Alliance of Valiant Arms Review: EU vs NRF
By Mohammad Abubakr (Abubakr), OnRPG Journalist
Alliance of Valiant Arms or AVA is a great looking massively multiplayer first person shooter (MMOFPS). The game features many elements you will recognize if you have played any other FPS but it also offers many unique features that will make you want to give it a try. AVA will requires you and your team to use good amount of strategy. You cannot just run towards your enemy expecting to take the whole team down.
When I started my first match, I noticed that the graphics looked great compared to other free MMOFPS games. The maps are detailed and show that the developers spent a great deal of time designing them. The weapons are also very detailed and the lighting on them makes them look even better! Keep in mind that the graphics will look much better when playing, so please do not judge them just from my screenshots.
There are however some problems with the graphics. I was not able to change each setting manually! I was only able to change my resolution and the gamma. There are radio buttons, which allow you to manually change the settings, but I was not able to change from automatic to manual. After doing some configuration file modifications the manual box did get highlighted, but I still did not see any options. There is a logo about Nvidia so maybe we ATI users cannot change the graphics.
Sniped!
The sound is not so bad. The guns sound pretty realistic and the music is alright. Many of you will like it more than me because I do not listen to music. The grenades sound very realistic. You can feel the vibration and the echo when they explode. There is a radio function you can use to give your team commands or just warn them of incoming enemies. Your character will actually automatically do these commands when needed.
Unlike most free FPS games there are three classes you can easily switch between based on what you feel like playing. These are the sniper, point man and the rifleman. The sniper is my favourite class because they do a lot of damage from long range with amazing accuracy. The downside is that he does not shoot very fast.
The point man is the opposite of the sniper. He is the master of close range with very high movement speed and uses SMGs and knives. He is not very good at range though. Finally, the rifleman is a balance of the two. He uses rifles and is the master of grenades.
Game Modes
AVA has quite a few game modes to offer that will keep you entertained. Many of these are available in other FPS games but there are some that are unique. You really cannot make all your game modes unique in an FPS because they will almost always involve you or your team killing the enemies using guns and rifles and playing in at least a few standard modes. This game does however change the names around to make their game modes a bit unique.
The first game mode I will be talking about is Annihilation. Annihilation is played just like your typical team death match mode. There are two teams who will keep on killing each other until the target amount of kills or points has been reached. The team to reach this first will be the winner.
There is however a small twist. When you kill a player, they will drop dog-tags. Pickup three of these and you will get bonus points! To make it a bit harder, your-dog tags will reset to zero when you die. You need to get a triple kill streak, run to the body, which usually means getting in open fire, and loot the dog tags. Not that easy for a beginner.
Another game mode many of you will be familiar with is Demolition, which is usually known as Search and Destroy. Most FPS gamers will know that the aim of this mode is to plant C4 on one of the various points or to annihilate the other team. In AVA, EU (Europe) will be the one attacking and planting the C4 while NRF (Neo Russian Federation) will try and kill the EU team or defuse the bomb. There is no respawning until the round ends.
Convoy is another game mode. This mode plays like Capture the Flag. EU has to transport an object to the target area to win while NRF tries to stop them. You can also just kill the opposing team to win. Once again there is no respawning until the end of the round.
Now come the more unique game modes. Prison Break is one of my favourite modes in AVA and has just been released recently. If you ever played a game like Left 4 Dead or any game where you survive waves of zombies, you will like this mode. Instead of zombies you will have to fight off escaped prisoners or fugitives. You will see huge amounts of them running towards you. To make it a bit fair they can only use melee. There are some harder to defeat fugitives you can fight which will randomly spawn at times. One of these types is the swift fugitive who runs very fast, making sure you have a challenge. To make it even harder you cannot respawn! When your whole team dies, you lose.
Fighting Fugitives
While you are killing all these enemies you will be burning a lot of ammo. You can find ammo and health packs by killing fugitives. They will randomly drop.
To win in Prison Break you have to kill all fugitives for round one. In round two you have to activate four controllers to open the gates and in round three you use C4 to demolish the four controllers and open the gate to the helipad. While doing all this there will still be waves of prisoners coming. This sure is one big jail.
The last game mode AVA has to offer is Escort. This is another one of my favourite modes because it reminds me of payload in Team Fortress 2. EU is in charge of escorting a tank to specific points while NRF must defend. To move the tank you simply stand beside it. NRF has areas where they can get RPGs (anti tank rocket launchers) to take down the tanks and stop them from moving any further. EU can repair the tanks when they have been damaged and use the machine gun to mow down enemies. If you fail to reach the specific points before the time ends you will fail.
Customizing and Maps
When creating your character you do not get many options to change your character’s features. You will simply choose what face you want, name your character and start playing the game. You are only able to create male characters; I have not seen any female characters while playing this game.
There are quite a few guns to choose from for each of the classes. To make it even better, you can customize them! You are able to add on items like scopes or silencers to change your weapon to suit your play style.
This game features ten maps unique from each other to offer you some variety so you will not be doing the same thing and applying the same strategies all day.
Very nice lighting on the armour. Also shows how you can use your environment to make strategies.
My Experience
I really enjoyed playing this game as it features great graphics with very fun gameplay. The game was very easy to learn and get used to as I play a lot of FPS games. I enjoyed playing Escort because I love TF2 and this game reminded me a lot of payload in TF2 where you must push a cart to the points.
There were some problems with lag but it rarely happened. I did not experience the community too much because people did not talk a lot. I believe adding a voice chat function will encourage people to talk more and come up with strategies.
Conclusion
To conclude, AVA is a great FPS game that is definitely worth checking out. I can guarantee it will keep you occupied for a while with its great graphics and gameplay. A little work to fix the lag, allow easier changing of graphics, and maybe implementing voice chat will make AVA a great free FPS game.
Pros:
– Good graphics
– Weapons are customizable
– You are able to do offers from Ijji to get free CS items.
– Easy to learn but will take time to master.
– A lot of competition (There are even tournaments for those who are really good)
– Unique modes
– A lot of servers to choose from; never wait to play the game.
– A lot of ranks to keep you busy.
Cons:
– You might face problems changing graphic options.
– The community did not seem to talk too much. (Might be different for everyone, maybe I picked the wrong rooms)
– Some lag issues but they rarely occur.
