Sunday, March 05, 2006
An Everyman's Guide to Counterstrike: Source
Today's Geekdom Post is brought to you by Curtis Kidd. He's writing on a topic I only encounter occassionally: the Video Game. And now...
An Everyman's Guide to Counterstrike: Source
One of the advantages to having a lot of extended family
that lives in the area is that I get involved in a lot of
activities I would otherwise never get around to. One of
these is LAN parties; I don't know that many people that
enjoy playing on the computer, outside of my family circle,
that live in this area.
And I have to credit my cousin, Roy, with introducing me to
a lot of games. The most recent one on the list is
Counterstrike: Source. This is, simply, the original
Counterstrike, with a few options built in to tweak some of
the game options.
Now, before you get into this and wonder why I haven't
answered all the questions you might think to ask, look at
the heading again. I consider myself an 'everyman'...Joe
Average, someone who knows enough about computers to get
them to work most of the time, but not enough to do
anything beyond some pretty basic trouble-shooting. I
don't worry much about the fine details of how games
work--I just worry about whether or not they're fun to
play.
Quick overview--Counterstrike is a first-person-shooter
game, built on the Half-Life engine. Players can be
Terrorists or Counter-Terrorists--the grown-ups version of
Cowboys and Indians. Both teams play basically the same,
but have a few different options for choices in weapons.
Two different game scenarios exist--Hostage Rescue or Bomb
Planting. The different scenarios put pressure on the
different teams to be the pro-active element in the
game--in the rescue scenario, the CT team has to penetrate
a location and either eliminate all the terrorists or else
find the hostages and return them to a neutral safe-zone.
The bomb scenario requires the terrorists to infiltrate a
target, to one of two bomb sites, plant the bomb, and
protect it against being defused...and hopefully make a run
to safety before the bomb goes off. Or, optionally, they
can just kill all the counter-terrorists.
While this runs off the same engine as Half-Life, I prefer
Counterstrike...it may be the same, in the actual mechanics
of the game, but you don't have all the 'trick' effects of
the weapons. You fire, and bullets fly...and when they hit
a target, it hurts it. No guided missiles, or fancy
ray-guns, and the sights on all the weapons are easy to see
(which is NOT true in Half-Life). As I told my brother
when talking to him about it, it's kind of like playing a
digital version of paintball.
The big advance between Counterstrike and CS: Source is how
the multi-player options work. The original forced a
balance of players between teams--which is nice, if you
have a well-balanced skill level among all your players and
everyone has a nice, even temper. The group I play with
had two or three outstanding players, and many is the time
we wished we could split them up to pit the two of them
against the five or six of the rest of us (we ended up
playing Call of Duty for that...a review for another time).
You could, with some effort, track down programs to set up
'bot players', computer-controlled opponents...but the
quality of the bots was hit-or-miss, and you typically got
one skill level only. If you were a proficient player,
this made it challenging. If you were a novice player,
trying to get some practice, this made it infuriating.
CS: Source now has an option where you can set up one team
with a variable number of players, which can all be bots.
You can set the skill level, limit the options for weapons,
and otherwise tweak the game to create a scenario to
optimize your satisfaction with play. There are also
additional options (with me being a non-die-hard gamer, I
don't know if the list of options my cousin was tweaking
came with the software, or if it's a list of cheats that he
found online somewhere...but the printed list didn't look
like anything official), so you can adjust the other
aspects of the game as you go.
It's fairly graphics-intensive on your system...if you're
not set up to handle high-quality graphics smoothly, you'll
bog your system down in no time flat. And if you're
planning on playing any sort of sniper role in the game,
lowering the graphics quality isn't a viable option.
Character motion is relatively fluid, weapon recoil comes
into play, and you have to deal with a blinding white
screen and muddled sound if you get caught in a blast from
a flashbang grenade. If you find yourself taking fire,
your motions are impossible to control (some less-capable
systems just freeze the character, rather than jerking it
uncontrollably). Realistically, you can't armor your head
very effectively--and if you get shot in the head in this
game, you will die (there's even a special graphic that
pops up to indicate kills by headshot, as well as graphics
specifically for grenade, and each weapon. There's also a
special option for team-killing, if you want to force
team-mates to deal with friendly fire situations.)
You are limited to buying the weapons in your category
(counter-terrorist/terrorist); but you can steal weapons if
you happen across someone's corpse. If you die after that,
you lose the weapon, of course...and there are some weapons
that are better-suited for various situations (sniping with
a shotgun doesn't work...neither does trying to shoot
through a wood wall with a submachine gun. But a sniper
rifle will do either one. However, unless you're looking
through the scope of the rifle, you've only got an educated
guess on where the shot is going to go.)
Things can be very fast-moving--a round can be over in a
matter of a minute or so, depending on whether or not your
team runs into the other team...or they can be very
slow-paced, depending on your style of play (I tend to be
the slow-creeping, stealthy type, which has its own
advantages and disadvantages...in most scenarios in this
game, however, that doesn't work very well. The graphics
don't accomodate it very well.) There are, as in reality,
some tactics that are very successful in one situation,
which don't work at all in others. The variety of
available maps for this game forces a certain degree of
tactical flexibility, and players that excel on one map may
find themselves floundering on another. Familiarity with
the game can be as much a factor as anything else...knowing
the capabilities of each weapon is a big plus; but knowing
your way around the maps is every bit as helpful as any
weapon.
Overall, I really enjoy the game. My biggest single
complaint about it is that you have to download updates
from the Steam website occasionally...and these are NOT
small updates. We had several machines set up and running,
but had to update a couple of them this weekend...one of
them took HOURS to download the last 20% of the update.
Steam REALLY needs to come up with some mirror sites for
the updates, to facilitate this process. You also have to
purchase an account with them to get the updates ($20 if
all you're working on is CS...but if you want access to all
their other game options, it gets pricey in a big rush)--I
believe your first account is paid for with your game, when
you purchase the software. My guess is, this is their
answer to the arrival of serial number cracks that are
often easily located on the internet.
I REALLY enjoy the fact that I can go and play with all my
gaming buds, and nobody is walking out at the end of the
night feeling resentful that they had a bad evening. You
can still play head-to-head if you so desire, but it's no
longer a requirement. For people like me, who enjoy the
sense of playing as part of a team, it's a great tweak.
And, I'll tell ya, there's a real sense of satisfaction
when you take up a position and gun down the other team
with a heavy machine gun, to be answered with the howls of
appreciation throughout the room at your success
(especially if the bots have been running rampant for the
past several rounds of play).
If you like first-person shooters, want something with
contemporary weapons and better-than-decent graphics (it
was very gratifying to shoot a couple of the terrorists the
other night and see them pitch headlong out through a
broken window), and really like the option of being able to
play WITH your buddies, instead of against them, I
recommend this one. Just make sure you get started on your
updates WELL in advance of the LAN party...or you could
find yourself sitting for hours, waiting to update, while
your buds are racking up a digital body count and war
stories galore.
Curtis Kidd
"Remember, the light at the end of the tunnel could be you!"
An Everyman's Guide to Counterstrike: Source
One of the advantages to having a lot of extended family
that lives in the area is that I get involved in a lot of
activities I would otherwise never get around to. One of
these is LAN parties; I don't know that many people that
enjoy playing on the computer, outside of my family circle,
that live in this area.
And I have to credit my cousin, Roy, with introducing me to
a lot of games. The most recent one on the list is
Counterstrike: Source. This is, simply, the original
Counterstrike, with a few options built in to tweak some of
the game options.
Now, before you get into this and wonder why I haven't
answered all the questions you might think to ask, look at
the heading again. I consider myself an 'everyman'...Joe
Average, someone who knows enough about computers to get
them to work most of the time, but not enough to do
anything beyond some pretty basic trouble-shooting. I
don't worry much about the fine details of how games
work--I just worry about whether or not they're fun to
play.
Quick overview--Counterstrike is a first-person-shooter
game, built on the Half-Life engine. Players can be
Terrorists or Counter-Terrorists--the grown-ups version of
Cowboys and Indians. Both teams play basically the same,
but have a few different options for choices in weapons.
Two different game scenarios exist--Hostage Rescue or Bomb
Planting. The different scenarios put pressure on the
different teams to be the pro-active element in the
game--in the rescue scenario, the CT team has to penetrate
a location and either eliminate all the terrorists or else
find the hostages and return them to a neutral safe-zone.
The bomb scenario requires the terrorists to infiltrate a
target, to one of two bomb sites, plant the bomb, and
protect it against being defused...and hopefully make a run
to safety before the bomb goes off. Or, optionally, they
can just kill all the counter-terrorists.
While this runs off the same engine as Half-Life, I prefer
Counterstrike...it may be the same, in the actual mechanics
of the game, but you don't have all the 'trick' effects of
the weapons. You fire, and bullets fly...and when they hit
a target, it hurts it. No guided missiles, or fancy
ray-guns, and the sights on all the weapons are easy to see
(which is NOT true in Half-Life). As I told my brother
when talking to him about it, it's kind of like playing a
digital version of paintball.
The big advance between Counterstrike and CS: Source is how
the multi-player options work. The original forced a
balance of players between teams--which is nice, if you
have a well-balanced skill level among all your players and
everyone has a nice, even temper. The group I play with
had two or three outstanding players, and many is the time
we wished we could split them up to pit the two of them
against the five or six of the rest of us (we ended up
playing Call of Duty for that...a review for another time).
You could, with some effort, track down programs to set up
'bot players', computer-controlled opponents...but the
quality of the bots was hit-or-miss, and you typically got
one skill level only. If you were a proficient player,
this made it challenging. If you were a novice player,
trying to get some practice, this made it infuriating.
CS: Source now has an option where you can set up one team
with a variable number of players, which can all be bots.
You can set the skill level, limit the options for weapons,
and otherwise tweak the game to create a scenario to
optimize your satisfaction with play. There are also
additional options (with me being a non-die-hard gamer, I
don't know if the list of options my cousin was tweaking
came with the software, or if it's a list of cheats that he
found online somewhere...but the printed list didn't look
like anything official), so you can adjust the other
aspects of the game as you go.
It's fairly graphics-intensive on your system...if you're
not set up to handle high-quality graphics smoothly, you'll
bog your system down in no time flat. And if you're
planning on playing any sort of sniper role in the game,
lowering the graphics quality isn't a viable option.
Character motion is relatively fluid, weapon recoil comes
into play, and you have to deal with a blinding white
screen and muddled sound if you get caught in a blast from
a flashbang grenade. If you find yourself taking fire,
your motions are impossible to control (some less-capable
systems just freeze the character, rather than jerking it
uncontrollably). Realistically, you can't armor your head
very effectively--and if you get shot in the head in this
game, you will die (there's even a special graphic that
pops up to indicate kills by headshot, as well as graphics
specifically for grenade, and each weapon. There's also a
special option for team-killing, if you want to force
team-mates to deal with friendly fire situations.)
You are limited to buying the weapons in your category
(counter-terrorist/terrorist); but you can steal weapons if
you happen across someone's corpse. If you die after that,
you lose the weapon, of course...and there are some weapons
that are better-suited for various situations (sniping with
a shotgun doesn't work...neither does trying to shoot
through a wood wall with a submachine gun. But a sniper
rifle will do either one. However, unless you're looking
through the scope of the rifle, you've only got an educated
guess on where the shot is going to go.)
Things can be very fast-moving--a round can be over in a
matter of a minute or so, depending on whether or not your
team runs into the other team...or they can be very
slow-paced, depending on your style of play (I tend to be
the slow-creeping, stealthy type, which has its own
advantages and disadvantages...in most scenarios in this
game, however, that doesn't work very well. The graphics
don't accomodate it very well.) There are, as in reality,
some tactics that are very successful in one situation,
which don't work at all in others. The variety of
available maps for this game forces a certain degree of
tactical flexibility, and players that excel on one map may
find themselves floundering on another. Familiarity with
the game can be as much a factor as anything else...knowing
the capabilities of each weapon is a big plus; but knowing
your way around the maps is every bit as helpful as any
weapon.
Overall, I really enjoy the game. My biggest single
complaint about it is that you have to download updates
from the Steam website occasionally...and these are NOT
small updates. We had several machines set up and running,
but had to update a couple of them this weekend...one of
them took HOURS to download the last 20% of the update.
Steam REALLY needs to come up with some mirror sites for
the updates, to facilitate this process. You also have to
purchase an account with them to get the updates ($20 if
all you're working on is CS...but if you want access to all
their other game options, it gets pricey in a big rush)--I
believe your first account is paid for with your game, when
you purchase the software. My guess is, this is their
answer to the arrival of serial number cracks that are
often easily located on the internet.
I REALLY enjoy the fact that I can go and play with all my
gaming buds, and nobody is walking out at the end of the
night feeling resentful that they had a bad evening. You
can still play head-to-head if you so desire, but it's no
longer a requirement. For people like me, who enjoy the
sense of playing as part of a team, it's a great tweak.
And, I'll tell ya, there's a real sense of satisfaction
when you take up a position and gun down the other team
with a heavy machine gun, to be answered with the howls of
appreciation throughout the room at your success
(especially if the bots have been running rampant for the
past several rounds of play).
If you like first-person shooters, want something with
contemporary weapons and better-than-decent graphics (it
was very gratifying to shoot a couple of the terrorists the
other night and see them pitch headlong out through a
broken window), and really like the option of being able to
play WITH your buddies, instead of against them, I
recommend this one. Just make sure you get started on your
updates WELL in advance of the LAN party...or you could
find yourself sitting for hours, waiting to update, while
your buds are racking up a digital body count and war
stories galore.
Curtis Kidd
"Remember, the light at the end of the tunnel could be you!"
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