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TerranUp16
[H]ard|Gawd
- Joined
- Dec 11, 2007
- Messages
- 1,031
Developer- Nexon (previously Doobic but Nexon bought them out)
Publisher- Nexon
Platform- PC
Price- Free to Play
Genre- Online FPS
Release Data- TBA (Currently in "Closed" Beta)
Combat Arms Website
Combat Arms Interview
Combat Arms Announcement
So you thought the only free FPS game this summer coming from a relatively big publisher that warranted your attention was Battlefield: Heroes, right? WRONG. Combat Arms opened-up for "Closed Beta" this week via FilePlanet so I decided to check it out and thus far have been utterly floored with how well the game has turned-out.
First, I have to note that the graphics are quite good. They are by no means amazing, but they are a lot better in-game than they are in the screenshots you'll see (and there are still a couple of settings not up yet in the Closed Beta) and the game is extremely well optimized. I'm running it at 1600x1200, max beta settings, 16xAF, 8xMSAA, and am forcing vsync from my nVidia CP and getting a completely smooth 60fps (yes online- the game is online only, but I have yet to encounter any lag)- literally, the game never drops below that for even a millisecond (undoubtedly because when I take vsync off it runs at 110fps but w/out vsync it tears so vsync ensures a very smooth experience). The textures are crisp and the graphical style is almost a kind of odd hybrid between Team Fortress 2 and Call of Duty 4, but it works well. Yet, despite this, the game's minimum reqs are similar to Battlefield: Heroes (and from what I've seen of BFH so far, this looks better).
So next, gameplay. I'm not usually a team deathmatch fan. But Combat Arms pulls it off excellently. I'd probably describe the beta maps so far as "CounterStrike style", which is to say that they're large but segmented so that they can almost feel claustrophobic at times. And yet, there are ample sniping spots and plenty of chances to "open-up the map" a little more. The end result is combat that is at once fast and almost as thrilling as CounterStrike's (of course, you do respawn in this, so it can't quite match CS there). The combat is definitely on the arcadey side, but much like its art style, it just works. The plethora of modern weapons have a good feel to them and perform more or less as expected. Also working in the game's favor is its use of static spawns. The maps I've played with so far do a great job of ensuring that any attempt to get into the the enemy's spawn will require some hefty skill (and, more-likely, plentiful teamwork) and that camping for an extended period is rarely feasible. I haven't yet had once instance where I'd spawned and died in under ten seconds, whereas it's not unusual to spawn and die multiple times in a row in Call of Duty 4. The static spawns also allow the map designers, as previously noted, to really do a good job of ensuring that the areas that surround a spawn are defensible, and even team deathmatches tend to take-on a back and forth pushing war of sorts that is more common to Conquest or Control Point modes (ala Battlefield and Team Fortress 2) than to TDM. I would really love to see them add an HQ mode to this.
Finally, distribution. The game is free to play and that will probably ring quite a few alarm bells with quite a few people because of what that has come to connote. Thus far, Nexon is keeping its rhetoric similar to DICE in that premium items will not imbalance the game and that they will focus mostly on cosmetics for those. What I've seen so far seems to substantiate this. While there are no "premium items" available yet, Combat Arms has its own system of awarding "Game Points" based on your in-game performance. This is no new concept. However, what's interesting is how you use your Game Points. Instead of just accumulating these and flat-out buying weapons and the like, you actually use your Game Points to lease weapons- for a day, a week, a month, depending on how many of your Game Points you want to spend. The effect this has is that virtually everything is affordable- that isn't to say you can lease every item for one day immediately, but it is to say that it won't be hard to get one-day leases on a few items at a time. So if you absolutely need a particular weapon so that you can build your Game Points back up, you can start-out with leasing that weapon for a day and earn back what you paid. Additionally, all of the guns so far seem to be well-balanced- you're spending Game Points on variety rather than quality.
Now, what makes this interesting is that it's conceivable that Nexon will allow you to buy those same weapons that you can lease with Game Points permanently with real money. I haven't heard anything on this, so this is just speculation. But the idea of that would be quite similar to the idea of buying experience power-ups that let you gain experience 2-3x faster at the expense of real money (thereby substituting real money for time).
Imo, definitely worth a dl if you like Call of Duty 4 or CounterStrike.
(My apologies if those post reads like an ad or something- it's really not meant to be; I actually just happened to stumble upon this a couple of days ago and didn't seriously think that it would be any good largely because of that fact, but CA has definitely proven me wrong there)
