Combat Arms: First Impressions

Although it got off to a rocky start, (server issues were preventing games from being played at all)  Combat Arms’ closed beta is underway now.  As it has been said before, this testing period will last until next Friday at 2:00 PM PDT and you must have gotten a beta key from Fileplanet to access the game.

After looking through a few things, I eventually decided to get myself all set up and give it a try.  At first I was worried about video requirements and such, but my computer has been taking it quite well.

Combat Arms is the mix of a couple of different games; It has a bit of Soldier Front, (in terms of RPG elements) a bit of Counter-Strike, (in terms of team-based play and the “search and destroy” mode, which plays just like a de_ map) and a bit of Unreal Tournament (in terms of having awards like “double kill” etc…) all into one game, but how does it play?

Personally, I think it’s been executed very well, especially when compared to its older FPS/RPG counterpart, ijji’s Soldier Front.  New weapons and armor are bought using in-game currency that is awarded at the end of every game.  Guns can also be modded with things like supressors and scopes to try to get an edge in combat. (Although, I think it’s funny to see a scope on top of a colt.)  The only catch here is that everything you buy, like in Kartrider, is only temporary, obviously using this as a hook to get you to play more.  (Although you do have a default set of weapons that will never expire.)  You also gain experience as you continue to play, although I’m not sure that it does anything more than upgrade your rank at the moment.

Currently there are only two play modes: Team Deathmatch (which is pretty self-explanatory) and Search and Destroy. (which as I mentioned is pretty much the same thing as a DE map in CS.)  Whether or not there will be any other modes in the future is currently unknown.  Out of these there are only about four maps available, which is about as much as I would expect for a closed beta.

The gameplay in general is fairly good.  The default control scheme follows the popular WASD configuration, and is configurable to whatever you want it to be.  For myself, it was a bit difficult of points due to a tad bit of FPS lag but everything stayed smooth for the most part.  (For some reason, whenever I try to change to one of the preset graphic settings it resets itself back to “high.”  You can customise that, though.)  All in all I was enjoying the experience, although in general I suck at the FPS genre.

Combat Arms features a Messenger (it could be “Nexon Plug”, which is the name of the messenger that was built into KartRider and functions as a messenger across their games over in Korea IIRC) and a clan system, but neither has been made available for the closed beta.  (I would assume that clans will most likely come around in OB or official.)  Another interesting option that I noticed is the ability to turn the badword filter on and off, although this hasn’t been enabled either.

All in all, Combat Arms was a fairly good experience; Probably not the best but definitely better than other FPS games of this type.  If you’re not a part of the CB I would definitely recommend at least giving this game a bit of a test spin.  It won’t be the next Counter-Strike or Call of Duty, but it’s a good go.

Another New Game from Nexon

So far, I haven’t heard of this one being provided by any other company, but Nexon America is upping the ante with this DOOBIC Studios (Korea) online FPS game:

Combat Arms

Closed beta starts next Friday (Apr. 30th) at 2:00 PM PST, and the only way in is via a closed beta key at FilePlanet that you can obtain when the beta starts.  Unfortunately, Combat Arms looks fairly intensive as far as graphics go, so it looks like some people with older computers such as myself will be sitting this one out and stick with their Counter-Strike 1.6 or UT2004.

More information can be found on the Official Website.

Now, you may be wondering, “what about KartRider?”  Well, things look somewhat grim.  If you were to look at the Nexon forums, you’d see that KartRider’s forums have been completely replaced with those for Combat Arms.  -Hime- also says she has no information.  I’m sure she wishes there was something she could tell us, but right now there’s nothing.  Just hold on.

Maybe if someone needs a quirky online racing fix, I might be willing to swap Mariokart DS and Mariokart Wii friend codes.

Note: Windows XP SP3 and Gameguard

UPDATE: One person says any issues with gameguard and SP3 can be solved simply by deleting the affected game’s “Gameguard” folder and allowing it to redownload itself on the next run, or by completely uninstalling the game and reinstalling it.  I haven’t tried this myself yet; can’t really be bothered.

Long time, no see.  I’ve been busy with stuff so I haven’t been keeping tabs on any happenings outside of some of Mabinogi’s events.  All I know is that gMS is getting (a nerfed) Showa, Mabinogi has been pimped out with NX features, and it’ll probably be another 2-3 months at least before we hear anything about KartRider.

But anyway, this is fairly important, especially if you’re a Windows XP user that plays not just MS or Mabinogi, but for any game using GameGuard:

As you may or may not have known, Microsoft released Windows XP Service Pack 3 today on Microsoft Update. Of course, it’s always good to make sure Microsoft won’t break something in the OS or with something that you use, and in this case from my searches, SP3 breaks something we ALL use: Gameguard.
I did a quick search on the internet and have found people who have installed the SP3 betas/RCs and Gameguard seems to have failed to initialize on all of them. That being said, for now, if you play MapleStory, Mabinogi, or any other game that utlilizes Gameguard, do NOT install Windows XP SP3 until it can be confirmed that GG works with the final release.

If I find out more I will make it known.  Automatic updates for XP SP3 aren’t firing just yet but chances are that when they will, we will know for sure whether or not there’s a problem with SP3 and GG.