Page 2: Learning by failing

Contents

The battles in "Counter-Strike" are fast and merciless: As a rule, one hit to the unhelmeted head is enough to end the round prematurely - and this is much more the rule than the exception, especially due to the powerful sniper rifles (the AWP in the hands of a reflex-strong opponent is a nightmare).

Unlike in other online shooters of the time, in "Counter-Strike" you don't immediately reappear on the battlefield ready for action after a kill. Instead, you spend the rest of the round as a ghost hovering behind your team. If you're dead, you stay dead for that round - and to be honest, especially as a beginner, you spend most of your playing time as a spectator.

Because "Counter-Strike" is hard. It has always been. It requires a great deal of willingness to learn and a mighty thick skin of frustration to be fun in the long term: The shopping hotkeys need to be internalized. The operation of the many different weapons has to become second nature. You have to be able to recite the bomb and hostage points on each map in your sleep, as well as the structure of the map itself, as most of them have many different routes to the target. You need to know the enemy's best-known pincer points; being able to distinguish between friend and foe at a distance is essential. You have to spend a lot of time on both sides to grasp the important differences in the game system of both parties. And most importantly: no continuous fire with the automatic weapons! Only targeted single shots will bring success - if you hold down the fire button for more than a fraction of a second, you will develop the hit rate of an Imperial stormtrooper.

The technology: only moderately exciting

Technically, "Counter-Strike" was, well, functional right from the start. The game runs on the old GoldSrc engine from "Half-Life", which was advanced for the time, but not exactly photorealistic. However, this didn't play the slightest role in "Counter-Strike": the only things that counted and still count here are game speed and the legibility of the levels. Legendary maps such as "de_dust2", "cs_italy", "de_nuke", "de_inferno", "de_aztec" or "cs_office" are simply structured and, after years of fine-tuning, have been perfected for optimum playability.

And this is still noticeable today: there are always several paths to the goal, there are points everywhere where you can gain an advantage, at least briefly - but you can't really box yourself in anywhere. Campers have never had a place in "Counter-Strike" and are the first to be kicked off a server. The second ones are the ones who run off with the M249 instead of a knife in their hand.

More "Counter-Strike" for the world!

Version 1.6, released on January 16, 2003, was the final major release of the original "Counter-Strike". It was also the first to be brought to players via Valve's then brand-new distribution platform, "Steam". This version, which continued to be patched but always bore the serial number "1.6", was the "Counter-Strike" standard for many years to come. Under this number, it developed into an eSports colossus. Under this number, it was turned into the flagship "killer game" after the various tragic school massacres. And under this number, it became a million-seller. It is impossible to say exactly how many copies have been sold over the years, as it has been released again and again and again in countless variants and collections. Even Valve can only speculate roughly into the millions.

In any case, several attempts were made to repeat this lucky strike – sometimes more, sometimes less successfully. "Counter-Strike: Condition Zero", for example, was supposed to be a spin-off aimed primarily at solo players, but it took four years and three development studios before it was released in spring 2004 – only to be largely ignored by the gaming community.

Back to the present

Around six months later, "Counter-Strike: Source" was released, which, as the name suggests, brings the original game to the "Source" engine primarily developed by Valve for "Half-Life 2" (2004). Sounds like a clear winner, but this game also never found its way into the dedicated gaming community, who didn't care about bump mapping and more realistic smoke effects.

Only "Counter-Strike: Global Offensive ", released in the late summer of 2012, managed to knock "Counter-Strike 1.6", which was already almost ten years old at the time, off its throne. Valve designed "Global Offensive" as an eSports title from the outset. It had a somewhat difficult start, but was patched to perfection over the years to become an eSports giant and was the title that paid out the biggest prize money at the biggest tournaments in the biggest leagues for years to come.

Until 2023, when "Counter-Strike 2", which had also been in development for almost forever, came along and literally and inevitably replaced "Global Offensive" overnight. Of course, this was anything but well received by the community at first, but now there is no way around this game when it comes to Counter-Strike. Meanwhile, there have also been console versions of the series, with the 2004 "Counter-Strike Neo" even an arcade version developed by Namco Bandai. But none of these have left a noticeable mark on the cement of history.

Thank you, "Counter-Strike"!

The original "Counter-Strike", i.e. version 1.6, is no longer officially available, at least not from Valve. If you like, you can play it on modded DS and 3DS handhelds, but it makes much more sense to simply play it in your browser. And when you do this again after years of abstinence, you immediately feel like you've been transported back to the turn of the millennium: The cacophonous clacking at the start of the round when everyone makes their purchases at the same time, followed by "Okay, let's go!" The smoke grenades that are thrown into the usual suspected choke points right at the start, accompanied by "Fire in the hole!" The voices, the sound effects, the "E Il Sol Dell'anima" performed by Luciano Pavarotti echoing through the streets of "cs_italy".

Hach. How this game dominated my private LAN parties at the turn of the millennium! We played a lot back then: "StarCraft", "Quake 3 Arena", "Armagetron", "Team Fortress Classic" - but once we'd tasted "Counter-Strike" blood, there was no going back.

"Counter-Strike" was the prototypical underdog story of the turn of the millennium, from small fan project to mass phenomenon, from modding finger exercise to the ultimate skill-based team shooter. Which, at its core, still works in exactly the same way today as it did when it was first released 25 years ago. And which, alongside "Wolfenstein 3-D", "Doom" and "Duke Nukem 3D", can easily be considered one of the most important and influential first-person shooters of all time. And as one of the most important mods anyway.

(olb)