CounterStrike 1.3 - a complete failure
Note: This article first appeared over at our affiliates site http://www.techfocus.org. The original article can be found here
By: DietCoke
I've just finished playing Counter-strike 1.3, a mod that runs under the Half-Life engine. Previous versions of CounterStrike had been exceptional, so I eagerly looked forward to this version, especially since the shotty was supposedly rid of it's aim bugs (virtually impossible in previous versions to kill an opponent in a crouch.) Unfortunately, I have to report that this update is perhaps one of the worst updates I have seen in a game, bad enough that a CS addict like me doesn't have much desire at all to play it.
The most major issue I'd say regarding the update is how the CounterStrike team failed to properly plan for the release. While they originally had a lot of mirrors, at times their site was unreachable, and I'd say a good 80% of the servers didn't serve up the promised files, or it was at such a slow rate it would be idiocy to download it. It was possible to download some updates via FilePlanet, but my suspicion is that some sort of deal was reached to "encourage" users to sign up for their "dedicated" servers, ie. an instant download. Otherwise you were looking at waiting in a line that in my case made you wait over three hours just to start downloading. Not acceptable.
The second issue is quality control. Did anyone on the Counterstrike team think about testing CS under an ATI video card? Apparently not, as even after the hours-long downloads would take place, if you had an ATI card you would get a video overflow 30 seconds into the game, and would be dropped from any server you joined. Two days later updated drivers for ATI cards were available.
The third issue(s) were load times and size. 100 megabytes for a simple update? Why not call it MicroCounterStrike? Additionally, the load on my PC (Athlon 850 with 458 mb RAM) took an additional 6 seconds over the previous version. Once again, not acceptable.
The fourth issue: voice chat. Great idea, but the bandwidth constraints make the feature unpleasant for modem users and broadband users under cap limits. I don't have those limits, but the feature blew even for me. Not worth it, folks.
The fifth issue is one I can't figure out. The mouse now has momentum of some sort. I never ran into it before, but now when I move the mouse to look around, it's not solid start-and-stop. Instead, it's like a gradual acceleration and then a gradual slowdown, making aiming a pain in the ass. This was perhaps the most annoying portion of the new game for me. Perhaps it's some setting I've got wrong, but I never had the problem until this update. One way or the other, it's obnoxious as hell.
The maps are better. Hostages do move easier about the map, and the motion does seem smoother. However, I have noticed additional stray horizontal lines when rendering under fire, making me assume that the drivers aren't written well and servers are having trouble reflecting positions. Annoying, but not a big deal.
It comes down to this: a formerly great modification was better than Half-life. It took off on the internet, and thus a lot of developers became involved in the updates, throwing in feature after feature. As a result, the mod is now bloated, buggy and distributed in one of the sloppiest releases I have ever seen. Upon speaking with other CS enthusiasts I have heard the same things and they've echoed the same sorts of issues. An additional thing to note is that the Half-life engine is getting old - you can trick out an engine so much... after that it's just straight-up degradation.
My conclusion? Counterstrike is done. I may leave it on the PC since it was such a pain in the ass just to get it on there, but I won't be playing this game much anymore, perhaps 10% of the time I used to. Instead, I'll move on to newer titles from an established game producer instead of from a development team based on the net. This release is crap - don't waste your time downloading it... it's just not worth the hassle, and the quality is gone.
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5.) CounterStrike 1.3 - A complete failure - DietCoke
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