America's Army update live

The US Army may be lagging in its efforts to meet enlistment goals, but that hasn't stopped it from updating one of its most innovative recruiting tools. Today at noon PDT, the Army released a revamped version of its popular self-developed and self-published PC shooter, America's Army: Special Forces.

Titled America's Army: Special Forces (Direct Action), the update adds two multiplayer maps to the game. The first, a Counter-Strike-style "daytime urban mission" called SF Extraction, has both teams trying to locate and retrieve a suitcase with valuable information on a terrorist cell. Players can play as either the US Special Forces or the unidentified "Indigenous Forces." SF Extraction's spawn and retraction points are randomly generated.

The second map, SF Dockside, is a smaller tournament map set in a dilapidated harbor during a rain-swept night. It puts two teams of US Special Forces soldiers against each other in a race to find and hold two cargo containers full of biological weapons. Like in Extraction, Dockside's spawn and container points are randomly generated.

The Direct Action update also features a new training mission that sport tactics from the Army's MOUT (Military Operations on Urban Terrain) program. Titled Shoot House, it has players enter a 10-room house full of randomly generated targets, which they must shoot when they pop up. The level is timed and scored for each weapon, with results appearing on a site not yet online.

America's Army: Special Forces (Direct Action) comes in two versions, both of which will be available via GameSpot's revamped download section: A 925.3MB full client download, along with a smaller patch for those who already have v2.4 of America's Army.