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War Rock
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War has never rocked this hard! This cross between Counterstrike and Battlefield 2 is well worth the free download.

As gamers we know that our hobby doesn’t come cheap. It costs money every time we want a hot new game and even those of us who wait a few months to pick up a used title at the local Gamestop will still see the dollars add up considerably after a while. That’s why I get as giddy as a school girl when I hear the words “free” and “game” used together in a sentence. Unfortunately that particular vocabulary combination usually has an additional definition: suck-o.

Like in Battlefield 2, aircraft are tricky to learn and difficult to control, but a skilled pilot can make a huge difference in battle.

In recent months that trend has started to change. Thanks to the advent of microtransactions and in-game advertising (and, in some cases nothing more than the good will of a publisher) there are now a slew of pretty good games that can be downloaded and played online free of charge. Games like F.E.A.R. Combat (completely free and sans-ads) and Bots! (supported by ads and micro transactions) are not only free to play, but a heck of a lot of fun. Return to Castle Wolfenstien: Enemy Territory is also a complete freebie that has been going strong for about two years. Now a new game has joined this collection and I’m happy to say that it’s pretty good. That game is War Rock and, living up to its name, it rocks.

War Rock is a team-based FPS that plays like the bastard child of Valve’s Counterstrike and Dice’s Battlefield games. Players choose soldiers from one of five classes (engineer, medic, scout, combatant, and heavy weapons) to engage in head to head skirmishes across multiple maps and three basic game modes. If you want to play a different class you merely choose another when you respawn (in most modes), ala Battlefield 2.

Doin' wheelies on a motorcycle. How cool is that?

The three game modes are currently called Close Quarters, Urban Ops, and Battle Group. In Close Quarters one team is trying to plant and detonate a bomb while the other attempts to prevent this or defuse the device once the timer is ticking. Sound familiar? It should – that’s what’s been going on in Counterstrike for years. Urban Ops is a small-scale version of Battlefield 2, conducted primarily on maps that represent war-torn urban locations. Battle Group offers far larger battles on huge maps and comes complete with an impressive array of combat vehicles. Gameplay in both these modes revolves around the capture and control of strategic bases or control points; just like in Battlefield 2.

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