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.

It was just released… maybe an hour ago? I don’t know, but you can download it for yourself after the click from their website, as the client isn’t up on the ModDB page. They’ve got one of those neato customized pages like Overwatch had. Wait a second, why are you still reading this? Are you waiting for the download to finish? Anyway, for those of you who aren’t familiar with the Firearms mods (or its turbulent history) here’s the lowdown: it’s Counter-strike with that pesky thing developers tend to call realism. True to its name, Firearms is all about the guns. There’s about thirty-one, or thirty-three if you’re going by the trailer, of them.

Of course, it’s not really about the guns for me. I was slightly enthused at best about  Borderlands’ promise of 87 bajillion, so I sat through the first half of the trailer in merely passing interest until the white on black “SIX SKILL TREES” popped up. Now, I like a good skill tree, and when they manage to throw six of them you can pretty much guarantee that I started downloading instantly.

The game client can be found at the Firearms: Source website.

And the obligatory ModDB page.