It's kind of a reoccurring topic with regards to myself, but I can't stand Counter Strike, it's players and it's ability to somehow stay a solvent medium of competitive gaming@. I think the whole game is geared for twitchfuck gamers who obsessively chew through the game so heavily that to win against anyone you must know every small nuance of the game (otherwise you will be reamed in a fashion not unsimilar to having a Hydrochloric enema). Now, where to start ?
Oh yes, let's start with my smallest beefs. The level design is wholly impractical in a real world sense of the word. Even with CS Source's impressively redone maps, you're still stuck maps that are constructed around direct routes and bottlenecks. Now normally, having clearly defined routes is a good thing ,but in my books , having ONLY routes and bottlenecks (no lines for ambush or change of tactic) results in the maps being 100% predictable and linear. Painfully obvious about it as well. This is of course ignoring real-world impracticality, which CS maps all most certainly ARE. There is no sense of purpose to any of them. Thoroughfares that literally hair pain around a building, only to have the middle section drop below and under for NO reason other than for... well I don't know, it's goddamn ridiculous.I'll only concede one map is remotely real-world plausible, and that is CS_office. The rest are just theme mazes in my books (which detracts from the theme of the game)
Next biggest beef - Map scale. It's all wrong. Even with source (which is an improvement), the size of objects directly in relation to players is always off, varying from a bit to OH MY GOD BOXES THE SIZE OF SEATAINERS.
3rd biggest beef - Weapon Models- they're CRAP.No Seriously, not a single CS game has had decently looking or proportioned weapon models. Couple with the hurrrr lower right-corner weapon origins and animation makes every goddamn weapon feel ridiculous.
2nd biggest beef - Game mechanics and systems. They're outright bloody silly (which has lead to such heavy inbuilt and inbred imbalances... in). Starting with the almost arbitrary hit detection system and recoil system attached to weapons, and going through to the absolutely futile and broken weapons balance, it's all frigging wrong. As alluded to the hit detection is trash, it makes players who are occupying an entire crosshair on your screen less of a "you're in my crosshair now you will take some pain" and more of a 50/50 flip coin decision for whether that player is going down or not. usually erring on not (read: crosshairs mean SFA, Accuracy is almost arbitrary to the casual player). Again as inferred previously, recoil in the game is broken. If you can legitimately put a YouTube video video up that shows an exact recoil pattern that can be 100% replicated time and time again, you have officially broken it.
Moving onto the weapon balancing and it's broken ness. Once upon a time, every weapon in a game had a purpose at most of the time throughout all a game. This isn't the case in Counter Strike, because if you're not using the AWP, M4A1, AK47 and Desert Eagle in some sort of cycle, you aren't going to stand a chance against anyone at all. Sub Guns are a laudable effort, and outside of one round in the game ( "the SMG round", the second round in a game) you are not going to fucking touch them. Same goes across for the Shotguns, and the 1 machine gun "Has no use". If CS were thought out at all, there'd still be some use to these weapons in some sense ( personally, I would love to see some sort of purpose returned for CQB fans like me to continue using these weapons, unfortunately it doesn't happen because there is just no motive to get people out of their "favourite weapons"#. Then there's stuff like the AWP, which literally has no counter. THAT, in a multiplayer game is a fucking horrid design flaw. This combined with that whole "fire quickswitch" thing that "AWPers" do, it's intolerably unfair without contention. (and no one uses Auto Snipers for the stigmata they they'd receive from other players)
Now for my Biggest peeve about Counter Strike- the players.
If you're playing on a public server, you are guarantee to find the VERY worst of people's attitudes and egos on display. If you thought /b/ was bad, you ain't seen shit. Then there's incessant voice chat spam, the stoners sitting there with their voice key down while they toke or use their bong, prepubescent twerps and their ear bleeding voices, and all manner of other voicespams.
Then of course you have to deal with that fine level of elitist faggotry that some guys guys parade around with (usually ex-clan guys, or currently IN clan guys just wasting time until.... I dunno.... their order of shithot comes down from clanleader divine or something). These pricks are annoying on their own level because they play the ego card like a motherfucker and when they get pegged down one they scream bloody murder.
Then there are the Private scrimmers and clan guys.. .you know, the competitive guys.. These guys you see on the public open servers sometimes,and usually they pick a side and just REAM. These guys ARE egotistical pricks who not only mean srs fckn bsness ALL the time, but they make sure you know about it.however, unlike the ex-clan guy or the other egodouches, these guys are absolutely ruthless because they know the game better than Valve, Turtle Rock and Gooseman combined do, they know how exactly EVERYTHING goes and because of that, they end up just being serious mindfucks. The funny thing is, you'll pick them out a mile away IRL, because they're all the same. Watch out for these fuckers.
In short, CS is a brain-hemorrhaging experience, and why it's held up as a poster child for anything, is beyond me. There are dozens of games that did things better than it. Tactical Ops (and it's retail cousin in Tac Ops: Assault on Terror) was around at a similar time to CS, and without question it was the superior of the two in gameplay,design, art and function. For a more modern analogy, maybe see Call of Duty 4. Both of these games don't suffer the horrendous issues that Counter Strike suffers and (COD4's own independent success aside), neither replaced it on any level.
@ - I'm of course going to ignore that CS was touted as a tactical shooter. It clearly isn't, it's a twitch shooter of the ilk that quake3 is.
# - For the record, Valve have tried to rectify this once ,with CSS- the Market place. Unfortunately, habitual buying broke the marketplace in under month. last time I looked you would actually GET money money when you bought a TMP ,and the AWP was more expensive than the M249 was on static pricing
Addendum Rant -
I really don't get what every one's problem with COD4's Multiplayer is (by everyone, I of course mean "pro gamers", the same ilk that worship CS no less ) ... Here we have a versatile, robust multiplayer component that pretty much will let you play however you want, the maps are WELL designed and reasonable, and the balancing is fairly solid. Hit detection is MUCH more reliable than Counter Strike (for direct comparison because I just ranted about it), and it even allows for those idiot CS players to player their favourite mode - Bomb Defusal.
Furthermore, I reject the notion that COD4 isn't a fast deathmatch game. It is, and you need much faster reactions in COD4 than you would in a similar CS scenario. If you want a SLOW deathmatch, I challenge you to play Rainbow Six Raven Shield in adversarial mode, it's slow and what's more , all your CS-breed trickery will fucking fail in it. There is no jump, no quickswitching, and it has all sorta of believable cause-and effect systems in motion. Enjoy your slow deathmatch.
Phew, glad to chew that one out. I hate CS and I think COD4, by comparison, is THE shit. People make me angry :p
Don't go away folks because when I return I bring a TREBLE REVIEW. I review a slightly obscure FPS.. and a DRAMA.. AND MASS EFFECT
PS- I hate this keyboard.
