Reviews
Counter
Strike
Publisher:
Sierra
Release date: out now
Price: Free mod for Half-Life, standalone version prices
vary.
Type: Online FPS
Official Website: www.counter-strike.net
Minimum Specs: Pentium 200, 32MB RAM, Internet Connection
28.8k+
Tested on: Celeron 566, 256MB RAM, Geforce2MX 32MB
Counterstrike is one of the most (if not *the* most) popular
modification to Half Life and now it's available as a
stand alone game. If you've never played it, the basic
idea of this game is that there are teams of Terrorists
and Counter-terrorists who do battle against each other
in different scenarios. It's an all out war in which you
have to use tactics and teamwork to win.
There
are many different scenarios which you are put into, one
of them is the terrorists have to plant a bomb in a certain
area of the level, and the counter- terrorists have to
either stop the bomb being planted or diffuse it in time.
Another is that there are hostages being held captive
by the terrorists and the counter-terrorists have to get
to the hostages, and get them back to safety, without
the terrorists spotting and killing you.
It is very exciting to play as it feels real, because
there is simply no way you can run headlong into the terrorist’s
base and get the hostages, because you will be killed
straight away – you and your team-mates will have
to employ tactics to complete the mission objective.
The main weapons range from the popular Desert Eagles,
AK-47’s and sniper rifles to the plain old pistols.
There are so many ways you can go about achieving each
objective – you could stay with the rest of the group
and pick the other team off when you see them, and throw
the odd grenade to keep the opposition at arms length,
or you could find a good dark spot and snipe the opposition
when they come into view, which can be very satisfying
when you get a head-shot without the other person even
knowing what happened.
~Going
online~
To actually play online, just go to "internet games"
in the options screens and it will automatically search
for servers (after having connected to your ISP), but
this is a little slow. There are better ways of finding
servers such as using external programs like "The
all-seeing eye" and "Gamespy arcade", they
find servers faster and have more filters to chose from.
Something to note about other Internet users is that most
servers you play on have very good players on it, and
you will probably get killed straight away on your first
go.
~An
alternative to playing online~
One way of getting better at the game, so as to get prepared
to play online is to download something called “bots”,
with this you can play Counter-strike offline against
computer controlled opponents.
You can determine the ability of them, which is definitely
a good idea to do – because it will hone your skills,
as you can start on an easy level, and then slowly increase
the intelligence of the bots.
As before, you can download some of these of counter-strike.net
– they are very easy to install to the game, because
you just un-zip them to your cstrike directory on your
hard-drive. Although with some of them, you may need a
program called Winrar which will do much the same job
as winzip, but for different file types like .RAR
~Customisation~
The good thing about it being a PC game is that you will
be able to download maps from the Internet when you are
bored of the ones that have been given to you as default.
That said, all the maps are very good, with well thought-out
design, giving you lots of places to hide and many ways
to attack the enemy.
You can also get something called an SDK (self development
kit called Worldcraft), in which you can make your own
spray logos, character skins and maps. Doing this yourself
can be very hard and time consuming, so I would reccomend
just downloading other people's creations to begin with.
~Conclusion~
Having said that online play is hard, but it's still great
fun to do when you are at an acceptable level of ability.
The online play IS Counter-Strike – so if you don't
want to be hogging your phone line, then don't Download/Buy
it. The game can actually be bought as a standalone game,
if you don’t have the original Half-life game.
Review
Score: 9/10
Review
by Mark Jones
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