First off, don't get fooled by my played hours, I've been playing it way before it was avaiable on steam but I didn't touch it since around 1.5 years. I would estimate that my played hours are somewhere around 3k, I've also participated in 2 tournaments. I would still love this game and recommend it to everyone and their grandma if Aeria wouldn't have messed up AVA like they did.

AVA was a great game back when ijji published it, it had great potential. The maps are great, nothing to complain about here. You could buy Weapons, Grenades and Armor for ingame money. You would get money relatively slow, but once you hit 50-60k € you could buy a decent, permanent weapon and that's pretty much all you needed. You also need money to repair that weapon and buy parts for your weapon that need to get replaced regularly. Getting 50-60k could take up to 1-2 months, depending on how much you played. You could still spend real money on weapons in order to get them immediately. It still was not pay to win at all. The graphics were actually decent for a F2P game. You would encounter hackers from time to time, depending on whether there were any free hacks out there or not.

Ever since Aeria games took over things changed. Their biggest failure was the removal of permanent weapons, which ultimately made the game pay to win. You could only buy weapons for 30 days, then they expired. The price of a decent weapon was still around 50-60k, and I guess you already see that this is a huge problem. If you don't play 3-4 hours per day you won't be able to get 50-60k per month, that means you have to play with the standard weapons which are not entirely useless, but you would never beat someone who is on the same skill level as you with a standard weapon while he uses his expensive rifle. This also meant that old players will always have an advantage over new players, because they still have their permanent weapons.

The thing is, you may think that the publisher should have no influence on the content of the game, since they are only publishing, but not making it. Redduck is actually making the game, and they do so for several other regions such as Japan/China/Korea. All of those regions still have permanent weapons. In fact, Aeria denied to have anything to do with the change from permanent to timed weapons, but we actually contacted someone from Redduck who told us that they were against that change, but Aeria insisted.

The next point are hackers. Aeria implemented a new anti cheat engine that doesn't do its job at all. There were times where you would run into a hacker every 2-3 games. I can't tell you how it is in its current state tho, since I haven't played since quite some time.

By the way, Aeria introduced the "Tiered Spender" where you would get additional rewards depending on how much money you spend on their game. That's a nice concept, but the thing is that many of those additional rewards are permanent weapons, which is another aspect that makes it pay to win. Just to give you an idea on what you have to spend for a permanent weapon: In one of those tiered spenders you would get a permanent weapon starting at 7999 AP(a little more than 60€) and ending at 29999 AP(around 210€).

This is coming from someone who sometimes played this game all day long, played 2 tournaments and even made a few videos, my best montage got around 2k views, my overall best AVA video has around 10k views. If you have LOTS of money and can live with the fact that this game is pay to win then by all means, get it. I've been putting a decent amount of money into this game myself, and I would never do it again. Money still doesn't buy you skill, but it surely gives you an huge advantage. The next thing to consider are the hackers, everytime there are free hacks on a certain site AVA will be unplayable, and you might even get banned despite being a legitimate player (At one point hackers were able to use your name, which earned you lots of reports). And then I wish you good luck with Aerias automated support answers when you try to appeal a ban.

In the end it's up to you, but I can not recommend it in its current state.


*UPDATE*

I still play a round or two every few months, and I was positively surprised when I played yesterday. Permanent guns are back, but they are really expensive and it surely will take you quite some time until you have enough money for a good gun. I think they need to either make the weapons cheaper, or give you the option to try them out for free before you buy them permanently. It now feels a lot like back in the days when I still used to play this game all day long, but it still has a few pay to win elements. You are still not going to be able to beat a good player if you are average and spend a lot of money, but it's harder for beginners to get into the game, because it will take lots of time until you found the right gun, can afford it, and got enough money to buy armor as well. So it's not pay to win in the sense that bad players will defeat good players because they spent money, but good players who already have an advantage over new/bad players will have an even bigger advantage, so expect to have a hard time in the beginning if you plan on playing AVA.

If you are starting out I recommend you check out some guides because there are some things you should know that are not immediately obvious. Here is an (old) thread that's actually meant for players who want to play AVA competitively, but still is relevant and could give you some useful tips: http://www.aeriagames.com/forums/en/viewtopic.php?t=1885997

Hackers are still around, but it's not as bad as it used to be. It is understandable that they can't prevent hacking, because they can only react to hacks after they have been released for the most part. They surely are doing things to stop hackers before they actually get to do any damage, we have XIGNCODE after all. It's similar to bugs and glitches, if you programming a game or program you are going to try to avoid bugs, but you can't eliminate every single bug before they actually occured. The best you can do is try to prevent them to your best ability, so there will be as few bugs as possible.

So, I still don't recommend this game, altho it got a lot better. AVA is on a good path right now and maybe I will one day be able to recommend it again. I even think I'm going to play it more regularly from now on. Maybe I will give AVA a positive review one day, but today is not that day.

This game was a pretty decent F2P game before Aeria Games took over.

Now it's just Combat Arms but better graphics. Pay to win. Pay to get decent guns.

Also full of hackers.

The fact that these game companies exsit make me sick. Aeria Games, you have no respect from me and probably 99.9% of PC Gamers.

PLEASE READ BELOW:

This isn't even a recommendation, but a warning. This game has been ruined by Aeria Games Entertainment and since the June update on 2013, the best and most of the fun guns are basically timed. You may wonder, what you mean timed? Well, before this June update, all guns can be bought permamently, either for in-game money or real money. But since the update, basically all the good guns are timed. Who would spend $15 USD for ONE gun that you can play with for 30 days? Yep, $15 USD for 30 DAYS. Not only that, the euros you earn in-game is freaking hard to earn and it won't be enough to cover the costs of buying attachments and even buying the gun again.

With how stupid Aeria Games Entertainment has become and basically ignored our pleas and said "Screw you, we know better than you silly gamers because we got the power" and thus, if you play the game today, you will see a lot more hackers than before and a lot of model bugs that ruins the gameplay easily. I feel sad that this game had to take this path, and it was going well too...

UPDATE (June 7, 2015): After playing this game again after hearing about the permament guns returning, so far, the game is finally good with the permament euro guns now. Earning the in-game Euros are still kinda tedious but doing the events that Aeria has on their monthly events calander can help you earn the Euros (Such as playing x-map for 2 hours to earn 30k Euros for example). The game is still poorly optimized with FPS fluctuating between 90 FPS and max FPS (200) even when staring at the skies in India. Not only that, the networking of this game is still horrid, that even when shooting your enemy in the face, the shots will not register at all and you'll die instead. Game is still infested with players over 130 ping and that makes killing them more than a challenge already as their shots can kill you even behind cover when you peek out (due to the model delay on their screen where even if you just take a quick peek and you're already behind cover on your view, their view shows you completely exposed and you'll get killed from them). Permament guns are a great start and I thank the new PM for pushing this intiative. This game still has a lot of work to do (And at the same time, I would love a HD texture pack in this game. It looks awful at max settings).

Let me go on record to say that this game is fun.
It has some good gamemodes, some good combat, and overall, it's a very good counter-strike knockoff.
then the problems start.
First: this game installs a keylogger. THAT'S ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ RIGHT. IT INSTALLS A 3RD-PARTY KEYLOGGER FOR ANTI-CHEAT MEASURES. It's also nearly impossible to remove, unless you extremely specifically remove something from System32, then from Regedit, but i'm not even going to try.
Second: The company that made bought the rights to this game filled it up with weapons that you have to buy for... with real. world. money. Here's the best part: the weapons have better stats, but disappear from your inventory after a while. You know what that means? A Paytowin FPS.
Even if they didn't have other stats, they're just retextures of other items, for example, you could have a normal smoke grenade, or get a colored one for an additional fee.
Personally, i only installed this to get the black rose in TF2, but found myself playing it more than expected. I uninstalled it several months ago, and just now found out about the keylogger.
DON'T INSTALL THIS GAME. NOT EVEN FOR THE BLACK ROSE. IT'S NOT WORTH THE RISK.

Give me a like if you only played for the tf2 knife

Playing this game for about five years going on six and seeing the different changes that have affected this game makes me ashamed of how long I've played this game, I have developed many perspectives for this game. Playing when IJJI had the game was when A.V.A was at its prime, back when the guns actually took skill to use, and how the competitive scene was just being born. But ever since Aeria Games has taken over the game, they have reduced the game to its limit. Milking every dollar they could make, removal of permanent guns and the implementation of timed weapons. Poor server maintenance, etc. First off this game is a fast paced, intense action first person shooter. Second the guns in this game are well made considering most of the guns are based off real guns. (excluding Mega Capsules, Blue tickets, Red Tickets, Etc.) Third, the maps are OKAY, not well made, it's basic maps, some maps are so outdated that they don't even bother fixing the glitches/bugs in most of the maps. (but the maps that are played the most are updated a lot.) Fourth, this games graphics are fairly outdated for the North American version (UAVA), but seeing what the future updates will bring forth has made me more interested in this game. Such as HD textures. Currently in TAVA (Taiwan AVA) they have HD Textures which are considered a huge thing. Fifth, is the competitive scene, back in 2009-2012 the competitive scene was at its best. ieSF was a huge contribution to the competitive scene, they made the players strive towards perfection at this game. But sadly ieSF has stopped including A.V.A in their games list, because of lack of players in the competitive scene. Many of you might know Skadoodle of team iBuyPower from CS:GO, he has played this game professionally and has competed in ieSF, considering this is the first game that he ever played competitively and has achieved the most in. It is sad how the players quit because of the lack of competition because poor anti-cheat, poor game design, etc. All the things I have listed here are mostly cons of why I don't recommend this game. And now I will list the Pros of this game, there are a few dedicated players willing to do whatever it takes to make this game better and improve the amount of players, to have a permanent gun in this game, you had to be playing before they removed the permanent option. If you live near the servers, (Example: Canada) you will have at least 1 ping or 2 depending if you have good internet or not, this game is a really good game to help your aim. It's easy to warm up for games like CS:GO, it will make your aim better, you could have fun playing this game if you play with friends. That pretty much it. Aside from the fact that the people installing this game just for the "Black Rose" knife in TF2 and then uninstalling this game right after. It installs a keylogger into your system, but it does nothing. I promise you it doesn't do anything to your PC. But uninstalling it without playing it is stupid in my opinion. At least play the game, who knows? Maybe you will end up liking the game and maybe pay money to actually get permanent weapons. Overall my final verdict for this game is 6.5/10, it used to be 9/10 but ever since the heavy impacts it took, I don't recommend this game. Pay 2 Win, used to be balanced. Don't download unless you have played since 2011 and have perm guns. Enjoy!

I've been playing this game since ijji owned the franchise... 1500 hours, the game itself was fun... until Aeria Games scammed me. After not logging in for 6 months, my account that had a list of guns, was reactivated just to find the entire inventory empty... i made a ticket and thought maybe they're was another process to this... apparently aeria says there is no record of me owning anything of a sort... they left me 30k, and the standard starting m4a1, the standard sv98, and an mp5... Everything i had bought with real money, and everything i took the time to acquired was now lost forever, as staff told me... they even told me my account was banned for "inactivity" and had "unused ap". I will never spend another dollar on this game, and will discourage others from playing this game till the day i die.

Instructions
1. Install game
2. Get the TF2 Knife
3. Uninstall game
4. Profit!

Man this is so smooth, so powerfull, and so delux, I never though this much quality could be put into a knife. err... wait, aim I supposed to be talking about the game?

What game?

Admit it







You want the black rose