Counter-Strike
With the popularity of Half Life and it's included level modding tools came a huge game modifying community. While I was in university I used to play Half Life online deathmatch with friends of mine from back home. The basic game was pretty fun but as new fan mods started to show up we tried a whole ton of them. Some were silly, like Boxwars, where everyone was a crate amongst a sea of crates. And some were very successful. Counter-Strike was one of the later.
Counter-Strike was so successful it was acquired by Valve and the creators hired. It's been consistently updated over the past 15 years, released on multiple platforms and seen a number of ports, rebuilds and sequels. Aside from Team Fortress -also from Valve and using the Half-Life engine- Counter-Strike has grown to be one of the longest running and perhaps most popular online FPS multiplayer to date.
Graphical progress over 15 years.
I remember when a friend of mine at UofT residence showed it to me. I was amazed because for the first time in an FPS game took proper care to recreate the weapons in both animated action and design. And although I don't consider myself a 'gun-nut' I always appreciate when someone recreates the weapons nicely in a shooter title. As soon as I started playing though, I was hooked. I spent way too many late nights playing Counter-Strike when I should have been working on my classes, I'm pretty sure I recall playing until the sun came up.
I also got surprising good at it. Although I can get pretty good at most competitive local multiplayer games, once you drop me into a pot of online players I tend to do quite poorly. But when playing Counter-Strike I managed to roll in at the top, or near top of the rankings at the end of the match. Mind you, CS featured simple, easy to learn levels and basic goals like team vs team bombing runs and VIP deathmatches. So, it doesn't take hours to put yourself into a position where you know the game inside-and-out. It also didn't feature any over-the-top leveling system like Call of Duty where consistent players start with regularly better weapons. And even if they did, in Counter-Strike you may be just as well-off with a cheap pistol if you know what you're doing.
Counter-Strike was a basic Terrorist vs Counter-Terrorist FPS game where each team starts with a different goal. During a bomb defusal game, Terrorists place a bomb at a preset goal and defend that position. Counter-Terrorists aim to defuse the bomb, usually wiping out the opposing team in the process. VIP requires Counter-Terrorists to protect a living target while Terrorists attack and Hostage maps are basically the opposite. Hostage maps were a blast though, because if you're feeling like a right a-hole you can kill your own hostages. Which I've been known to do after threatening the other players with demands.
I put tons of hours into Counter-Strike. Which is pretty great considering that other than the initial purchase of Half-Life, the game was free. I've never played a game mod so much and never seen one blow up into something this huge. I got along perfectly fine with the random online crowd, but that that ever seemed to be an issue back in 1999. What I really need to do now is try out the latest version after not playing this for 15 years and see how things have changed. I'm sure I'll be right there on the bottom of the charts.
With the popularity of Half Life and it's included level modding tools came a huge game modifying community. While I was in university I used to play Half Life online deathmatch with friends of mine from back home. The basic game was pretty fun but as new fan mods started to show up we tried a whole ton of them. Some were silly, like Boxwars, where everyone was a crate amongst a sea of crates. And some were very successful. Counter-Strike was one of the later. Counter-Strike was so successful it was acquired by Valve and the creators hired. It's been consistently updated over the past 15 years, released on multiple platforms and seen a number of ports, rebuilds and sequels. Aside from Team Fortress -also from Valve and using the Half-Life engine- Counter-Strike has grown to be one of the longest running and perhaps most popular online FPS multiplayer to date.
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| Graphical progress over 15 years. |
I also got surprising good at it. Although I can get pretty good at most competitive local multiplayer games, once you drop me into a pot of online players I tend to do quite poorly. But when playing Counter-Strike I managed to roll in at the top, or near top of the rankings at the end of the match. Mind you, CS featured simple, easy to learn levels and basic goals like team vs team bombing runs and VIP deathmatches. So, it doesn't take hours to put yourself into a position where you know the game inside-and-out. It also didn't feature any over-the-top leveling system like Call of Duty where consistent players start with regularly better weapons. And even if they did, in Counter-Strike you may be just as well-off with a cheap pistol if you know what you're doing. Counter-Strike was a basic Terrorist vs Counter-Terrorist FPS game where each team starts with a different goal. During a bomb defusal game, Terrorists place a bomb at a preset goal and defend that position. Counter-Terrorists aim to defuse the bomb, usually wiping out the opposing team in the process. VIP requires Counter-Terrorists to protect a living target while Terrorists attack and Hostage maps are basically the opposite. Hostage maps were a blast though, because if you're feeling like a right a-hole you can kill your own hostages. Which I've been known to do after threatening the other players with demands. I put tons of hours into Counter-Strike. Which is pretty great considering that other than the initial purchase of Half-Life, the game was free. I've never played a game mod so much and never seen one blow up into something this huge. I got along perfectly fine with the random online crowd, but that that ever seemed to be an issue back in 1999. What I really need to do now is try out the latest version after not playing this for 15 years and see how things have changed. I'm sure I'll be right there on the bottom of the charts.
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