(Or: Again with the de_dust?)


As I am a (legitimate — no eBaying here) owner of Counter-Strike: Condition Zero, I, like about a billion other people, was let into the open Counter-Strike: Source this evening, and have braved the impossibly busy Steam servers and returned with some very brief impressions of the game. No shockers here, but if you’re curious, read on.



Anticipating the CS: Source beta, I installed CS: CZ over the weekend, marking the first time I’d actually popped the CD in my drive since receiving that review copy lo those many months ago (it was so long ago, I was still a journalist!). Anyway, the beta was pre-loaded on my system a few days ago, and I figured that was it, and I was ready to go once Valve flipped the switch. Unfortunately, I still needed to download an update, which meant my first 20 minutes of the beta consisted of me continually attempting to log-in to the servers to download said update. As you can imagine, the Steam servers are getting hammered in every possible way tonight, so it took a while.


But eventually I did get in, and so the first thing I did was launch the “video stress test” to see how my system ran the thing. With the default settings for my system (6x AA and 8x filtering, high detail/shadows and world reflections) I averaged around 62 FPS at my monitor’s native resolution of 1280×1024. I decided to crank up the one setting that wasn’t all the way up just to see how I’d fare, and with reflections set to all, I averaged 55 FPS. Pretty nice. The benchmark itself resembles the engine test Valve showed two E3s ago, which was sort of disappointing. I was hoping for something a little more exciting. But it’s functional enough as a benchmark, I suppose.


But of course, the real point of the beta is that it’s a playable game, so I then moved on to try out the game itself. And then began the fun part. First of all, as you can probably guess, 99% of the servers out there are either full, or crashing from the stress of tons of anxious Counter-Strike players who want to get in (the auto-login ain’t helping when there’s this much demand). So it took me a while to actually get into a server. But when I finally did, all hell broke loose on my system.


See, the other day I installed Windows XP Service Pack 2. And like an idiot, I figured all I needed to do was give Steam full access to my system and I would be fine. No dice. A friendly bit of advice for any SP2 users out there: be sure to add the “hl2.exe” file in your Steam\SteamApps directory before attempting to join a server. Apparently CS: Source is one of those Windows apps that really, really doesn’t want to lose focus. So the next ten minutes were spent trying to get CS: Source to crash so I could switch focus to the XP dialogue that popped up when I tried to join a server. Fun! Once that was done, and I’d restarted my machine, I tried again.


This time I had slightly better luck. I finally found a server with a consistently low ping, set it to auto login, and started the process of actually joining the game. But then it just sat on this screen:



But then after a few stalled attempts, it finally managed to get past that…only to crash, giving me a memory read error. Doh!


By this point I was pretty determined to actually play the damn thing, so I tried again. So I did it again. Yep, crashed again. But the third time! Oooh, you better believe it crashed. It took four times before I finally got in a game, joined the Terrorist team, and started spectating.


Now see, this is where my natural stupidity takes over. Figuring I’d post a write-up like this one on my blog, I loaded up Fraps before launching the beta (that’s how I got the above screencap). So there I was spectating, and I decided to take a screenshot. So I hit the F10 key…and the program crashed. No errors this time, just a drop to my desktop. Fortunately for you, I was able to get my screenshot:


Nice, isn’t it?


I refused (note: refused) to let this stop me, so I relaunched the program, and tried a few more times to find a server, and eventually, I got into another server, and yes, I even managed to play two rounds of the game. Amazing.


Okay, so jokes aside, how’s it play? Exactly the way you remember it. Seriously. It’s a lot prettier sure, but it’s identical in every way, shape and form to the original you’ve been playing for ever. The physics are cool, but if they have any effect on the gameplay, I couldn’t tell. Actually, the coolest thing I saw was that it’s bloodier than the original. Or maybe it’s just that the Source engine’s blood is more realistic than the original’s, but I don’t remember the game being so gory (then again, the last time I played dust it was on an Xbox, so maybe that version’s toned down slightly).


But really, everything is identical to the original. The maps, the architecture, the weapons, the character models…the sound effects, everything. It’s all more detailed, but not that much.
Frankly, I question the logic here. I mean, I see the appeal in porting the game, but I really hope this isn’t all we’re getting from Half-Life 2 multiplayer when the game ships. Because as much as I like CS, let’s face it, even if you’re the hardest of the hardcore CS players, there’s only so many times a guy can play de_dust and aztec before they start to get a bit old.


If you’re thinking of buying a CD-Key on eBay, don’t bother. It’s not worth the hassle. The beta is the same level you’ve already played to death and the benchmark is so short it’s not worth going out of your way for.


I’ll admit I’m curious to hear what the hardcore fans have to say about this…I have to think even those people would rather have seen Counter-Strike 2 than this, but then, after all this time those people are still playing the same maps in the old engine, so maybe they’ll all migrate immediately.