8xid_Burned: A Developers Perspective

Review: Combat Arms

When I was initially contacted by Nexon about trying out their new game Combat in Arms I was a little skeptical. I have played my fair share of so-called “free” download games. Many were seedy pieces of spy ware aimed at destroying everything I loved on my computer. Very few of these low-budget free games have ever shined above the rest or offered any shred of entertainment value. But. Once in a while there is always an exception to the rule.



While I can't yet vouch that the program has not filled up the various “sectors” of my computer with mal-ware yet, I can tell you that the game itself is in fact free AND fun to play. It's almost an oxy moron: Free fun... It certainly doesn't seem plausible, but in this case it is.

Combat in Arms is a free to play FPS game. At it's core it feels like a graphically challenged BF2 meets Unreal Tournament Classic. As I watched the trailers and gasped at the horrible graphics that I was going to be subjected to, I quickly lowered my expectations quite a bit. But when I was done with the process of signing up for a Nexon account and installing the game, suddenly I was rewarded from the heavens. I'm not sure what I did this week to deserve such a nice treat, but I'm damned glad I did it.

The horrible graphics that I was afraid of were not as based as what I would have thought. After loading the game it turned out that while the graphics are not as beautiful as Crysis, they are no slouch either. Everything is rendered in a smooth style polygon format, blocky in some areas but textured nicely. If I had to guess I would say it was rendered using either the original Half-Life engine or the original Unreal engine. [After talking to the developer it turns out that it was an in-house engine developed off of half-life.] SO while chunky, it is nothing less of well put together and in no way detracting. The levels I played were well designed. Plenty of places for hiding, moving up high and climbing. No interactive environments, but plenty of cover to duck behind.



The main attraction of the game is actually quite nifty. Full character customization. All the body shapes are roughly the same, but you can pick your characters face. As for gear you have little choices to start. As you play through the game you earn XP and GP. GP is used to spend on new equipment. This can be better armor, changing the looks of your cammo, accessories, weapons, and weapon upgrades. I was surprised at the large number of upgrades available for your weapon. Silencers, scopes, and even mounts. The weapon upgrading works much like Army of Two in the style that upgrades are purchased individually and attached one at a time. Also, apart from the store, there is a “black market” section of the game in which players can trade and sell weapons, upgrades, and armor among each other. A nice little idea if you ask me.



The game has all the typical game modes you have come to expect from multi player FPS: Death Match, Team Death Match, Last Man Standing, Capture the Flag, as well as a few other I haven't tried yet. All the games I played auto balanced – and load in a pre-game lobby before play.

The controls are familiar. Weapons change with the number key, chat with enter, move with WASD, and reload with R. I didn't read the FAQ, and most players won't have to. Within a few minutes anybody who has played an FPS before should be able to figure the controls out fairly quickly. I have not yet found a way to customize the scheme, but I'm sure it exists. Even if not, there's not allot I would change.

The downsides of the game I can see is: Overcrowding. There is a very large list of servers. While it wasn't hard to find one to jump into, I did notice a large number of them were hitting their max. I wasn't on during prime time, so I can imagine how hard it might be to jump in a match with allot of people playing. Additionally, I did notice a little bit of lag and that was in a room with only 4 players. It's impossible to tell if it's the game or the other players, but with a free game like this I'm sure there are no filters that kick players for high pings. Finally, there was no training. While the game was quickly picked up by me – the average player might get lost in all the jargon. Navigation is a little harsh for beginners. A better starting room with instructions or even some training maps could have been useful.

All in all, it seems like a great and solid game. I had great joy in splattering my enemies and listening to the crappy impersonations of the UT announcer applaud my efforts. (Yes he said “Head Shot and Multi Kill” but he sounded like Marc Summers when he did it.) Low learning curve, good design, and best of all free. Check it out and maybe in 30 minutes you too will by accusing me of using hacks when the announcer screams... “Head Shot!”

*Edit - Further play through with even more players, the game does suffer from some lag. While a bit of a downer it nothing worse than anything else I have ever played. Further more the game suffers from some broken graphics bugs. Some of the game issue I'm running into are taking away from the fun of the game. I'm also noticing that the general community are a bunch of whiny teens. While the game is still great (and I still give it a recommendation, I have to pull a star from it.

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