Teens in Tech Games

When a friend showed me the free-to-play, online warfare first-person shooter Combat Arms for the first time last year, I was blown away. I had been introduced to an amazing world of action and warfare that I would soon become a part of. It was developed by Doobic Studios and published by Nexon, both respectable game companies, and this time they have outdone themselves. Personally, as a complete addict of this game, I can say that it is quite possibly the best free online FPS game available. With 16 high-quality war zones, 8 enticing mission types, fully customizable avatars, well over 100 weapons and even a real-world-money “Black Market”, this game will blow practically anyone away. They regularly patch the game and keep adding more and more amazing content, so you never get bored with what they offer.

It’s hard to know where to start, but let’s begin with quality. This game is free-to-download, and yet it still has first-rate quality, from the intricate and well-thought-out maps to the realistic and high-texture weapons you use. The sounds of weapons, footsteps, explosions, bullet impacts, and hit-confirmations are all top-quality and carefully chosen. I was impressed with the wide range and variety of sounds such as gunshots and reloading noises, because all of them are different. Overall, the visual and audible quality of the game is astounding, considering that it’s a free-to-play game. Next we should look at weapons: there are about 74 standard free ones, not mentioning all the rare and real-money ones. They are fully customizable, with lots of attachments. Attachments and weapons are unlocked as a player gains experience and moves up in the ranks. There are a LOT of ranks, and no one has reached the top one yet! Players can equip themselves with any weapons they want, as long as they have the rank requirements for them. A great thing about Combat Arms that sets it apart from other games is that no weapon is perfect or “cheap.” All weapons have advantages and downsides, making them all equal to each other in the long run. Weapons may excel in one area, such as power, but lack in another, such as recoil. Even the highest ranked weapons in the game have their limitations, so it is impossible to buy a weapon that will automatically own. Overall the weapons in CA make it a great playing experience. Not only does the Shop sell weapons and mods, but it also has a huge variety of character customization options. You can buy things like helmets, vests, hats, camo, etc. with in-game money (you make the money from playing the game) that make your stats better, like more protection or stamina, and also make your character stand out. The huge variety of items is great, and I always enjoy customizing my character with all the gear I need to play my best. You may be wondering: how does this company make any money? Players not only have the option of purchasing free gear in the Shop, but can also use real-world money in the “Black Market,” an online store full of improved and special edition weapons and gear. Just go out and buy a Nexon Gift Card, and buy pretty much any item you want!

There are a few serious backdrops to this game. It’s obviously not as good quality as a store-bought game, and there is the chance that it could infect your computer (free games are always crawling with viruses). Another problem is the huge amount of hackers in the game. While Nexon is doing everything it can do stop it, hackers just keep popping up, and it ruins the game for everyone. So don’t hack! Plus, the Black Market can be a real money-waster, especially since all the items are basically replicas of free gear already in the game.

In short, Combat Arms is one of the top free online shooters out there, and is my personal favorite game of all time. Any player can design their own game room from top to bottom, including what weapons are allowed, what the mission type is, what the map is, and who is invited. With a huge variety of weapons and gear available, everyone can make their avatar function exactly the way they want it to. Every mission type you can imagine is there, including Elimination, Capture the Flag, Search and Destroy, One Man Army, a campaign-mode, and even a zombie-mode! The game is always being patched, and by next month it will probably have 10% more content than when you read this last. If you want a free-to-play, modern warfare first-person shooter with more customization than any of its rivals, choose Combat Arms. It’s unbelievable.

Introduction-

Aion: The Tower of Eternity, is another MMORPG that was released September 22, 2009. This RPG has been up and running in Korea for a couple of years now, and the anticipation level of its release in all other parts of the world have been high. Aion is being release by NCsoft, who also created City of Heroes, City of Villains, Guild Wars, Lineage, and Lineage II. With all these other great predecessors, you cannot expect anything but greatness from Aion: The Tower of Eternity.

First Impressions-

Upon entering the game, you get to choose your race, class, and what your character looks like. With Aion, NCsoft took an extra couple steps in character customization–everything about your character is unique to you! There are multiple colors and scales to use to adjust your characters nose height, width, eye width, eye angle, head size, head shape, chest size, eyebrow thickness, eyebrow angle, and much more. Once character creation is out of the way, you enter the world, and the graphics are unbelievable! On my laptop I currently run the game on medium-high settings, and everything looks great, and the game runs smoothly at the same time. So it is obvious that NCsoft really wanted to concentrate on the overall look of the game, but how about the actual content? The game starts you out with some quests that help you get the basic controls down, and then you quickly move on to more adventurous quests and zones. The quests in this game are nothing compared to the quests in World of Warcraft, but they are still neat. Overall first impression, solid game with good graphics that has a world of space to continue the game with new content.

The Good-

Aion: The Tower of Eternity has a lot of good characteristics. First, the graphics. The graphics in this game match those of Half-Life 2 games, yet the game still runs very smoothly. Second, they have a great system for class creation. You first create a main class, and at level 10 you get to choose your subclass, each main class has two subclasses. This brings even more diversity to the game. Also, each subclass is very balanced, unlike in World of Warcraft. Thirdly, They have a really good PvP (player vs. player) system that adds an extra challenge to leveling. At level 25, you must go to a zone called the Abyss, which is a complete in-air PvP zone, with in-flight combat, cool! The challenge to this zone is that every time you kill a monster or another player of the opposite faction, you gain what are called Abyss points. However, if you die to a monster or another player, your Abyss points go down and you will lose experience. This twist to the game adds a challenge not yet experienced in any other MMORPG.

The Bad-
The main issue that I have found with this game that there are a lot of points in the game that you will find yourself with no more quests to do. When this happens, you have to start grinding to the next level, or until more quests become available (which could be 1-4 levels). The term grinding refers to when you sit and just kill the same group of monsters over, and over, and over again for a given amount of experience. Grinding is the most boring part of any MMORPG, but almost always will be an inevitability. Another problem with Aion is the lack of GM (game master) support in the game. The chat channels are constantly being flooded by Kinah (currency in Aion) sellers, however this is fairly easily stopped by blocking the spammers.

Overall-

Despite the long, hard core grinding sessions you will encounter, and the Kinah spammers in trade chat, Aion is actually a very good game. Leveling is for the most part fun, and the game is actually rather challenging, unlike many of today’s MMORPGs. I would definitely recommend that anyone looking to play an MMORPG at least give Aion a shot, because once you start to play it, you probably will have a hard time stopping.

World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King is the second expansion of World of Warcraft. This expansion was released November 13, 2008, and was probably the most anticipated game of the year. Everyone had high expectations for this awesome new expansion, and the enthusiasm was shown at the night of the release. World of Warcraft is an MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game), and some would argue the best of its kind. World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade was a great expansion to the game, and all of Blizzards users had faith in them to continue the greatness with Wrath of the Litch King.

First impressions-

You would think that this World of Warcraft expansion is the greatest game ever to be released. Look at the lines to get the game on the release, ridiculous wait times and people dressed up as fictional characters… this game should be awesome! I of course got the game on the release, and played for a long while into the morning. It was extremely fun for me, especially since I was leveling with a friend of mine. Overall, the leveling to 80 is fun, and you will never have to spend time grinding out a level, since there are plenty of quests and zones to explore. The problem exists at level 80, however. My first impression of level 80 game-play was “wow, you have got to be kidding me”. A bunch of old content revamped to be playable at level 80, how lazy can Blizzard get? So basically, a lot of old content followed by re-used skins and models–my first impression, not worth the money or the time.

The Good-

One of the good things that Blizzard did with World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, was the amount of content they put into quests and leveling. New quests have elaborate stories behind them, which makes questing really fun. Also, the new instances that were created have some really fun boss fights that were really challenging for a while.

The Bad-

Be prepared, there are a lot of bad things about this game due to the rushed release and overall misunderstanding that Blizzard has with its users. First of all, almost all of the end-game raids are just old raids from level 60 that had the level of the monsters inside them increased. The fights are all the same, and the bosses even say all the same old lines. Second, the new content is way too easy! The first level 80 raid, that was supposed to keep people with a challenge for a couple months until the new raid would be released, was cleared easily in just weeks after the game’s release. Lastly and most importantly, arenas! For me, arenas are the most important part of World of Warcraft. In World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, arenas required more skill than anything else in the game, and not anyone could excel in them. With the Wrath of the Lich King, arenas were made a mockery of. Instead of arenas taking skill, they altered the rating system so that as long as you played a ton of arena matches, you could get your rating up into the 2000s with a win loss ratio of 52% (in the Burning Crusade, 1850 was a good rating, and you had to win more than 80% of your matches). Also, Blizzard completely botched the class balance, making is so that any arena composition with a Death Knight or a Retribution Paladin would win with ease. The unbalanced classes and wretched rating system completely ruined arenas for World of Warcraft.

Overall-

Overall, I would not recommend that anyone start to play this game, unless you enjoy replaying old content and really easy end-game material that will require absolutely no skill, whether its arenas or raiding. If you want a solid game that has even classes and is a challenge to play, I would definitely recommend you check out another game. Granted, there really aren’t many good MMORPGs available right now, but if you want one that easily beats the overall gameplay of World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, then I would definitely recommend the game Aion (review will be coming soon).