As an avid gamer and a self-proclaimed deity on strategy games, I was very interested in Counter-Strike when it was first released. At first, it looked like a real catch: realistic weapons, appearance, physics, no cheating codes, and large maps!

But, as any obsessive person will soon learn, Counter-Strike had its own mistakes.

To be frank, Counter-Strike is a spectacle graphic-wise. The blood spraying from a wound, the shine of a light on a blue-steel pistol, and the dispersal of a smoke-grenade looked uncannily realistic. So realistic, I began to doubt my own reality when I stumbled away from the computer. The actions of each character also looked realistic. Since there was such a large range of actions to do, like jumping, crawling, long jump, and ladder climbing, each action was closely detailed.

But Counter-Strike is a multiplayer game. The allure of the game is simply playing with other people on the 'Net, which I did. So I began exploring games on the various servers, and I began to enjoy myself.

I became increasingly annoyed, however, with the various characters who referred to themselves lewdly or unpolitely, which I'm not going to write for the sake of my reputation. Civilized behavior seemed impossible nowadays on the net. No matter where you go, people will be spamming the chat lines, or cursing explicitly.

So I retreated to the safety of offline play, and downloaded a variety of bots off the Net. So I began playing, and nitpicking on the various details of the game. Unlike Rainbow Six, which lets you place your Counter-Terrorists in strategic spots, the waypoints of all the players was the same for one side or another.

The gameplay, although very engaging and requires-all-your-attention-at-once, got repetitive and boring. After all, you can snipe down the same person a few times before getting bored out of your skull.

Bottom line: Although Counter-Strike is a great game, with fantastic graphics and great attention to small details, the online unsavoriness and the repetitive gameplay gets boring after a while.

Recommended: Yes