Letdow, just old-CS with new graphics
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.
