Yesterday I was invited by a friend to play CS at an internet cafe. It was pretty fun.. I've always heard things about CS but never played it myself until last night. It reminded me a lot like SoF2-MP, but of course the graphics weren't as good. SoF2 is based off the Quake3 engine, while CS I believe is based off the HL engine, which was modded from the Quake2 engine. And besides SoF2 came after and probably just copied their mission objectives from CS anyway. Still, the fact that CS is still so popular is pretty amazing, considering all the other games that have spawned since CS first came out. One thing great (or not so great) about CS is there's no weapon that can help you completely dominate the game. Almost every other game I have played has a weapon that can basically allow you to dominate.

UT/2k3, Quake 1/2/3, SoF, Doom/2 had the rocket launcher. SoF2 had the grenade launcher. NOLF2 also has a mini-rocket launcher, but I haven't played the MP so I wouldn't know. JK2 has the lightsabre (by far the coolest weapon in any FPS i've ever played). I can't even remember what RTCW had anymore.

I guess the closest game to CS I can think of is Medal of Honor: Allied Assault. Both are very realistic in that you will die from 2-3 shots. Both have "fire in the hole" grenade warnings. MoHAA was a *really* hard game though, I remember the d-day beach assault took me 2 days to complete. Two days for one mission!

As far as addiction goes I can see where it comes from, but I think all multiplayer fps's have the same affect on me. When you get killed, you just want to get back up and avenge your death. Especially if you were picked off by a sniper/camper.. in CS a third of the weapons were made for camping. In all the games I've played that has a shotgun, that has been my favourite weapon. Even in quake3 where everyone wields the rocket launcher, i still go with the 'boomstick'. It's quick, and it packs a punch. My love for the shotgun started from doom and doom2, especially doom2, when they introduced the double barrel shotgun. The sound of it reloading and shooting -- ah, good times indeed.

Well all in all, CS is a prety cool game. The only two beefs I have for CS are: The jumping. When you run and jump, it slows you down once you land. Perhaps it's more realistic, but I'm used to jumping being something that speeds up your running rather than slowing it down. The second beef is how when you get shot, you almost cannot move. It basically stops you, once you've been shot, you're going to die, for some reason your guy can move, like he's stuck. That's annoying because basically if you're caught in a crossfire, you can run away and hide. But, I like the concept of buying your weapons prior to each spawn so you can try different weapons/combinations that work best for you. And I like the fact you can play this game on a sub-par machine and still get pretty nice graphics and speedy gameplay. The bots aren't stupid either, they work together and only occasionally do they get stuck in loop!

Anyway.. back to work.