366th played so far
Genre: First-Person Shooter
Platform: PC
Year of Release: 2004
Developer: Valve Corporation
Publisher: Valve Corporation
As much as war is a big, easy setting to go to for many shooters, from Call of Duty to Metal Gear Solid and Halo, these days terrorism seems a bigger concern in our world. As it is nearer to our own experiences, it’s less commonly addressed, but some games do go there.
Counter Strike takes this to a place that, if it were more widely known, would probably draw some (minor) controversy. Only supporting co-op multiplayer, team versus team, it pits security forces against terrorist groups, all based on (at the time of release) real ones.
Following the release of the Half-Life mod of this name, the developers of Counter Strike were hired by Valve and, at some point, the game was ported to Half-Life 2 Source engine.
Our Thoughts
We previous played Left 4 Dead, another multiplayer-only FPS, although where the focus there was purely cooperative, and Team Fortress, a very standard multiplayer team vs team experience. Counter-Strike runs with the same mechanics, but takes a different twist. While balanced in numbers, both teams have different goals, often with one taking the initiative and another defending. Taking this approach, the entire game feels different, even if the underlying game is just capture the flag/protect the base/kill each other.
Aside from the setting, the game makes a few more concessions to reality not often seen in these. Rather than respawning on death, you don’t come back to play until the next round. This creates its own goals – usually, when defending, all you need to do is kill everyone else before you are killed yourself or the other group fulfils their directive, and in fact, killing all opponents means you win the round just as much as planting a bomb does.
This system creates short rounds, maybe two or three minutes each, rapidly allowing you to build up a pattern and plans, learning the maps even if you don’t know them yet and getting to work with people you might not have played with ever before. Although we haven’t had as much time to play with it, the maps also felt pretty balanced, with equal chances assuming equal skill (a strategy that worked well with the bots we decided to play with).
Moving away from the game, the map design is interesting. The maps seem intentionally small and simple, with a few sidepaths, but not enough to let yourself get lost or having to protect too many places. As interesting is the variety. The maps we tried had a wide variety of scenery, going beyond just putting buildings in different places to giving a completely different feel between locales, with differences in feel between industrial locations, deserts and caves. Each of these maps can have different play-modes and goals, including weapon restrictions between them.
Weapons can be bought based on performance in previous games – you earn money in rounds to spend on weapons and equipment in later ones. It lets you slowly upgrade to bigger weapons at a measured pace (especially if both sides are progressing at a similar pace), slowly building the chaos each round. Both sneaking and fighting are viable strategies, and when winning you probably want to do both – distract in one area while tryingย toย go in using another, and one the buying mechanic allows you to specialize for.
Final Thoughts
It’s a fine line when it comes to this list about what edition of a game should be included. Counter-Strike: Source is on as a successful update, the original Shadow of the Colossus is on despite a lauded HD update whilst both the original version of Metal Gear Solid and its facelift Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes are entries.
This list discrepancy aside Counter-Strike: Source is a valuable edition to the list. Not just because it means Valve have another entry on the list but also ebcause it marks an unusual case of a shooter where you don’t immediately respawn AND you are able to take the role of the terrorist. After the global success of more gung ho shooters (yes Call of Duty I am looking at you) it is good to see some form of contrast get acknowledged.