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.