Most games I buy are shelved within a month, with an exception of a few and Counter-Strike is one of them. Six months after getting Counter-Strike im still playing with enthusiasm - and to think this was a game I got for free!

The gameplay concept is simple - Your either a Counter-Terrorist or a Terrorist. The Counter-Terrorists job is usally to eliminate the Terrorists, escort a V.I.P, rescue hostages, defuse a bomb or stop it from being planted in the first place. The Terrorists job is usually vice-versa, kill the Counter-Terrorists, kill the V.I.P, plant a bomb and make sure it blows up, prevent the Counter-Terrorists from rescuing the hostages.

The graphics are still pretty good seeing that it's a Modification of the Half-Life engine which is based on the Quake engine.

The guns are modeled very accuratly, the way the weapons fire and recoil are pretty much the same as in real life. The weapons are also quite well balanced except for a few. If you play the game you'll soon come across a weapon called the AWP (Arctic Warfare Profile) which will probably kill you in one shot. The bug where if you get shot in the foot and die instantly with an AWP has been fixed in a later version.

The guns are taken from real life so don't expect lasers and high speed machinegun turrets. The guns are split into these categories:
Pistols -- Used as your backup weapon
Shotguns -- Powerful at short range but useless at distances
SMGs -- Sub Machine Guns (Average at everything)
Rifles -- Good for distances
Machine Gun -- Only one of these, has a huge clip
Oh, and you also get a knife
Some guns have silencers as an addon to increase the accuracy and quiten your weapon.

Theres also equiptment menu to buy things like kevlar and a helmet, a high explosive grenade, a flashbang grendage which blinds you for a while, smoke grenades, a defuse kit and nightvision.

It takes quite some skill to master the weapons and learn the different characteristics of each one. A technique called bursting can be very helpful for accuracy ie.. don't just hold down the trigger, shoot in little shots to control the recoil.

There used be be lots of cheaters but this seems to be dieing down due to a Third party software called Punkbuster which eliminates cheaters. Around 1 in 100 people are cheaters, not much. And cheating the game will probably get you banned from the server.

You can only play Multiplayer but in the Retail version (the one you have to pay for) it comes with a short offline tutorial.


Recommended: Yes