Counter-Strike

"A huge blessing in a disguise : Counter Strike"

Counter-Strike was one of the most popular PC titles of all time. Console hardcore gamers wanted a piece of the action just as badly as PC gamers wanted a little Halo. When Counter-Strike was announced for the Xbox, the pitch fevered and newcomers to Counter-Strike as well as hard core Counter-Strike addicts were ecstatic. Funny what a little time will do to a great game. With a remarkably similar turn of events, Halo and Counter-Strike both suffer from being too much like the originals, but being a couple of years late on the current platforms.

Gameplay:

For the one or two of you out there who aren’t familiar with Counter-Strike, lemme ‘splain. Counter-Strike is a spin-off of another amazing PC title, Half-Life. The spin is that it uses modern day weaponry and locations with modern day themes such as terrorism.

First of all, if you don’t plan on using Xbox Live, you really shouldn’t bother with Counter-Strike. I say this, knowing that you’ll probably ignore it, because nearly everybody that likes FPS action in any form will at least give Counter-Strike on the Xbox a rental. But the single player mode is lame, to be blunt. There is no storyline and the single player game consists of an Unreal Tournament-style training experience with bots on both teams. You basically are limited to skirmish type single player games. They are fun, but not as good as they could be with a mission-based campaign integrated with some kind of storyline or objectives.

That aside, the game itself, particularly when played against live opponents is great. CS is setup with two different teams – terrorist and non-terrorist. You choose a side and then you go to war. As a counter-terrorist, you can battle all the opponents, rescue hostages, and defuse bombs and foil terrorist plans. There is quite a bit of strategy involved with missions because of the fact that there are multiple ways to win. Also, you can’t just go out and blast everybody not on your team, because some of them may be innocent hostages. Neither side wants the hostages to die, obviously. This kind of look before you shoot flare makes the game much more interesting and challenging without slowing the game to a crawl like the Tom Clancy series.

Games are based off of multiple rounds in which one team is declared a victor of the round. Before each round, your team hits the shops and purchases weapons, ammo and other equipment to go to battle. If you win the round, you get more money to purchase better stuff. Obviously you want to win each round in order to avoid having to chase down rocket launchers with a pistol.

Up to ten players are allowed in a game at a time and a mixture of bots and players can be used if you only have a few players available. But, I can’t emphasize this enough, the game is great with a bunch of other humans playing at your side, but it fails miserably the more bots you have. They just don’t play the way humans play and the lack of single player storyline really makes this an online only game in many ways.

Gameplay Score: 9/10 -- Would of had the 10 if the maps were not changed from the classic version of the PC. I was very disapointed when I logged on and played dust2 without knowing where to go....It's over all a great game in need of tweaking. Just to let you know I played this game on PC in CAL-INVITE lvl with Hicks With Sticks and I must say this is a must for any true gamer.. All you DIEHARD cs fans get out there and buy this game, it's worth it because frankly it's the best game out there since Halo. Give it a try, you won't go home UNHAPPY.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 02/11/04