Oh, come on. You didn’t really think we’d forgotten, did you?
So here we are. The end of our gargantuan Unmissable Mods Month feature. And, in a perverse and backwards sorta way, it seems only fitting that we’d start at the beginning.
I mean, sure, mods were around before Counter-Strike. But it, and to a lesser extent a selection of single-player Half-Life mods, marked the start of the golden era. It marked the start of people realising that, with enough talent and determination, a few kids in their bedrooms could create what would go on to be one of the most popular videogames of all time.
There are so many memories I have of Counter-Strike. In the sleepy suburb where I grew up, one of the few realms of childhood excitement was Lan City. It quickly went under and turned into a LearnDirect office, but those few months of epic tactical warfare shone as brightly as anything else in my then-teenage existence.
Post-millennium, games became my life, and several-times-weekly Counter-Strike sessions with my friends became the reason to push on through the school day. Italy was our map of choice, as it was everyone’s, really. There was one in an airport whose name I can’t remember, as well. One kid even made his own map, and we played that for a while. That was the thing with Counter-Strike. It was a mod you could mod yourself.
Magically, it wasn’t just the nerdy kids who spent so many long evenings in Lan City, bracing themselves for a bollocking when they turned up home to cold dinner and concerned parents. It was everyone. Counter-Strike fever gripped our school. The most popular of the popular, happily blasting away with the geekiest of the geeks. Counter-Strike broke high school social politics. I can’t think of anything else that’s ever done that.
Of course, it went retail. A few of the mods we’ve covered over the last four weeks have done the same, and all are worthy of their eventual price tags. But Counter-Strike’s an interesting one. Of those retail releases, it’s arguably the least likely to have done so. Not in terms of quality – of course not. It’s as brilliant as they come. But it’s also, when you think about it, decidedly straight-forward.
And that is, I think, what all aspiring modders should be studying in Counter-Strike, even today. Robert Yang’s spoken on here before about keeping it simple for single-player mods, but Counter-Strike proves that absolutely the same is true in the online world. Its code might have been complex – CS was one of the first mods to really go to town with custom programming – but as a computer game? Hugely modest. Two teams, a few guns and pieces of equipment to buy, one-hit kills, no respawns. You walk around for a while, aiming for your objective, and then you shoot, or get shot. Game over for one or the other. Most of your time playing Counter-Strike, unless you’re dead good at it, is spent watching the rest of your team finish the round. That it remains so compelling is testament to the extent to which these basic core mechanics were so tremendously refined.
I haven’t played a game of the original Counter-Strike in years. Lan City’s long gone; even LearnDirect isn’t there any more. I think it’s a counselling office or something now, though it’s a long time since I’ve been back to that part of my hometown. I really hope people are still playing, though. Even though Counter-Strike Source was an excellent reboot, it never quite captured the magic of the pure, original experience.
And, you know, totally unmissable. For the record, when we started planning for this feature, Counter-Strike was first on the list – and within seconds. No one even thought to question it. Because I suspect that all four of us have those memories, those teenage delights where everyone huddled together in a dark room, or over an internet connection, and nothing else mattered in the world.
Why is it on our list?
Well, because it’s Counter-Strike. Y’know?
Get it from
Original here, CS: Source through Steam.
Easy to install?
Early versions probably require a boxed copy of Half-Life. Others will be straight-forward.
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Ahh, those were the days. Where nobody cared who you were, you just sat together and played a random game. People who got owned would just yell a random insult or complain at ‘you’ with ‘you’ being ano one of the half dozen people in the room. There were no hard feelings, it was just plain old fun. It seems, though, that the moderisation of games has led to a more immature personality for those who play them.
Still, I wish I could go back to those good old days…
I read that article with a silly grin on my face.
I spent a ridiculous amount of time playing Counterstrike. It was one of the very few games that I could actually play for 6+ hours without noticing the time. It also made for quite a social event considering I always played on the same few servers and knew most of the regulars.
Like hlife_hotdog I wish I could go back to those days!
Great read Lewis, sadly I missed the original CS craze and never got to know the greatness of what many people still consider to be the best version of the game.
I did dip my toes in CS Source though for a while (until BF2 came along) and had some great moments on the UK Training Camp group of servers, I really have some great memories of that game.
Strangely enough, while I did retro pieces on Day of Defeat Source (http://thereticule.com/2009/08/i-play-again-day-of-defeat-source/) and Half-Life Uplink (http://thereticule.com/2009/10/looking-back-at-half-life-uplink/) I never did one on CSS. Thanks for reminding me :D
It’s worth noting that Counter-Strike was abysmally simplistic, horrendously repetitive, abd was chiefly just horribly addictive because every round was identical and equal; an eternal refinement of technique, perfecting your methods more and more every time.
It was another way to get the same fix Diablo II gives, coming from a wholly different direction.
It was technically rubbish, and it struck a lucky formula – there was nothing planned or clever about it, it was just the purest and most simple fusion of intensely competitive, intense shooting and arena deathmatch.
Counter-Strike is not worthy of note in the annals of gaming except as a business decision. It’s certainly profitable. But it’s not a clever design or anything creative.
It is also worth noting; I played the damn thing for three years and loved it ._.
it was also available for xbox.