PCAlliance of Valiant Arms is a free to play fps for PC that uses the Unreal 3 engine. It takes place during a fictional now/future war between the European Union (EU) and the Neo Russia Federation (NRF). Originally developed in Korea, it was brought to a North American audience by NHN America, or ijji. It uses a class based system and features many different team-based modes. Player characters gain experience and money (euros in-game) to develop special class skills and acquire more powerful weapons and equipment.
Gameplay
The game plays similarly to the popular FPS Counter-Strike: Source. Before entering a game, players are allowed to purchase and equip armor, stat boosting items, and weapons which they pay for with the game's currency. Said currency is gained by playing the game, more being given for the better a player does.
The game's teams are split between the two armies, the EU and the NRF, though neither team has any advantage over the other as they have access to all the same equipment and weapons. The only difference between the two is the look of their soldiers.
The game includes a large variety of weapons, with more being added every update. It includes SMGs, Shotguns, Assault Rifles, Machine Guns, Grenades, Pistols, and Sniper Rifles.
Classes
The game has three classes: Pointman, Rifleman and Sniper.
- Point Man
The 'scout' class, this class uses its speed and maneuverability to its advantage. Using SMGs and Shotguns, this class is always on the move and is the fastest class in the game. Its special abilities including leveling up moving speed, knife damage and range, negated fall damage, and increased SMG reload speeds and ammo counts. It is the only class in the game that can add silencers to their main weapon.
- Rifleman
The rifleman is the most balanced class, being efficient at all ranges and in all combat situations. Using Assault Rifles, this class can be found at the front of any battle and is able to take the most hits out of all the classes. Its special abilities include increased armor and critical-hit defense, grenade throwing range, sighted-accuracy, and increased AR reload speeds and ammo counts.
- Sniper
The long range weapons specialist, this class is at its strongest hidden away at the back lines or in hidden positions picking off enemies from long range. Using both bolt action and semi-automatic rifles, this class has access to the strongest weapons in the game. Its special abilities include increased scoped accuracy, increased on-the-move accuracy, increased movement speed while using sniper rifles, better pistol use, and increased SR reload speeds and ammo counts.
Game Modes
A.V.A includes traditional modes like Demolition and Team Deathmatch. It features unique game modes like Escort, Convoy and E-Boat. Co-operative game modes are also present involving AI enemy survival in Prison Break and in the Riot game mode. Other Co-op campaign modes include Battle Gear Begins and Death Valley. Unique in-game cosmetic skins are dropped as loot in Co-op and survival game modes.
Early in the game's life the first modes were Demolition and Escort, followed by Annihilation. North America and Europe received these three game modes in those region's initial release. Convoy, Free-for-all, AI enemy survival and Death Valley followed next. Later game modes include E-Boat and Riot.
- Demolition
Otherwise known as Search and Destroy, Demolition involves two teams on opposite ends of a map trying to secure one of two objectives or to eliminate the other team. The defense team is known as the Neo-Russian Federation (NRF) while the offense team is known as the European Union (EU). The EU side must either kill the NRF team before regular round clock time hits 0 seconds or plant a bomb, defend it and allow it to explode by reaching 0 seconds on the 40 second long bomb timer. The NRF side must kill the EU team, defuse a planted bomb before the bomb timer hits 0 seconds or have at least 1 member alive while the regular round timer hits 0 seconds.
Only one bomb is provided to the EU team. It can be dropped to the ground and other EU players may pick it up. NRF members may only interact with the bomb by defusing it but can visually see a non-planted dropped bomb on the ground. Additionally, the Command Binoculars can be used to highlight any number of enemy targets with a red rectangle for 5 seconds. Known as UAV, the effect displays the affected targets as a red rectangle through walls (and become smaller with distance) and are displayed on the mini-map. To target a player one must use the binoculars and have the target(s) within the reticle displayed.
There are 14 demolition maps in A.V.A (can not be played in other game modes without modification). They include:
- Black Scent
- Dual Sight
- Hammer Blow
- Cannon
- India
- Hellhound
- Fox Hunting
- Supply
- Airplane
- Aslan
- Slim Fox
- Showdown
- Power Plant
- Factory
Room customization's allow players to change the regular round time, bomb timer, defuse time, friendly fire status and random team shuffle. In North American and European versions some of these options are not accessible.
- Convoy
One team must take a package to an extraction point on the other side of the map. There is no respawning in this mode.
- Annihilation
Standard team deathmatch. Dead players drop dog tags that can be picked up for extra points. Every three dog tags gives a personal score of +3 points. A kill is +1 to the player's score. Games can be customized for time, player count and kill camera.
AI Annihilation
AI Annihilation includes everything that standard Annihilation contains. The game mode adds the addition of AI enemies on both sides and players on either team battle both real and AI enemies. Not all Annihilation maps are playable in AI Annihilation and vise-versa. AI enemy kills improve one's score and the overall team score but does not grant additional gold or experience at the end of the game.
- Escort
One team must escort a tank to the end of the map within the set time limit. The attacking team must take RPGs from weapon lockers and fire them at the tank to disable it. When disabled, the defending team must repair the tank to get it moving again. Throughout the map the tank will cross checkpoints which pushes the respawn location for the defenders forward and the attackers back. When the defenders reach the end of the map, the teams switch sides and the new defenders must get their tank to the end of the map within the amount of time it took the original defenders to win. If the original defenders did not get their tank to the end of the map, then when teams switch the new defenders only need to get their tank to the location the original defenders did before the time limit.
- Free for All
Free-for-all deathmatch pits each individual player against all other players. The player who reaches the kill target by eliminating other players will be the victor. The top players at the current moment are displayed via a UI in-game and updates in real time. Upon death players will respawn and can change their class (effectively letting players choose different weapons). The respawn point is randomly decided with no deeper algorithm to determine fair spawn points.
- Riot
The game's co-op mode. It has two sub-modes. Four players are put into a prison in which they must survive against hordes of AI 'prisoners' (they seem a lot like zombies to me). One of the sub modes is simply to survive as long as possible. As time goes on more and stronger waves of prisoners spawn. The other is escape. This mode is similar to Left4Dead in that the team of four players must go from one side of the map to the exit, but with some large differences. Escape is split into four parts, with each part requiring the players to do different tasks. In each part, the players are given 3 lives. If all 3 lives for all four players are used up, they lose and must start over.
PC System Requirements
- CPU: Pentium 4 2.4GHz
- RAM: 1GB
- VGA: NVidia GeForce 6600 or better
- DX: 9.0C
- OS: Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7
- HDD: 6GB
- Network: Internet Connection required
