Written by Jeff Buckland, 5/18/2004
Played on:
Windows
Few games have had a development cycle as rough as Counter-Strike: Condition Zero. What started off as a single-player version of the original online smash hit turned into a soap opera of fired developers, false starts, and other debacles that made this game almost as much of a joke as Duke Nukem Forever. Let's not even get into the fact that the announcement of the game going gold resulted in a delay of its release by almost six months.
The sad part is simply that Condition Zero didn't even have much hype to live up to. The original plan was to make a story-based single player campaign based upon the fairly well-established Counter-Strike gunplay, and then to spice up the multiplayer game at the same time. While this has been delivered to some extent with CS:CZ, the game presents little else to entice players.
This is the same old Half-Life engine we've seen for the last five years with a couple of new special effects that are almost as old as the underlying technology itself. While I can go on about how Condition Zero is a great buy for those who want a new game on a slow computer, players will soon find out that this is actually is an old game with only a couple of new elements. Detail textures are now in the engine, and some fairly decent rain effects were added as well; while both of these effects look fairly decent, these graphics still aren't going to wow anybody.
Many of the classic maps were retextured with art that has more definition, it doesn't seem to have any more personality than the old art. One could even argue that messing with the classic look of these maps might have actually been a bad idea. Of course we still maintain the stability of the original Half-Life engine, and so far everything seems mostly bug-free.
The only exception I see to this is Steam. Steam is Valve Software's streaming download technology that is being used for all their future products. The release of Steam and the conversion of their online games to it (classic Counter-Strike included) went badly for Valve, as their network couldn't handle the load of players trying to all get on it at once. Months later, Steam has improved, but it's still got bugs that many players are simply not willing to deal with. They might be willing to deal with these problems when they have to use it to play Half-Life 2 in a few months, but maybe not for CS:CZ. Of course, this isn't a review of Steam - it's a review for a game that runs on Steam. Nevertheless, it is an integral part of the technology and it does have its problems.
Condition Zero has added a new element to the game: AI-controlled bots. These bots have distinct personalities with names and voices, and these characters can be chosen by the player when going into a mission. Here, Turtle Rock & Valve have done an excellent job streamlining the interface. The multiplayer interface is also excellent, with server selection and options popping up as windows on top of the game itself. None of that interface is new to those who have already used Steam, but this is the first retail product that includes this interface.
CS:CZ's controls are excellent, and they'll feel right at home for veteran CS players. The practice you get against bots can be directly applied to online play, since the single player action is so similar to the multiplayer game.
Turtle Rock did make an effort to give the game at least a bit of a facelift, but it's just not enough. Many maps look different, but they don't play any different: they couldn't really help this because Turtle Rock needed to maintain compatibility with the original CS. The recently released v1.1 patch did add new player models and weapon skins to the game, but neither the new animations nor the models really look any better than the old ones in my opinion.
While the detail textures and weather effects go that small way to adding a bit of graphical flair to the game, the new graphics are still old and ugly. It's probably the best that Turtle Rock could do considering the fact that the engine is pretty much the oldest one that's still in use for retail games today.
Just about the only real difference between this and the original CS revolves around the bots added to the game. You progress through six "tours of duty", each with three maps, where you can pick which AI bots to add to your team. They're loosely rated on three statistics: skill, coop, and bravery. And these settings do mean something if you watch the bots in action, but in the end, it just doesn't amount to a very interesting game.
Turtle Rock did attempt to spice up the normal CS gameplay by adding requirements that you must meet during each match. In some missions, you'll need to get a certain number of kills with a specific weapon or maybe rescue some hostages. The thing is, these requirements are just not diverse enough to be fun after about an hour of gameplay, and they start becoming a burden before long. Pick the right guys, and your team is likely to mop up the terrorists - leaving you trying for round after round to rescue the required number of hostages before the enemies are all dead. Other times, the game will make you use sub-par weapons just to get some kills. We all know that Counter-Strike's weapons are far from balanced, and it's no surprise that the same problem exists here.
