Here is Firearms Source as it stands right now. You’re all prepared to shoot people that need shooting on the Internet. You go to connect to your favorite server, but lo and behold, the version you have is different than the server version. “Gah!” you cry in exasperation. “I’m just an average, everyday person! How is this development team expecting me to keep up with the crazy amount of updates they put out all the time?”

Unless you obsessively refresh ModDB, this could happen to you. Luckily, the Firearms team has the solution, by adding Steamworks to the next release.

Unfortunately for you, this means that you’d have to down the entire thing, all over again, but through Steam this time. However, they seem to have padded this blow with enough goodies to make the crushing blow of another couple hundred megabyte download much more bearable.

There wasn’t anything said about new maps, but there will be handful of new weapons, like the two pictured above and more above. Also mentioned is the probably-intentionally vague “more features” and “feeling like a whole new game” and “more content” that could hint on additional stuff being added into the new version of Firearms? I don’t know, but I do know that there might be achievements and player stats. More numbers; always good in my book.

Before I forget: obligatory ModDB link.

If you can’t wait until “whenever it’s done”, the version 1 of Firearms: Source is still available for download. It’s decent enough.

I’ll admit that I was a little apprehensive about trying this out. The words “it looks like Counter-Strike!” kept flashing through my mind while I was downloading it. I was never really a fan of those Calls of Modern Duty games, so I figured that if I set my standards low enough no matter what happens I would be pleasantly surprised at the results. Oddly enough, Firearms: Source manages to not only meet my low expectations, but surpass them by far. Beneath the tried and true modern warfare exterior lays a polished and well-executed shooter.

But it’s of no surprise to me at least that Firearms is a good game. I mean, there’s only 12 years of multiplayer experience that they borrow from the original Firearms game, even though the original team has very little to do with the Source remake. The Source remake channels the classic Half-Life Deathmatch feel really well, and I’ve never been happier to be wrong about something. If you remember, I said that Firearms was something akin to those pretentious “realistic” games, and it’s nice to not have a video game try too hard to take itself seriously.

Yes, despite my apprehensions I actually ended up having fun playing Firearms: Source. But as I was playing, Firearms’ little flaws kept cropping up and making the four or five complete matches I played into a somewhat sour experience. For instance, the complete lack of a deathcam (or even CS:S’s pre-update camera that looked in the general direction of your killer) led to many deaths that left me wondering what happened.

Another niggling flaw was the actual health mechanics. When fighting another person one-on-one, the element of surprise was the only thing that kept me from losing duels. It boils down to whomever started shooting first would end up the victor. This was incredibly inconvenient for me, since my usual loadout was a sniper rifle, the game’s only shotgun, and bandages. The shotgun just couldn’t shoot fast enough to match, say, an M16-A1. I wish there was more weapons besides the usual assault rifles, snipers and pistols. There’s only one shotgun, and a grenade launcher, which made me kind of disappointed.

I’m pleased to say that the mapping is superb, though. There weren’t too many chokepoints and plenty of ways to actually flank the enemies. A flashlight is needed in some of the darker maps though, and it’s unfortunate that you can’t buy one. The dark maps also make it harder for you to snipe, because the indicators that show if a person is friendly fade out after a certain distance. This is only compounded by the fact that there isn’t much of a difference in uniforms between the two sides (one is tan and one is dark green), and in the dark it fades to a bluish color that is hard to distinguish. Oh, and the UI, especially the Skill trees, is kind of dull. Just saying.

But don’t mistake my criticisms for condemnations. Firearms: Source is great–not perfect, not by a long shot–and the skill trees give a nice little differentiation to FA compared to the thousands of other Source multiplayer mods. There’s a lot of room for improvement, and once the community starts churning out maps for it, you’d be hard pressed to find something better.

We’ve done a lot of HL2 and not much else the past couple of days, but one of the Firearms: Source devs drops me an email just now to tell me that they’ve gone and announced a release date. Well, a range of dates, at least, for this successor to the hugely popular Half-Life mod Firearms is to be launched in July. This July. The one coming up after June.

I’m hoping to arrange an interview with these guys in the coming [insert period of time here], but for now, here’s a tonne of new screenshots and here’s a cute visual history of Firearms.