Online FPS: Combat Arms

[Ryudo Lee]

Does anyone play Combat Arms?  It's a free online multiplayer FPS.  And that's free as in "they don't take any credit card information, and don't sell any upgrades through the site for real world money".  You do have to have an account with Nexon, which is free as well.

It's realistic military style, with, for now, only a handful of (IMHO nicely made) maps, and a handful of modes of play (CTF, free for all, team combat, and something they call "search and destroy", which I haven't experienced yet).

The weapons and equipment are models of real world stuff, although the military nuts will complain that they're not realistic at all (and they do complain).  You can customize all your weapons and equipment, but at a cost.  You earn money by playing the game.  Also, none of the equipment, except for your basic equipment, are permanent.  You buy the equipment for a certain number of days (1 day, a week, a month, or 3 months).  Your basic equipment is a black cap, an M16, a pistol, a combat knife, and frag grenades.

You also don't have access to all the equipment as soon as you start.  You have to go up in ranks to get access to the better equipment.  And the ranks are pulled from the US Army ranks.  You gain experience points by playing the game, but the caveat for that is that you have to go through an entire game from when you enter the game, to the finish.  (I'm currently a PFC.)  You can get some really nifty stuff, like high powered sniper rifles, AK's and other high powered AR's, mines, flashbangs, anti-tank rocket launchers, and a whole slew of armor, helmets, uniforms, and vests.  And that's just scratching the surface.

But even though you can't buy the equipment, you can pick up the weapons your opponents drop when they die, even if you don't have access to them.  Say if you don't yet have access to a particular sniper rifle, and someone of a higher rank comes in a game with that rifle, and you kill him, you can pick up and use that rifle, as long as you don't run out of ammo, or get killed yourself.  You just can't pick up their grenades (they tend to explode).

And there's also a clan feature too.  I'm sure they must have something in the works for clans, tournaments or something, but I don't think anything like that has been announced yet.

They've also implemented an anti-hacking solution in with the game client.  You can't play the game without it.  So it's really hard, if not downright impossible, to run an aimbot or anything of the sort on this game, although people who get killed a lot tend to want to accuse everyone else of cheating.

In any case, I've been playing on it since last week and I'm enjoying it thoroughly.  Although you really should be a fan of FPS deathmatch to truly enjoy this game.  If you are playing it, or if you end up signing up, look me up.  I'm "MegaRaichu".

[Valynth]

I decided to give it a shot...  *beats self for that bad pun.*

Anyway, I play there by the same name I always use.

From what I can see, it's simply a free version of Counter Strike where you "rent" you weapons.  It's also bad because I get an unusually high amount of lag when I try to play, making it damn near impossible for me to apply any actual skill and leaving me with luck.  Even then, though I managed to get through a game with 26 kills and 15 deaths...

*seriously needs a better compy*

[Ryudo Lee]

That's not too bad.  I average around those numbers myself.

[Jack McSlay]

I've downloaded it myself, but became uninterested. the game has an unusually high amount of brazilian players, so I haven't got a major issue wth speed, but found nearly impossible to play an hour straight without the game crashing on me