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First Person Shooters (Games) PC Games (Games) Entertainment Games

Counter-Strike - Condition Zero Finally Released 80

Posted by simoniker from the cause-for-relief dept.
daitengu writes "After almost a year and a half of 'It'll be out soon', Valve Software has finally released Counter-Strike: Condition Zero. It is available on Steam for the low-low price of $29.95 or, rumor has it, you'll be able to buy it in stores today or tomorrow. Counter-Strike is the world's most popular online First Person shooter, and Condition Zero brings updated maps, skins, and graphics to the game, as well as a single-player mode. It also brings what some reviews have claimed as one of the best AI they've seen." The submitter continues: "If this game was released 9 months to a year ago like Valve was promising, I may have invested the $30 or $40 to buy it. Now, however, It's just not worth it to me." Does CS:CZ pique your interest at all?
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Counter-Strike - Condition Zero Finally Released More

Counter-Strike - Condition Zero Finally Released

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  • I lost my CS CD key a year or so ago. Will I be able to play traditional CS if I buy CS:CZ? Or will the key only work with CS:CZ?

    • Re:CD keys. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by fireduck ( 197000 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @05:44PM (#8650055)
      CS is available free if one owns HL. so assuming you originally bought HL (and not the retail CS), then you should be able to play either no problem...

      as for the original question of whether we have any interest in CS:CZ, I have none. Day of Defeat is my HL mod du jour. and for those "realistic" moments, I am messing around with America's Army.

    • Re:CD keys. (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Creepy Crawler ( 680178 )
      Heh.. Just call up Valve and say there was no CD-key in your box set.

    • Re:CD keys. (Score:2, Informative)

      by Jackazz ( 572024 )
      I bought CZ last night, it does come with a multiplayer version which is basically the same as CS. It has a few new maps, and all the old maps are slightly redone, new ramp here and there, more detailed textures, bump mapping, and extra touches like junk on the floor.

      Basically, it is just CS with more polygons added to each map, and better textures. The bots are fun, they are so good it is like playing with real people, except you know they aren't cheating, and your teammates will actually stick with yo

  • oh come on.. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dackroyd ( 468778 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @05:44PM (#8650059) Homepage

    If this game was released 9 months to a year ago like Valve was promising, I may have invested the $30 or $40 to buy it. Now, however, It's just not worth it to me."

    Seeing as it's going to be another year before HalfLife 2 is released, and CounterStrike is now pretty much broken (post the 1.6 patch) it's probably worth the money.

    /ducks

  • I am going to play it. (Score:3, Funny)

    by FriedTurkey ( 761642 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @05:50PM (#8650113)
    It will be at least 4 days before a cheat comes out. So I can play on even field for a little while.

  • Not worth it. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by elasticwings ( 758452 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @05:52PM (#8650128)
    I think I will probably wait until Half-Life 2 comes out. I just recently picked up Battlefield Vietnam, and I think it's going to tie me over for awhile as far as online fragging goes. Half-Life 2 on the other hand, will hopefully still be inovative when it comes out. But then again, at the rate their going, all the inovations in it might already be out in other games by the time it comes out. Hopefully it doesn't go the way of Daikatana and be too late or never come out like Duke Nukem Forever.

  • sys requirements (Score:5, Informative)

    by gothzilla ( 676407 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @05:54PM (#8650147)
    After clicking several links on different counterstrike sites (including the official ones), I finally found the system requirements on the Amazon.com page. Just in case anyone else is looking for them....

    Windows 2000/NT/XP
    Pentium III 500 MHz processor
    96 MB RAM
    16 MB Video Card
    500 MB HD Space

    When you have slightly older equipment, this info is important before shelling out $$$.
    • One thing I've found that it runs fairly slowly. I'm running 800x600 on a P4 1.7 with a Geforce Ti500 and 512mb of RAM and on some of the new maps there is slowdown - there really shouldn't be.
      • One thing I've found that it runs fairly slowly. I'm running 800x600 on a P4 1.7 with a Geforce Ti500 and 512mb of RAM and on some of the new maps there is slowdown - there really shouldn't be.

        This isn't intended as a flame, but I would yes you should expect slow down on your system, even at that low resolution. I want a sophisticed engine in my PC FPS games. I don't expect games to stay stuck looking like 4 year old titles, that means they need to take advantage and embrace new hardware.

        Now I haven't t
        • One thing you're missing: Counter-Strike is a mod of Half-Life. Half-Life is based on Quake 1. Not Quake 2, Quake 3, or Unreal 2003. It's the most ancient engine available in any game still sold today. If it didn't work on a 500Mhz box, I'd be quite disappointed.

          Now, I won't expect Half-Life 2 to run well on a 500Mhz box, because it's a new engine. CS:CZ is not (just a few incremental improvements), so it had better run well.

  • So where's TF2, then? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Most of the things that TeamFortress 2 was supposed to do have already been done by mods and by other commercial games (BF1942, UT2003/2004, etc). Where the heck is TF2?
    • No shit. I wanted that game so badly it hurt. Yet if it got released right now under the original specifications, it would be way behind the pack, just like what happened to OMF: Battlegrounds when they took too long to finish. :-(
      • Were you one of the people who hid his eyes and ears when the HL@ sourcecode got stolen? One of the big suprises out of that is appearantly TF2 is built-in to HL2 as a multilayer mod out of the box. Or there are a bunch of references to it in the multiplayer portion of HL2 for no good reason. Your call.

        • If I was a development company, I would build the source for my mods (which TF2 comes under) into the same source code repository, even if I wasn't going to distribute it with the game. This way you get a nice categorisation of your projects so if you want a specific mod checked out, you checkout hl2/tf2.

          However, I will remain hopeful that this was in fact not the case, and that something good is going to happen.

    • I believe that Team Fortress 2 is part of the multiplayer component of HalfLife2. Probably in the same kinda way that TeamFortressClassic was the good multiplayer component of HalfLife1, before CounterStrike.

      AFAIK there hasn't been any official information about this, but I recall reading websites mentioning that the leak included TF2 stuff.
    • what is the point of team fortress? i've never played (only CS). Is it like capture the flag?
      • Among other things, yes.

        I personally prefer it to CS, due to the people who play it (There are still people intent on spoiling the game, but less than on CS, at least in my experience.)
        • What are the "among other things?" Please excuse my ignorance, and a google search basically turns up 1,000 clan/map pages. I just wanted a quickie synopsis of the game (if you have the time I'd appreciate it). Thanks!
          • It's bascially capture the flag but also has player classes (Support, Engineer, Sniper, Heavy Weapons, etc) to encorage co-operative team play. The player classes were the most significant element IMO. There were also other level varients with things like multiple points to hold, as in BF1942 or BFVietnam.

            More info on TFC [planethalflife.com]

            It was somewhat 'superceeded' (not exactly, but in the eyes of many players) by the likes of Tribes (to which many TFC players jumped). I mention this as in many ways, the closest thi
      • What made Team Fortress ultimately boring for me was the ever-so-few amount of available maps. It seemed 99% of the servers were running the 2fort map and that was it. You had to go out of your way to find custom maps(one of my faves was the gigantic house where you are he size of a mouse).

        Sadly not many servers ran alternatives to CTF, like attack/defense. If you had un-regulated classes, every person on defense went engineer and you had to fight your way through 2x(# of ppl on defense) sentry guns. Pro

  • I've Bought It (Score:5, Informative)

    by colinramsay ( 603167 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @06:01PM (#8650256) Homepage
    Seems like all the posts here are offtopic or by people who haven't bought the game, so here's my impression.

    I bought it over Steam using a credit card, and it downloaded it in the background before it was released. Then the game was unlocked this morning. Apart from a little bit of network slowness when I first ordered it, this was totally seamless and I'd buy all of my games this way with confidence.

    The game itself shouldn't be a disappointment if you've read any previews. It's a Tony Hawks style "complete these objectives" game fit into the traditional Counter-Mtrike match format. Essentially you and your team of AI bots fight against another AI team in a normal match, but you'll have to make 5 kills with the Scout or something like that.

    There's also the single player missions that Ritual did - this is a kind of storyline section, like their Elite Force 2. In other words, it's a generic shooter.

    I'm enjoying it. It's nothing amazing, but it's challenging and all the maps have been re-done and look really good. The thing that makes it cool is the AI - the bots are truly amazing, very lifelike. I saw one knife another when it ran out of ammo, it was a shock to see a skill like that transferred to a computer opponent.

    All in all, it's "ok". Don't expect a revelation and you'll be fine. And Valve are offering it at a cut down price for a few more days.

    • I saw one knife another when it ran out of ammo, it was a shock to see a skill like that transferred to a computer opponent.

      Actually, that's been around for quite a while. Unreal Tournament bots switch to the Impact Hammer when they run out of ammo and will attack opponents using that melee weapon. There's even one bot that has the Impact Hammer as a favourite weapon - it will switch over and attack with it even though other weapons are more suited to the situation. (They will normally retreat if they

  • Well I guess judging by their release speed, Half Life 2 will be in the market by 2010.

  • Far Cry in stores tomorrow (Score:3, Interesting)

    by CoreyGH ( 246060 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @06:18PM (#8650462) Homepage
    I'll be spending my money on this http://farcry.ubi.com/ Check out the demos if you haven't seen them; you owe yourself that much.
    • I'll second this. I bought FC yesterday and, let me tell you, the Next-Gen FPS titles have arrived. Doom 3 and Half-Life 2? They're now playing catch-up to this amazing title, imho. FarCry is out - it has amazing graphics, and those graphics (in a rare convergence) actually facilitate good gameply instead of just being eye candy. id and Valve's offerings? Nowhere to be seen.

  • 2004 (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Tom7 ( 102298 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @06:25PM (#8650521) Homepage Journal
    ... and I'm still looking at axis-aligned rectangles and big unaligned textures.
    • Then stop playing games on a 6 year old engine.

  • valve link (Score:5, Informative)

    by Corporal Tunnel ( 642897 ) on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @06:54PM (#8650767)
    The link in the story [valve.com] goes to ValveNET, which certainly isn't Valve Software [valvesoftware.com].

  • What do you mean! (Score:4, Funny)

    by irokitt ( 663593 ) <{archimandrites-iaur} {at} {yahoo.com}> on Tuesday March 23, 2004 @08:23PM (#8651536)
    This is unreal! Valve released a game! Armageddon must be upon us!
  • Doesn't get my interest going as I played CS to death a few years ago and got tired of it. Especially when other mods such as TFC (TeamFortress Classic) are much more fun and encourage more teamwork IMHO then any CS game.
  • I'm not personally a fan of the FPS genre, personally prefering RPGS, but I do have a friend whos CS clan is sponsered, they placed pretty high at the CPL last year (7th or something I think), he seems to think that Conditon Zero is going to pretty much flop, at least for the hardcore CS players.
    What do other slashdotters think? Will players migrate and new clans form leaving the old CS clans antiquated memories, or will the original CS continue to flourish for a few more years?
    • Supposedly the multiplayer is identical and compatible. So I don't see why anyone not interested in bot matches or single player would buy CZ. And I don't see any bot match tournaments popping up...
  • I have counter-strike for Xbox (I have a mac, sadly half-life was never ported to macs). If they used a similar AI for condition zero as they did for xbox counter-strike, you guys are in for a treat. On xbox, you can scale the AI from Walking Meat to Unblievably Tough (with a couple steps in between). WHen I say unbelievably tough, I mean they are hard as hell. The bots actually camp. And they dont just sit there, they will move around a little, then camp a little. Its pretty cool. I couldnt believe
    • I have a mac, sadly half-life was never ported to macs

      Actually...what's even more sad is that it was ported to the Mac. After being over 90% complete, it was axed.

      http://www.cdmag.com/articles/023/139/hl_mac.html

  • I played the game, but it wasn't great. I played for a day or two almost straight in the single player and it was Ok, but nothing special. It seemed kind of boring - run through the corridors and kill the baddies, get the key, etc (though you get the opportunity to sneak around sometimes).

    Multiplayer might be worth it for some. I didn't get a chance to play.

    With Far Cry and Unreal Tournament 2004 out, I wouldn't spend my money on CS:CZ.
  • I am very positive on CS:CZ. First and foremost, the bots are remarkable. They talk to you, listen to you, work with you, complete mission objectives if you go down, and navigate well. Enemy bots, at least in the lower levels of difficulty, are not hard to kill or outsmart, but they do work to achieve their objectives with a surprising amount of intelligence. For example, if the T bomb-carrier goes down, the rest of the Ts will work to to get the bomb and carry out their mission. The only bug I have seen i

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