The folks over at Webzen were kind enough to offer me a souped up account to try out one of their most recent releases, freshly out of closed beta: Arctic Combat, a free to play military shooter, does Webzen nail it, or is this one a dud? Check after the break to find out!
Like most free to play games these days, you’re able to accrue points by playing that allow you to unlock new gear. These points can also be bought with real money, allowing you to circumvent the grind if you don’t have the time or patience to play through many games. Arctic Combat presents pretty much what you’re used to if you’ve played any online shooter ever. Perks, weapons, air strikes, points, etc, etc. Nothing new. And, besides character models, nothing is really done well either. The sounds effects and music are horrid,. Even at times when I could just barely tolerate the plastic gunfire sounds, an alarm would blare telling you that an airstrike was coming or you’ve been seen by an enemy UAV. These alarms are not proportionate to the rest of the game’s volume, and they’ll blow your ear drums apart if you play with your sound up even a little.
Like I said, though, the character models are pretty decent, the animations for soldiers pretty smooth. But textures and gun models leave a lot to ask. Bland, forgettable, and very reminiscent of PlayStation 2 graphics.
Free to play shooters can be done really well. Just check out Blacklight: Retribution for proof. Arctic Combat just isn’t that good. It tries to pass itself off as a Call of Duty clone, but by making those comparisons, it just shines more light on all the deficiencies it has. Arctic Combat could have left those things off the table if they hadn’t have been so adamant to let you know they were trying to copy the format. In the end that hurts them. It’s free, so you can pick it up just to see if you enjoy it. But don’t expect this to fix any shooter addiction you may have.
