I realised that any team-based first-person W shooter out this year would have trouble doing so too. And so another press trip was over, ending the way each one does.
Well, this was Paris after all Got to work, had a cup of coffee, a muffin, a banana. Checked my emails Hold on there was something else At about hours we received a Code Red from Tac-Ops, who relayed the position of a terror cell to us.
Major draaaag. So after afternoon tea and a nap, we pootled off in a stealth chopper to have a look, infiltrated their base and you'll never guess who we found. Osama Bin Laden. Heh, who would have thought it? In Somerset of all places. One minute you're sitting around sharpening a knife on your stubble, the next your intestines are being used as a skipping rope by some terrorist's niece. It's a job where you never know what dangers you'll be facing tomorrow, whether you'll live to see another day.
Danger, intrigue, brutal firefights, a battle of wits against the most uncompromising and brutal men on the planet. It's a scenario which many an online shooter, in particular Counter-Strike , has tried to replicate The impudent little twat gets to you so much that all you end up thinking about is how much you'd like to grab the little prick by the neck, slap off his glasses, and hang him out of a window by his ankles while beating him round the back of the legs with a sawn-off oar.
And I don't think I'm alone in thinking that What's more, how the hell are you supposed to improve when you die within seconds of each round? Counter-Strike: Condition Zero, that's how. At least, that's what we've been led to believe until now. Due 16 months ago when it was still being developed by Gearbox , Condition Zero claims to be the single-player version of Counter-Strike, the world's favourite online shooter.
Which obviously means, you don't need to go online to play it. Now, from what we could gather from the information trickling out of Ritual who appear to have totally changed the game since the Gearbox days , this meant an 18 mission, worldwide campaign against terror, where you and a collection of intelligent bots fight as a team to thwart terrorist cells, in all-new missions not too dissimilar to the ones you currently play online.
We were wrong. Split into two parts, Condition Zero's first half we'll come to the other, far superior half later offers an 18 mission, worldwide campaign against terror, where you singlehandedly fight to thwart terrorist cells, while a handful of brain-dead Al team-mates stand around looking at flowers urging you on to do everything for them, in missions not too dissimilar to the kind of basic, bedroom-coded rubbish you'd expect from a ten-year-old making their first foray into level designing.
And you can't play them online. Or with other people. Before you wade into the action, you're offered a training course, which is basic at best, and inadequate at worst. After this, it's on to the campaign. Each of the 18 missions begins with a token cinematic sequence, outlining the mission goals defuse bomb, rescue hostages, kill VIP etc before you set off on your lonely trek.
In fact, while we're here, why don't we get a feel for a typical mission? The first level picks you up and plops you down, deep underground. The Japanese underground to be precise, where you find yourself on a tube, keeping one eye out for terrorists and one on the white panties peeking out cheekily from beneath the skirts of the Japanese schoolgirls sitting opposite you hey, they said they were 16 OK?
The next thing you know, you're getting beaten round the head by a man who looks like a South American paedophile, while his mate wires up a bomb and randomly shoots passengers. Mustering all your years of training, you pass out, waking just in time to see the bomb go off.
Now you're pissed - especially as those schoolgirls have gone. Kidnapped apparently. With the place swarming with counter-terrorists CTs , you're ready to join with your compadres and pump your assailants up to the fillings with lead.
Sadly, only one other CT, Gerald the model-train enthusiast, will come with you. He opens a door. You walk through. He closes the door behind you and wishes you luck. The bastard! Seconds later, you're cowering behind your riot shield one of the game's new weapons , futilely popping away at a dozen or so terrorists with a cap gun.
Barely alive, you stumble past the corpses, blood smattered all around the white walls like vulgar graffiti, diving on to a bomb in order to defuse it, only to die immediately as two terrorists appear from nowhere and shoot you. You dive on to the bomb to defuse it, then die as two terrorists appear from nowhere and shoot you. Rip off earphones, throw them at monitor. Throw monitor out of window. Where's the back up? There is none. Where's the teamwork? What team?
Even after just this first mission, you're left in no doubt about two things, a Those girls definitely weren't And not a very good one at that, either. Throughout the next few missions this suspicion intensifies as you're persistently sent off on your own to accomplish goals your team should be helping you with.
And on the rare occasions when they bother engaging the enemy, their bullets prove about as effective as sponge plugs, with 30 of their bullets accomplishing what yours can achieve in two or three. Add to this an abundance of barrels filled with high explosives which are always conveniently positioned right next to large groups of terrorists, the inability to pick up enemy weapons, not being able to shoot enemies while they're in the middle of a scripted animation and stealth sections which are lamer than a two legged horse, and it's hard not to feel you're trapped in Clichesville twinned with Crapsville - a town where there's nothing new and little to get excited about.
But even a little is better h than nothing, and while the campaign as a whole will invite little more than derision B from CS veterans, B there are some merits to this section of CZ. While enemies' often flamboyant entrances rolling from behind a r wall, throwing over a table F and taking cover are all scripted, the level of intelligence they show during a firefight is sporadically impressive.
When in groups they fan out and take cover, when in a position of superiority they close you down, caging you in to prevent you from escaping. Throw a grenade at them and they'll run and cower, aim at their heads and they'll try to duck down.
Then there are some of the more entertaining scripted sequences, like shooting down a Harrier Jump Jet as it strafes you from above, or reliving the final chase scene from Terminator 2 as you try to shoot down a pursuing helicopter.
And the dated Half-Life engine has received a thorough makeover, updated to just about passable modern-day standards. The weapons from Counter-Strike are all present and correct, as well as some new ones too, meaning variety isn't a problem, but sadly the buggy-like radio controlled bomb that we were promised, which can be driven into enemy encampments, is MIA.
So why the relatively high score Korda? You been taking bribes? You getting' a cut of the profits? Bloody hell, my schizophrenia-induced alter ego Sharon is getting impatient these days, isn't she? OK, let me explain. Remember, I said there were two parts to this game, and it's part two that lifts the score immensely. Even though all the features you're about to read about will be available as a free V1. Here's the deal. Imagine playing all the existing official Counter-Strike levels with bots.
Intelligent bots. Who work together to win a level. Who cover each other, protect bombsites and use stealth when navigating comers. Bots who are fallible, but also learn from mistakes when certain tactics simply aren't producing the goods.
Imagine playing without the need to go online, without the humiliation of getting no kills. Playing at a standard that'll help you improve your game, have fun and not have to listen to the arrogant ramblings of loners who've quit their jobs, abandoned their families and who piss in a cup so as to spend the maximum amount of time playing CS online.
Imagine playing with a couple of mates online or over a LAN, but still having a full server for a fulfilling and challenging game. Having bots that, just like humans, each have their own playing styles, be they campers, rushers, flushers or pistoleers. Games that can range from a second massacre to a five-minute game of cat and mouse as you and the last bot hunt each other down.
Every game feels realistic, and the four difficulty settings mean you never feel overawed. Put simply, it's the most entertaining, fulfilling and timesapping team-based singleplayer shooter I've ever played, despite the occasional erratic bit of behaviour from the odd disorientated bot, and the now hugely dated graphics engine, which although slightly tweaked with better weapon models and more realistic particle effects, remains much the same.
It's also the perfect training if you're a CS beginner, as you won't be put off by playing against veterans online, while even experienced CS players will appreciate the chance to try out the new weapons, such as the near-impenetrable riot shield and the FAMAS and Galil machine guns before risking using them online. Valve - who along with a new development company Turtle Rock Studios is responsible for developing this part of the game - has shown up Ritual's shortcomings in the campaign missions with their sublime Al programming and unparalleled skill in creating superb games and gameplay.
So there you have it. Two games in one. One flawed, one available free for HL owners , but deserving of a good score, which is why we've settled on 79 per cent. Had we been reviewing the CS bot game section on its own, you'd be looking at an Essential if not a Classic score. Be warned. If you're buying this game for the 18 new single-player levels, think very, very hard.
The campaign - just like the Blair Witch Project soundtrack a film bereft of music , which was packed with songs 'inspired' by the movie - is a game inspired' by Counter-Strike.
A barely passable shooter trying to pass as Counter-Strike, whose missions act as little more than a diversion from the sublime bot-filled Counter-Strike levels in which you can finally live the life of a counter-terrorist or terrorist , and believe it.
If you already own a copy of Half-Life and a 56K modem or above and want all of the new Counter-Strike features for free, then you'll be able to download Counter-Strike V1. Which means millions of fans worldwide will be able to enjoy the evolution of Counter-Strike.
Basically what we're saying is, if you're an existing Counter-Strike player, there's little need to buy Condition Zero, unless you want to play through a disappointing and hugely flawed single-player FPS.
So many opportunities missed and so little space to write them in. Let's start with the campaign game. Scripting has its place in any FPS, but the beauty of CS is its unpredictability, with no two games ever being the same. Why didn't Ritual let us use the tools in a freeform way? So we could use fibre-optics to look through any door in the game, rather than just the odd one here and there? The same with the blowtorch.
There could have been secret passages to discover and open, allowing alternative access and escape routes from terrorist strongholds. Oh, and then there's the small detail of teamwork. Yeah, some of that would have been nice. When Gearbox brought in the game to the offices a little over a year ago, there were groups of CTs and terrorists shooting the shit out of each other.
Now it's just you against the world. Finally, some new CS levels to play against the Bots and online would have been a nice touch as well. Right, let's try this again shall we? It was the one with the words Exclusive Review: Counter-Strike: Condition Zero' emblazoned on the front cover, replete with a balaclava-clad man about to be unwittingly run over by three helicopters. Inside was a six-page review - or should I say lamentation - about how the game was nothing like we'd expected it to be.
The thing was, right up until the moment the review code plopped onto our desks - and despite development having changed hands from Gearbox to Ritual - we'd been led to believe that Condition Zero would comprise of a group of ever- harder missions, in which you and a team of intelligent Al-controlled counter-terrorist bots would battle it out across a set of maps against terrorist forces in either bomb defusal or hostage rescue missions.
So basic just like online Counter-Strike , only with bots and personal tasks to complete in each map. Problem was, that's not what we got at all. No siree. What we got was a collection of 18 pitiful single-player missions that bore almost no resemblance to Counter-Strike whatsoever.
Pathetic scripted enemy encounters, moronic teammates and banal ledge-jumping puzzles were commonplace. Naturally, we were more gutted than a fish fillet, and had it not been for the inclusion of a stunning collection of bots to play with and against on existing CS maps either on your own or with other humans online , it would have scored considerably less. So what happened to that game, and why are we reviewing Condition Zero again a staggering eight months after running it as our lead review?
Was it because we were more premature than a two-ounce foetus? Like hell it was. Thing is, we were sent finished review code by developer Valve, reviewed the game, ran the review and cover and came to the conclusion that the single-player game was about as much fun as drilling holes in your eyeballs. After every round, players are rewarded based on their performance. You can spend earned money to purchase upgrades and new powerful weapons.
Special Wars. Combat 5. Counter Strike Online Rating: 4. Rating: 4. Combat Strike 2. Desert Force. Full-screen mode. You can access the forum of the best Cs servers. High score with the statistic for the best players and the location countries they are from. You can select to play on hundreds of maps and filter your search on base one servers and maps.
Easy to play and addicting gameplay. Buy premium and rules -Top up Gold On this page, you can purchase Gold for your account. At this moment Gold used to rent servers, in the future, it will be possible to purchase additional services.
You can't exchange Gold for Cash, but in the future, we will consider this possibility. How to get Cash? Cash is needed to purchase skins and perks in the store. It will also be used for games in the mode Clan War. Counter-Strike 1. To experience the game at its full potential make sure you play it on full screen.
If you enjoy this shooting game online make sure you play other awesome Call Of Ops 2 and SpaceGuard. Walkthrough For a better understanding of the game, you can check the video instruction, tips, and Youtube gameplay of Counter-Strike 1. This game was added in May 16, and it was played 7. Brightest Games. All Categories.
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