America's Army is a round- and team-based tactical shooter with a gameplay similar to Counter-Strike, with the player depicted as a soldier in the U.S. Army.

Before being allowed to play online a player must first go through four training maps and have his or her progress saved online in a player account. Accomplishing the other thirteen training levels enables the player to become a combat life saver (CLS, medics are not depicted in game), special forces operator, SDM (squad-designated marksman, not to be confused with a sniper which is currently not present in AA), HMMWV driver, CROWS gunner, and Javelin missile operator.

The main section of the game is the multiplayer part, in which players fight either as the U.S. Army or, on "Special Forces" maps, as Indigenous forces against an opposing enemy team.
The game is a medium-paced tactical shooter. Pacing is fast in the sense that players can be killed very quickly, but the players' movements are a lot slower and the gameplay contains fewer firefights than most other first-person shooters.

One of America's Army's unusual features is the design of the player's opponents. The players characters' are divided into two teams: usually an "Assault" group and a "Defense" one. The Assault team loses the round if the time limit runs out. Players always see themselves and their team as U.S. Soldiers or friendly Indigenous Forces. The other side is always seen as the enemy (or OPFOR in the case of training maps.).
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The game features a kind of honor system making use of operant conditioning, which means that gamers who obey to the rules, dubbed "Rules of engagement" (ROE), are rewarded with experience points or else punished with a decrease of them. Rewarded are the achievement of specific mission objectives, killing enemies and healing injured teammates, although one receives more points for completing an objective or healing a teammate than for killing enemies.
Punished are friendly fire and eliminating objectives which are assigned for protection. Players are kicked from the server when their ROE is too low and their characters are sent to the Fort Leavenworth military prison. A higher ROE gives the player priority over other teammates in selecting specialist classes such as automatic rifleman, grenadier, sniper, or team leader.

The Minimum System Requirements are:

• 3-D graphics card with 128 MB memory and support for hardware transformation and lighting
• 2.4 GHz processor or equivalent
• English version of Windows(r) 2000/XP Operating System with latest updates
• 512 MB RAM
• 3.5GB of uncompressed hard disk space for game files
• 4X DVD-ROM (not required for downloaded installations)
• Windows 2000/XP compatible system (including compatible 32-bit drivers for CD-ROM drive, video card, sound card, mouse and keyboard)
• DirectX(r)9.0
• 100% Compatible DirectX 9.0 soundcard
• 56kbps Modem or other network connection
• NVIDIA(r) nForce(tm) or other motherboards/soundcards containing the Dolby(r) Digital Interactive Content Encoder required for Dolby Digital audio

The Recommended System Requirements are:

• 3-D graphics card with 256 MB memory and support for hardware transformation and lighting
• 3.0 GHz processor or equivalent
• English version of Windows(r) 2000/XP Operating System with all updates
• 1 GB RAM
• 3.5GB of uncompressed hard disk space for game files
• 4X DVD-ROM (not required for downloaded installation)
• Windows 2000/XP compatible system (including compatible 32-bit drivers for CD-ROM drive, video card, sound card, mouse and keyboard)
• DirectX(r) 9.0
• 100% Compatible DirectX 9.0 soundcard
• Broadband Network Connection
• Nvidia nForce? or other motherboard/soundcards containing Dolby Digital Content Encoder required for Dolby Digital audio.