Counter-Strike: Source

17 October, 2006. 485 words.

I broke down and played some Counter-Strike: Source last night. This was the first time I’ve ever played Counter-Strike (CS) in all the seven years or so it’s been out. I figured it was time to assimilate since it’s like the most popular online game in the world, and runs on 6 bazillion servers, and has 7 gajillion people playing it every day. (As opposed to the handful of people playing Quake 4 on 37 servers.) The server I chose was running what amounted to a team deathmatch game on some Middle Eastern desert town map. I don’t know if it was “pure” Counter-Strike or some mod variation — I guess it was a mod because you respawned immediately after you died.

Overall, I liked it a lot better than HL2:DM, and I could see myself playing it again, but here are some complaints:

You can’t tell the stinkin’ teams apart! All the player models are some variation of brown and olive fatigues. It takes a lot of valuable time to squint at the screen to determine whether that’s a good guy (in a helmet) or a bad guy (in a mask) in the distance. If it’s a bad guy, you’re usually dead before you figure it out. And the little crosshair thingy that’s supposed to tell you whether it’s a good guy or bad guy took a long time to figure it out, too. That was the most frustrating aspect of gameplay. I suppose after some time, it would become second nature (I had the same problem with Wolfenstein at first), but for a n00b, it’s completely impossible.

It always took about 50 shots from the pistol for me to kill anyone. So I’m sitting there pumping round after round into this guy that’s just standing there, and then he leisurely turns around and kills me with one shot. Huh? It happened over and over and over again. I realize the default pistol is probably not the best weapon, but surely I should be able to kill someone by emptying an entire clip into his head?

So how do I get one of those one-shot-kill guns? That brings me to the weapon system. Somehow you get money for kills, with which you can buy new weapons. I didn’t really understand it, but admittedly I wasn’t really trying to. I just used the pistol most of the time. At one point, a menu randomly appeared on the left that let me upgrade to an AK-47, but I have no idea how it happened. The AK-47 worked a little better, btw, but not much. I guess if I plan to play CS more I should probably figure the weaponry out.

Overall, I found it to be a moderately enjoyable experience, but it still fell short of the “good old days” of online gaming. It wasn’t an addicted-at-first-sight sort of experience; just an okay-to-pass-the-time sort of experience.

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