Sub heading: using offensive grammar, run on sentences, and some made up words.

I never really enjoyed Counter Strike. I acknowledge it's grade A beef with one of the top ten persistent player communities of all time for realz. I won't even argue against it being the ACME online shooter of all time, but with the caliber of players in CS, the time it takes to get good enough to, you know, have fun, is eerily similar to getting a second job and I already have one of those.

For the past year I've been looking for a replacement shooter for the price of free, yes free as in less than any suspicious item you'd buy in a dollar store. In this pursuit I went through boot camp with Americas Army but eventually grew tired of having ten minutes sucked out of my life never to return every time I died. I subsequently went through shooty arcade shooter land with Combat Arms, which I loved until I grew to loathe gun rentals and repetition. I'm now making up for lost time with, stay with me, in air quotes, the "True Combat Elite Mod" for "Wolfenstein Enemy Territory." Bolth Wolfenstein and Combat Elite are free downloads at GameSpot.com and despite being old school they are just a hell of a lot more fun than many modern multiplayer shooters.

What does Combat Elite do right I ask rhetorically so don't answer..?? The answer is it takes the best bits of Americas Army, Combat Arms, and Counter Strike. The firefights are intense mixes of run and gun and belly crawling, the maps, lots of them, are balanced and full of ways to flank an enemy, and the graphics are exactly what you want from a shooter, detailed enough to entertain, but not so detailed as to make your server jump out a fifth story window. Actually some of the levels look retro which will give you a hint of nostalgia as you put two into your foes chest. I encountered little to no lag during matches of 28 players or more. The intro interface is intuitive, the weapons selection before each round is simple, and at any given time there are a multiple great games running on the servers.
Combat elite includes an impressive selection of maps, from wrecking someone's party cruise boat, to deserts, warehouses, and urban warfare. The maps have functional doors, ladders, and crawl spaces plus various materials with various bullet stopping abilities or lack thereof. There are nice visual touches such as graffiti and static military vehicles. Maps come in all shapes and sizes to satisfy everyone from the shotgun junkie to the dirt sucking sniperzz. Respawn times are reasonable and maps change as often as your attention deficit mind can handle. The maps are multistory and often firefights will rage from one side of the map to the other as teams continually flank and snipe at one another. Friendly fire is on but being shot in the back by a teammate will trigger a complaint window that lets you vote towards the offending player's ejection, they can do the same to you if you revengescrew' them back.

There are a large variety of weapons to choose from in Combat Elite and they all sound absolutely incredible. The assault, spec ops, and sniper classes all have unique weapons, but they are well balanced and all classes are competitive. What's enjoyable about Combat in Elite is that the air in front of you is absent of the magic floaty aiming reticle. Iron sights, dot sights, and scopes are the only way to fly. This largely eliminates the redundancy of shooters where sights slow down aiming. The best touch is that many of the assault rifles and sub-machineguns have fluorescent dots on their iron sights which make fast aiming a charm. Weapons are not customizable but you will definitely find yourself switching through a sizable variety depending on which side of defeat you're on. Also of note is how players get their lean on. Leaning is a core component of Elite and due to the speed at which bullets will end your pathetic bunkering attempt, is highly recommended/satisfying. The best compliment I can give Combat Elite is it's balanced, nostalgic, and a hell of a lot of fun.

I have to say a fond farewell to Circuit City. Goodbye and farewell to the creepy older uncle of Best Buy. Somehow you always made me feel as if buying electronics was somehow akin to buying a used car. Your store layout was always terrible, your employees often looked as confused as I was. You always made me feel a little uncomfortable. You had games locked away in a small corner cage as if they were reptiles at the zoo. I'll miss tapping on the glass. I'd get an ipod jack put into my car for old times sake, but with no accountability due to your closing, I'm afraid I'd find my car up on blocks in the back lot. I have so many fond memories of wanting to leave your store to go to Best Buy. You will be sorely missed. I am comforted by the fact that I can always drive to Canada to be visually molested by your dull grey interior design.

I likes me some Combat Arms but I have a big dilemma, the game is free, but it's kind of needy. This online arcade style shooter with some of the best and most balanced maps I've ever seen wants me to play it more than two hours a day. This is largely due to Nexon's gun rental system were you start with 9,000 game points that you drain on renting gear and equipment each day you put lead downrange. This means your purchases are gone in a fixed amount of real time, usually 24 hours. You earn points back through kills and wins.

A good weapon, say an AK-74 with scope, or fan favorite G36E, will run you 950 gp/day (game points per day) or you can play this game on the cheap by popping a 150 gp/day scope on your trusty yet mediocre M-16. The better rifles are more fun since they enable long range kills and better chances of high kill ratios all around. The problem is at 950gp per rifle per day, and earning only an avg of 150gp per round, it takes more than six rounds, or two hours per day not to bleed cash, and bleed cash you will. You can fund raise by playing for a day and only purchasing a scope, but this is almost reminiscent of grinding in MMORPG's. Don't let other bloggers fool you, you can have fun doing this on the Grunt servers. But as a Combat Arms player you are perpetually in a race to loose less than a few thousand gp per rank. If you make it to the next rank you will receive gp bonuses and in theory as long as you only bleed a few thousand gp per level, you're ok. Warning, this is easier said than done should you have a job, fiancé, dog, or child.

There is something to be said for having to earn your way through a game. I feel as if the trend has been going in the opposite direction for the past two years. By forcing you to earn your keep, Combat Arms challenges you to become a more efficient shooter. Wanting higher kill ratios and more game points per round, without spending real life cash, I found myself studying maps constantly for new sniping ledges, tactics, and advantages. But if you're wallet is dedicated to unleaded 87 octane like me, or you just don't want to spend real money on a free game on principle, then this rental system is both a mood killer and motivation to play.

I respect Nexon for having a business model in the first place. If there is one thing I've learned since leaving the guarded halls of torture, ahem, academia, it's that nothing is free and in order to bring you Combat Arms for free, someone has to be paying. If you should like to support the poor and needy gamers of the world you can avoid much hassle by shelling out some real world cash to pick up powerful weapons for 90 days for under ten dollars. But by those standards if you play Combat Arms for more than six months you're buying the game and then some. But hey, you're keeping it free for me and as I said, I likes me some Combat Arms. So gun rentals, bane or boom? I'm conflicted.