UKTerrorist

rain not THAT bad

Rain not THAT bad

“arse!”
“yeh?” – ArSe Replies
“nice shot” I typed. And it was, he caught me mid-air with an AWP whilst I was jumping down into the water hoping to sneak up behind him. Obviously he was waiting in the darkest corner knowing I was planting the bomb and planning to track me whichever way I went, yet still, any mid-air AWP shot deserves some credit.

CS: Source was a video of hope released at E3 last year showing counter-terrorists and terrorists battling their way through a sexier version of de_aztec. To Gabe Newell and the rest of Valve Software, Source was merely a disciple of their Jesus Christ, their saviour, their white ray of light and bucket falls of cash following 5 hard years of labour. As the gaming press licked their lips salivating over each new Half-Life 2 video, screenshot or interview, we were rocked by the news of Counter-Strike Source. Yes, this article, is going to talk about Counter-Strike Source, naturally, if you’re anything like me you would’ve top-right-Xed your way from such boredom and be halfway to your favourite Jolt 1.6 server by now, yet for the handful of you with absolutely nothing better to do, we’re going to travel on well-beaten paths, practically backpackers as I add my own footprints where many larger tourists have trodden before.

I have a confession to make, I’ve never really given CS: Source a chance, and why should I? It’s so different, yet so much the same, I slated it on many forums for its lack of originality, then slated it on many more for its differences. The biggest criticism that in which most people’s grievances can be umbrella’ed , is that it just isn’t Counter-Strike 1.6, or 1.3, or beta 5.2 or whichever version it is you hold dear. Source is a threat to our way of life out here. Once it converts enough people, the rest will pack their bags, and follow. The pro-gaming circuit will naturally be most susceptible to its charm, the major organisations know that very soon Valve will stop supporting CS 1.6 altogether, and what happens to a game once the developers lose interest? It dies. QuakeWorld became Quake 3, Unreal Tournament became UT2003 then UT2004, Warcraft became Warcraft 3. Sure you can still find the “never say die” Quakeworldian’s barricading themselves inside long-forgotten servers watching the uncaring cyberspace pass them by, but games simply don’t last forever. When Source was released I wasn’t happy, nosirreeee. I probably spent less then 1 disgruntled hour irritated by it’s newness before quitting in disgust.

Saturday March 12th 2005 – It’s the start of Easter break here at the University of Gloucestershire. For the majority of students, that means packing their possessions and returning to the nest for 5 long weeks of free food and accommodation. With that option not open to me, it meant 5 long weeks of nothing. Half-Life 2 completed, Doom 3 completed, TrackMania Sunrise completed, MMORPGs fire-walled. Naturally I was loading up Steam, browsing the games when my cursor, for some peculiar reason paused, hovered, and then clicked Counter-Strike Source. I know what I’ll do, I’ll review Counter-Strike Source, only rather than actually review the game I’ll just slate it, add some screenshots and simply say whatever everyone expects me to say anyway. As simple an example of myopia as you’ll ever see.

I prepared my A4-sized notepad, put a pen next to the keyboard to take down important notes, and selected a server.

‘Ok perhaps one of the most important things to keep in mind when doing a review is to keep an open mind, forget everything you’ve read, forget everything you know, and just concentrate on writing an unbiased opinion of the game…goddamit, why is this gaming taking longer than 1.6 to load up? Could be the server? No wait, it has to be the game, I hate it already’

The screen flickered to life with an extremely lavish conversion of once loved, now much hated, Counter-Strike map de_aztec. The models, the pixels, the rendering, the lighting, the water, every part of the game looked just beautiful. I took down my first note.

“Rain doesn’t look very realistic”, then I scribbled it out, I guess it was a bit harsh to mark down a game because it can’t handle rain effects very well, few games can. I auto-joined the terrorist team and began my first round.

‘oh damn’ I’d forgotten to set my keys before joining this game ‘Why can’t this game automatically convert my CS1.6 keys’ unable to purchase a gun now that the time expired, I was armed only with my bitter pen for this round. Grabbing the loaded pen I furiously wrote the complaint down, ‘that’s strike one source!’ I considered abandoning the review completely. I just wasn’t in the mood. Sadly part of me, the puerile part most likely, wants to be a Games Journalist “when/if I grow up” and if I want to do that I am going to get these shitty games that no-one wants to review, and I’m going to have to review them, I could use the practice. I gritted my teeth, jumped through the middle doors and was shot from above by a camper on the ledge. I wasn’t sure how, but this was definitely Counter-Strike Source’s fault, I tried to structure the complaint in my mind, unable to do so I gritted my teeth with the pen clutched in my right hand hovering dangerously close to Source’s inevitable doom.

The next round began, years of gaming had etched the key combinations into my mind, ‘B’ ‘2’ ‘4’...AK47, ‘b’ ‘2’ ‘8’…Armour, ‘b’ ‘8’ ‘6’…Ammo…’b’ ‘8’ ‘4’ HE Grenade…’B’ ‘8’ ‘3’…Flash bang. Within 3 seconds, I was tooled up.

Running with my brothers in arms to the doors, a thought struck me, the rain effects ‘weren’t that bad’ I quickly grabbed the pen and wrote ‘rain not that bad’ A slashing sound came over the speakers, a backstabber!

“Get out the way” the backstabber ordered I’d stopped very close to the middle doors, delaying the deaths of several team-mates by possibly 5, perhaps 10, seconds. “Sorry” I responded, moving myself next to the wall, allowing 2 more terrorists to rush through the doors. Whilst glancing through the crack to admire the fate of my rude backstabber, I witnessed something that was pretty cool. No not the heroic, yet foolish, rush of the backstabber and accomplice, but their deaths. I’m not sadistic, but the animations that led to the backstabber’s corpse throwing his gun into the air was, for lack of a better description, just cool. I wanted to see the death animation again. I ran backwards from the doors and headed for the terrorist-side bridge room to witness the death of our poor sniper. Poor because I’d heard several at least 5 AWP shots from the room this round without a single death-credit to his name. Fortunately the opposing sniper was matching him miss-for-miss and the two were locked in this ‘Enemy at the Gates’-esque conflict. “Jump” “Crouch” “Zoom” “Land” “Shoot” “miss” opposing sniper “shoot-miss” “jump back behind crate. The 4th cycle was about to begin, I was already irate. I positioned myself at the edge of the crate’s cover, then snickered as the sniper missed his shot, then tried to jump back to find me in the way. He turned to me, then bizarrely, and most humorously with friendly fire disabled, shot me with his now reloaded AWP. He realised his error too late, turning back towards the bridge he must’ve been the enemy snipe take careful aim, he was helpless, without even the time to glance mercilessly at me, he succumbed to his bitter fate, but not without my treasure, a beautiful, well performed, death animation sprawling and outwards over the floor. Nice.

I flashed the scoreboard, one terrorist, 4 counter-terrorists remained. I could win, but I needed to get the bomb planted. The Sennheiser pc155s alerted me of a terrorist coming via the door, and another advancing through the water. I decided to eliminate the waterboy first, but I needed to briefly halt the door-rusher. I hit 4 and prepped the grenade, ‘much rounder than 1.6, not bad’ and threw the HE-Grenade at the front doors, few counter-terrorists advance through doors with grenades exploding before them. I’d misjudged, the counter-terrorist was much closer than expected, the grenade exploded just as he had advanced through to face me. In a moment of pure delight, the grenade ended his existence in the round, throwing his corpse against the wall before coming to a rest of the ground. Awesome! If not for the stupid flash bang the forgotten waterboy terrorist would easily have snuck his way up behind me. Instead he threw a flash bang from the water up over the slope, exploding behind me. Not facing the grenade it momentarily dazzled my view, and the sound of a high-pitch telephone receiver penetrated my thoughts. I was alert. I could hear him running up the slope, believing that in my flash banged state I’d be easy prey he must have been confident. I crouched round to above the half-way point of the slope, then jumped on the wall from above and shot him twice in the head.

‘shit’ A terrorist emerged from the doors towards the end of my reload, he crouched slowly, taking careful aim and opened fire. I’m not Jules Winnfield, but my survival following this explosion of bullets must have had some element of divine intervention. Somewhere up there, a higher power must’ve looked ahead and realised I’d one day be in such a situation, then manipulated Valve to change the recoil on the Colt M4A1 for CS:Source. His gun clicked, and clicked. Empty. Not wishing to tempt a similar fate I downed the helpless opponent with two-short bursts from the AK47. I was Rambo, I was going to run through the through the undergrowth and eliminate the final threat to this round’s victory. I took a running jump into the water, and splattered my remains on the now raised section of the water-route. The lord works in mysterious ways.

“HAHA” “HAHAHAHAH” “fucking asshole, you blocked me” “hahahahaha” “ROFL LOL”

The cratered must endure the ritual humiliation dealt by the other dead. Yet, something told me there was a deeper level to CS Source. I had had an element of fun whilst playing the game, more than that, I actually wanted to continue playing it, to explore the changes, find out what was knew, what had changed, what was old, and what was missing altogether. I began the next round, hit ‘f2’ and automatically bought the same weapons again, nice feature. One of many nice new features.

Amongst my jungle travels I’d noticed many changes since previous visits, the giveaway rumbles of thunder when crossing the bridge and ascending the steps had been removed. Replaced with the more accurate, and terrorist-aiding random rumbles. The noises and animations of pretty much everything had changed, but we knew that from the limitless previews over at CSNation. I was being won over, not a full convert of the game yet, the hilarious headshot symbols and annoying crate movements had seen to that, but I was curious and certainly willing to accept that Source is the future.

Source is an inoculation, you have to be willing to absorb the irritation and slight pain to get to what we need. CS 1.6 WILL DIE! The higher powers decided that many moons ago, yet the community can stay alive by switching over. After an hour of Source a message appeared.

“The next map will be de_cbble”

I hit escaped and quit.

I glanced down at my pad, the last line reading “rain not THAT bad”…Such is the extent to which I was enjoying Source that it had slipped my mind that I was actually conducting an unbiased review. It would certainly be impossible to write a review now, so what could I do? A silent voice echoed in my head “just write something goddamit”