Electronic Gaming on the Cheap

At last ... you can play something very 'Counterstrikish' and based on the half life 2 engine for cheap as in FREE.

Combat Arms. An online fps based on the very successful engine that not only is free to play, though there are pay options, but runs very well on older machines. Any machine that could run WoW could easily run this. Looking at the tech specs I would imagine that it would even run on machines that might have a bit of trouble with WoW.

My machine was well above the minimum spec except for the graffix card and even with the the only thing that wasn't perfect was the rendering of my left hand when I was holding a SAW.

Basically Combat Arms is an rpg type standalone mod for the engine and is managed by Nexon America. It is based on a Korean business model. You can pay but you don't have to. Even more specifically for Combat Arms, since it is a FPS and they are promoting skill > gear, none of the pay to use gear is any different than the non-pay gear except for cosmetics.

To play, you sign up to make an account at http://combatarms.nexon.net/ and download the client installer. When you log in after installation you make a character. There are 4 basic characters to choose from. One appears to be Asian, one black, one red-neck lookin' guy and one an ethnically neutral looking guy who shaved a big "V" in his hair.

You start out with 9k credits to outfit your warrior.

You start with a stock M16, a semi-auto pistol, a knife, and two grenades. You can buy weapons, uniforms, weapon components like extended magazines, silencers and scopes, helmets and support gear including 'hear beat' monitors to track opponents a la the movie 'Aliens'.

I purchased with a submachine gun and added a silencer as I like to 'run and gun' in fps games and typically submachine guns are a bit more forgiving with this style. The silencer was there because often, especially with longer shots, I need take a few shots to take someone down with one and getting a few free shots in before the target reacts is a nice thing.

Mission theaters that are the most popular, from what I saw, are urban and snowy alpine environments. I bought a set of urban cammys which work nicely for both.

Helmets actually do something in this game so I forewent cool looking berets and ball caps for a good sturdy helmet.

After a while I added a scoped and silenced M14 as a second primary weapon for sniping. I love to camp choke points as much as I like to assault and this went well.

By the end of the night I was geared with a scoped and silenced AK-47 (so I could assault and snipe without changing weapons), a SAW as my second primary weapon (to lay down cover fire, control choke points and to suppress areas), my trusty knife (got one knife kill by accident even), my 2 grenades and 3 very lovely mines. During one game I spent the whole game laying mines in spots in a contested hallway where the enemy would duck for cover. It was literally a blast.

You play in two teams of up to 16 players total and both spawn areas are fully open to the opponents so take and hold was more important to me than run and gun.

Scenarios include Team and Individual play. As a team the most common matches I played were a race to kill a certain number of opponents. It was sometimes as low as 20 but often as high as 120 with 100 being the norm I guess.

As you make kills and complete missions you gain cash and xp. When you buy gear you buy it for a set amount of time like the old MUD gear rent system. To keep playing with the cool gear and to make the most out of it play when you have some time to make up cash to buy it again. The base cost of the gear is the amount that it would take to keep it for 24 hours and with more credits you can purchase the gear for up to a week of use.

You level up and unlock more gear that you can use as you gain XP. You start as a Recruit, level to Trainee and I made it to Private on the first night It's hella fun. Unlike Counterstrike if you are doing well you don't get booted by jealous server hosts as the servers are automated and ran by Nexon. A player sets up the game victory conditions and map but does not have the authority to boot other players.

I had a good night of play. I was accused of hacking once I figured the maps out. Of course I was only accused of hacking after doing a public message in a game when I saw one of my teammates using a map exploit.

I am sure he was more peeved about me outing his cheating than anything else. Of course his complaints started on the next map when he was on the opposing team and busy being very predictable, and quite dumb and had a love for running through choke points that I had slathered with mines and fell for my famous suicide grenade kills enough times to be humiliated.

I would rack up both kills, him and myself with that move so no kills for him.

The game also keeps track of your stats on the Nexon website. I don't know how someone who had an average of 10 kills and 11 deaths per game and 12% accuracy with weapons fire, I like to use suppression fire a lot while my teammates advance, could be realistically accused of hacking but it made me smile a lot and be happy with my performance.

It's free. It has a pay option that makes you look cool but has no performance advantage. It is based on an award winning game engine. It is fun and definitely does not suck.

Combat Arms. Awesome. A winner.

jof