Counter-Strike: Condition Zero (PC)

If you said to me the words Counter Strike, what would i think of? The biggest ever and most popular online game and has been for 4-5 years. Counter Strike is a modification for the multi award winning Half Life which is considered by many as the best game ever created. I don't agree with or dispute with that statement but one thing i can agree with is Counter Strike is the biggest online game out there. Why is it the biggest online game? because it is played by hundreds of thousands of people everyday. The game is a first person shooter like its origin game half life and is a team game as opposed to the usual all for one and one for all shooters like quake. You are able to play as 2 teams, one being the Terrorists or the Counter Terrorists and the objective of the game is by killing all of the opposing team or on certain maps plant the bomb as a terrorist, defuse as counter terrorist or on other maps rescue hostages as counter terrorists while terrorists try everything in their power to prevent that from happening else how would their demands be met? (i watch too many movies)

Ok after the success of this game the people who created this game were doing it for fun and eventually moved over to Valve the creators of half life in which they would come together so that it would be an official mod and updates could be made inconjunction with half life and counterstrike. As many people know companies are always looking to get more cash so how do we do that? create a sequel / addon type for this game. Now valve couldn't make any money from counterstrike apart from selling copies of half life so they needed a standalone game to attract people other than counter strike players to buy the game. So they recruited the help of another games developer to create the single player version of counterstrike named Counter Strike : Condition Zero which would be created by ritual a company known for the game American Mcgee's Alice which was a flop. After a bit of development time Valve sacked them and employed gearbox who created the addon packs for half life. The game was delayed, delayed and then came out... nonono it was delayed and when half life 2 was announced it was still delayed. Then after years of production and people whining at valve it was released on 2004.

So the release date came and i had been playing counter strike for 2 years and didn't even think twice at buying it since it was single player orientated. So i did the wise thing and borrow it off my friend. The first thing i noticed when i got it was, it was 2 cds. Counter Strike when downloaded is usually 400-500mb but i guess the new textures really filled the 2 cds up along with the deleted scenes element of the game. Ok after installation i immediately went to play the single player which i was expecting to be good since it had been in development for a long time. At the single player screen what do i see? maps from the original counterstrike and bots, it just isn't looking good for a veteran like me but anyway, once i started it was just online cs but with bots and goals of kill 2 in 1 round etc. The bots themselves aren't even great especially on the hardest difficulty settings because I am such a great player(EGO) so i got bored quite easily. After typing quit and returning to my desktop i realised there was another condition zero icon, it said deleted scenes, what did i think? videos? but there aren't any fmvs? so i clicked it and saw a map of the world. I chose the only country available and the game loaded, what did i see? the original single player that was made by ritual but got canned by valve. So i played this to the end and realised that this was very doomesque explore, shoot, kill, explore etc with some counter strike style goals like rescue your other counter terrorist friends but like doom3 it became a linear experience and i couldn't wait to get to the end. I then opened up the console and typed the infamous command "Quit" and exited the game, uninstalled and that was the last I saw of the game.

A few months later, half life 2 anticipation is at an all time high, E3 is looming hl2 videos aren't enough, what do valve do? show up with a video of counter strike : source, counterstrike on the half life 2 engine with ragdoll physics which display realistic deaths. A few more months later, valve announce that counter strike : condition zero owners will have the chance to beta test the new counter strike on the source engine, and for once i was envious of them so i went to play.com paid my 15.99 and it arrived in a few days so i could experience the new counterstrike fans had been dying for. One thing i needed to do before i could play source was to install condition zero so i did and it was 2 days till i could play source. So what do i do? i play condition zero online and i experience the new multiplayer maps that i didnt experience in single player and the new graphics that weren't in the single player too. Was i impressed ? obviously not since it killed my performance and the game ran incredibly slow even though it was the half life engine, an engine based on the original quake engine which is 8 years old.

After the source beta ends i intend to uninstall condition zero because, it is a waste of hard drive space because i already have the original counter strike which i only play online and is the same online. The user base is still larger than condition zero and nobody plays clan matches with condition zero unless they're really new to online gaming.

Don't know what counter stike is? New to online gaming? Played too much quake and want another shooter? Want CS:Source? Get Condition Zero

Got Half life? Got Counter Strike? Hate Counter Strike? Love good single player experiences? Don't Get Condition Zero