had been removed from the game, and the guide was no longer necessary, but the group still exists for those that prefer hardcore servers.

I started playing America's Army : Proving Grounds during the beginning of open beta, and I began this guide a couple months later. I have been around long enough to see some bugs and get most of the achievements. The content of this guide therefore had been added to as the game developed and got closer to it's official release. In other words, it has been a work in progress.

If you are here to leave negative comments on my game play, don't bother. You'll just be reported promptly before deleting your unwanted obscenities. To put it simply, I'll borrow a line that is often spoken on comms when a takedown is performed...

"Shhhhhhhhhhh!"

Furthermore, since this game is out of beta, all statistical data has been wiped from the game servers and any progress and achievements earned have been wiped from my respective profiles.

I didn't feel the need to earn all the achievements for this game yet again, thus I have mostly lost interest in the game and moved on to other first person shooters. However I leave this guide for anyone looking for some tips on their AA:PG combat techniques.

UPDATE: As long as this game is still playable, parts of this guide will still be relevant. If you find that you cannot install, launch, or load the game ... this game may be shut down and the guide is obsolete.

Thanks for the Steam Awards!

I have been creating guides for the Steam Community for a few years now, long before Steam Awards were a thing. I love creating content for the games I play. In 2020, Valve decided to reward players that create content with the points shop system.

The Steam points are very appreciated, and certainly encourages me to create more content for the gaming community. I even spent a few of the points to give more space for Steam guides on my profile. This lets me present up to seven of them on my profile at once. If you want to see what else I've created, you should check out the Other Published Steam Guides section of this guide!

You can check out all of my Published Steam Guides here, the following guides I feel are related in one way or another.

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2183349877

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3122987327