Perhaps even more so that Half Life 2 itself, CS: Source was greatly
anticipated by the online gaming community- from the pro clans right
down to 12 year-old AOLers with a passion for dying repeatedly. But I
digress. This was supposed to be The One- combining the fantastic
concept and gameplay of Counterstrike with the physics, graphics and
just plain coolness of the Source engine. Unfortunately for Valve, they
only scored one out of three.
First of all, I am deducting points for Value because of the ridiculous
Steam system. Not content with screwing over a $10,000 CS tournament a
few months ago, Valve seem hell-bent on forcing everyone to use Steam
just because it annoys Vivendi. I can see no other reason- it doesn't
prevent piracy (even the people they banned will just get a new CD-key
off bittorrent), it didn't make preordering quicker (were you one of
the 'lucky' people who had to wait 6 hours before they could even get
connected to the verification server to start unencrypting) and it sure
as hell didn't boost sales- Half Life 2 is currently lying third in the
UK games chart, behind NFS Underground 2 and GTA: San Andreas, the
latter of which has been out for well over a month. It might not seem
so bad, even if it did take you all day to install the *boxed copy* you
legally purchased (while the so-called pirates were already playing
away), but think if this rubbish catches on: you have an account for
Valve, an account for EA-LA, an account for EA-Sports, twenty five
different accounts to get into one Microsoft game? See the problem
here? Although they're talented and all, I hope that Valve go out of
business before they get the chance to ruin another game with this
spyware.
Anyway, rant over, I guess I'll talk about CS: Source itself now! If
you want a short summary, think CS 1.6 with bells and whistles (but no
tactical shield, which is irksome for the pistol marksmen among us). In
fact, when you join a server it still comes up with 'Welcome to CS 1.6'
which is frankly pathetic considering how long HL2 and CS: Source have
been in development. Speaking of joining a server, you'll be hard
pushed to find one in less than an hour seeing as the server browser is
powered by... guess what? Yes, that's right, STEAM.
The same old problem remains- Counterstrike (Source or otherwise) has
no workable team-balancing system. Fancy playing a nice game of 'the
world's most popular online shooter' (from box not my words)? Fine, so
long as you don't mind being on the wrong side of 7 vs 3 for most of
the time. Even Enemy Territory, released at the beginning of last year,
and which is COMPLETELY FREE (ie not bundled with a commercial product
or spyware) managed to incorporate a 'vote system' whereby if the
majority of players agreed teams would be rebalanced by the game (even
if the server was not originally set to autobalance). Such a system is
also immensely useful against the legions of aimbotters and wallhackers
out there, or more general griefers like the idiot on the terrorist
team who thinks the object of the game is to kill all the hostages (-$
Several Thousand thanks a lot!). But no, this simple piece of
programming (which by the way has been developed as a free mod for
UT2004 so it doesn't even require a professional development team) has
been left out for no apparent reason other than laziness.
Admittedly the graphics are nice and shiny- do you remember that promo
video of Aztec? How about sniping in that? Unlike the original CS, you
can actually tell the difference between the terrorist and CT player
models at long range (anyone remember those crayon-standard camo
textures?), and hostages don't look like they have bags over their
faces ('cept when they're supposed to of course!).
However, the name 'CS: Source' would probably be declared false
advertising if it wasn't a 'free gift' with HL2: it makes no use of the
Source engine whatsoever (aside from the aforementioned slightly nicer
graphics). Of course there is no way a Gravity Gun-type weapon could
have been included with CS: Source. That would have been completely
ridiculous (especially since they didn't do ANY multiplayer at all for
HL2, never mind with the gravgun in it). But what many people (myself
included) were hoping for was the use of at least some Source physics.
What would you do in real life if you needed to defend an area and
there were lots of small wooden crates round the corner. Would you
a) Move the crates to a more useful position and use them as cover fire *EARTH TO VALVE!*
b) Decide not to move the crates because they would just get destroyed by a grenade *THINK THEY CODED THIS EITHER?*
c) Ignored the 'crates' because they were actually just extensions of the wall retextured to look like crates
If you answered A or B then Valve must be living in la-la-(zy)-land,
but if you answered C then guess what: you are a CS: Source player.
Even more irritating is the fact that a lot of stuff (I don't mean maps
and weapons etc.- that was the whole point of the conversion) is just
blantantly recycled from the original CS and even HL. Those weapon
switch sounds are bringing back memories of the last millenium, but not
in a nostalgic way. Remember those shockingly low resolution
spraypaints? Guess what! Perhaps the most telling thing of all is that
barely a week after its release, someone has already released a modpack
to replace all the models and sounds in CS: Source with professional
quality ones.
Of course Valve are more than likely to start whining ('Its a free
mod', 'Stop moaning you freeloaders', 'Beggers can't be choosers'
etc.), but unfortunately that argument no longer cuts the mustard.
First of all, CS has been a professional product for several years, so
we are entitled to expect professional quality output. And secondly,
when you use that 'free mod' as your sole excuse for not including
multiplayer with Half Life 2, you will be judged by the standard that
excuse sets. Unfortunately Valve weren't up to the task.
