Since it's just a beta-version, we shouldn't take everything in the game for granted. Some of the things, mostly the details which we tell you about in the article, are most likely to be changed before the game hits the stores. When we tested the game, we discovered a couple of small bugs which most likely will be fixed before the final version of the game. For example, the buy-menu got stuck once and you couldn't use ALT+TAB without crashing the program. Sometimes it started raining bodies from the sky, they fell nicely to the ground, but was it really necessary?



The first change in the game was the menu system. The background is new and the dialog windows have been redesigned with a new colour. The dialog windows are now almost transparent and the ones you don't use get toned down. Generally, most of the things were the same, and all the stuff were where you expected them to be. The menu system felt smoother than before.



When we started the game we felt at home pretty soon. The scoreboard, the chat and the majority of the HUD was just like before. Everything's got cleaned up but it's obvious that Valve has tried to keep a lot of the old Counter-Strike.



For some particular reason, Valve has removed the text that indicates that you're firing on a teammate. On the german publicserver where we tested the game, it was kind of annoying that you couldn't tell when you were firing at a teammate. That caused some confusion since the players didn't know whether Friendly Fire was on or off. Despite some irritation during public play, I don't think it will have such a big impact on the game.



The headshot-icon is re-done again. It's not as horribly ugly as the big skull was a couple of months ago, but the old ordinary icon is a lot nicer looking. Some of the weapon icons are also new. These are not that big changes, but I'd prefer the old icons.



New for the chat is that you actually can use the Swedish letters å, ä and ö. In the beginning it felt pretty weird to use an ordinary keyboard configuration, but I got used to it pretty soon and as time pass on I think most of the players will fancy the ordinary keyboard, even more if you're new to the game. You could also use Swedish letters in your name.



Before we talk about the real game, I'd like to talk about some things that have been changed in the spectator's point of view. Unlike 1.6, you can fly around faster than before. It's also an odd feeling when you try to stop, since you can't stop at once now, you glide a bit after you release your finger from the button. The spectator-view has a slippery feeling now. The possibility to see a players' name and hit points is now available through pointing your crosshair at him.



Another interesting function is the new overview-map. It's not as blurry as before, now it's actually pretty satisfying to look at. Another new function is that the players now leave a trace when they run around the map. The trace disappears after a while, but it will surely be interesting in 2on2 and 1onX-situations during matches, if the function also is available for HLTV.



You could also see how much HP the players had left as in many strategy-games (with a small green and red line under the players). It may ease the transfer for some new players. For the ones that haven't had time to learn the details, it will be easier to get an overview of the game.



I CS: Source the HP blinks red down in the left corner when you're taking fire. Not as nice to look at, but it's not that big of a change, since mostly everyone knows whether they're shot at or not. Worth a notice is also that the HP doesn't get red when your HP is below 25.



Otherwise, we're excited to see the new functions, if any, that are available in HLTV for Source. Since no HLTV-servers have been released, we couldn't test it.



Now for the questions you're all wondering about: How good must my computer be to play the game? We tested the game on computers with Pentium 4 2,6 GHz, GeForce 5900Ultra 128 Mb DDR-RAM and 512 Mb RAM. Depending on the situation and environment, the FPS jumped between 30 and 70. We used a high detail on the models, the shadows and the textures. Strangely, the FPS was the same on all the resolutions we tried, 640x480 and 1024x768. Maybe it's just the beta version, and it might be changed before the final version. But with a couple of tweaks, the game will probably flow pretty well. You can also count with a couple of FPS-guides as soon as the game is released. It worked pretty well on the computers we tested it on, but there are probably a lot of people out there who are in need of that extra FPS.

Gameplay

The gameplay itself in the beta is very alike to the ordinary Counter-Strike. The weapons act mostly the same, even though it wasn't too easy to hand the recoil etc. on the german server. With exceptions for the greater amount of details, they also look the same. One interesting detail is that with the AWP, you can actually see behind yourself using the sniper-scope. It's a nice detail, but if it requires a lot of juice from your computer, it won't be long before it's tweaked away. The arsenal isn't changed at all, which some people may find pretty boring. The riot shield is removed, but otherwise the equipment is the same as in Counter-Strike 1.6.



The grenades have actually changed a lot. They've got whole new models (The HE is round!), and the grenades all act differently from before. All grenades are thrown in a new way. It's hard to point out the difference in the throw, but the feeling in the throw isn't the same as CS 1.6. It's not a bad feeling, mostly unusual. I bet we're all going to get used to it as time passes on.



If we start with the HE-grenade, it isn't even named HE more. The new name is Frag Grenade, which spoken would be "frag" (name collision?) if you use the new name. Just like before, the grenade explodes and damages those who stand near it. Unlike before, you don't just lose HP – if you're really close to the grenade, you'll be hearing a strange sound in your ears and you will get some trouble moving for a while. The strange sound isn't the most comfortable sound, but it isn't really irritating for the ears, at least not with the headset I used. In Counter-Strike Source, the grenades can't hurt you through walls. That function was implemented in Condition Zero a couple of weeks ago but hasn't really been introduced to Counter-Strike 1.6 yet. I bet that will mean a lot on a couple of places, like the bombsites on Inferno, the small bombsite on Dust2 and the yellow house at Nuke.



The smoke-grenade isn't as fast as in 1.6. It's not as slow as in 1.5 though, it's like a happy medium. The smoke pours out from the grenade in a fast tempo right from the start. The smoke doesn't move that much, it's at the one place it should be all the time. The smoke is generally as transparent as before, and the use of smokegrenades will probably stay the same.



The flashbangs are probably the grenades that are most discussed in Counter-Strike Source. The new thing about them is that you now hear a squeeking sound, just as if you were standing near a Frag Grenade. It also shows a picture of what you just saw in about one second. That phenomena isn't repeated as many times as we expected, we flashed and flashed but didn't freeze many times. When the squeeking sound appears, all other sounds are removed. It can maybe get interesting during gameplay. If you know were your enemy's at, you can easily bombard him with flashbangs and then stroll freely around without him knowing a thing.



Generally, the grenades are smaller than before. A grenade that comes flying isn't at all as easy to see as in 1.6. But on the other hand, it doesn't look that weird when you throw a grenade through a small opening.



Also the bomb has got smaller which makes it harder to find lying around the map. Before, it also was kind of hard to find that orange backpack if it had fell on a weird place. I can imagine that the bomb-finding will get even harder now when the maps contain a lot of junk, like barrels and things. It's also harder to tell which player is carrying the bomb, which hits the CT pretty hard.



Another new thing for Source is that you can pick up grenades just the same way you can pick up weapons from dead players. Since the grenades are small now, they're harder to find than a shining AWP or colt. The next step would be to collect pistols from players who carried a real weapon. Grenades from players who died with them drawn don't explode now.



A thing with the grenades that has bugged me for a while now is that "clonk-sound" that appears when you throw a grenade at a teammate. That sound is now replaced with an "ouch!" which also makes the player lose a small amount of HP. It's no great amount of HP that gets lost when a grenade hits you, when we tried it, we made 2 in damage with a headshot. Maybe the new humiliation instead of the knife?



Something that irritates me is that you can't buy one magazine of ammo at the time. If you hit the button for ammunition for the USP, you suddenly got to pay $175 instead of the $25 you had expected. This will cause a problem if you want to try a deagle-eco and don't want all the 35 shots that are available for $280. This gets even more irritating when you buy the AWP, and have to fire away $250 for all the extra ammo even if you just wanted that one magazine.



Since we're already discussing the buyzone, we can add that you're not able to jump and fool around during freezetime anymore. That can and will cause a problem when you want to drop a weapon for a teammate, at Dust2 it can be done, but what about T-spawn at Cobble?



The delay on the zoom on the AWP has irritated the whole community since the day it came. The old zoom isn't re-born, but the problem has been slightly improved. Nowadays, the AWP doesn't zoom at once. You see the whole zooming-process, from no zoom to the position you've chosen. The delay isn't as long as before, and it seems like you can hit pretty good without fulfilling the zoom anyway. The irritation isn't gone, but it's a step in the right direction.



The zoom looks a bit different. The glass is filthy and instead of the advanced zoom crosshair that is available in CS 1.6, we now only get two lines crossing each other in the center. The Aug and the Sig has got a small delay on the zoom (not as long as on the AWP) but otherwise they're the same as before.



The big negative thing so far is that you can't boost at all. They've made the heads of the players really slippery. If you try to jump on another layer, you fall off in a second. Against a wall it's easier, but when you're on top of that player, you can't jump anywhere. The boosting is no more and I think this is a sad that this element is removed from the game (update: Valve has announced that boosting will be back).

Physics

The biggest news with the Source-engine is the new physics. The maps will from now on be a lot more interactive than before. We can say right away that Valve’s done a good job with this. The new physics puts a lot of joy just in to shooting at stuff, like walls, small objects and barrels. Unfortunately there are also some objects which cannot be moved. Piles of small boxes cannot be moved, even though boxes of the same kind that lies on the ground joyfully jumps around when being shot at.



Things that are affected by the physics are weapons (when not being held by a player), players and some specific objetcs on the maps. Grenades cannot be affected. Big things, such as barrels, can be moved by walking in to them. Smaller things such as weapons and cans must be shot at, or hit by frag-grenades, to move. The ability to shoot at weapons lying on the ground may be an interesting feature. If one on, for example, Dust have a weapon lying in the middle of the hallway in front of the terrorists it can be shot from the catwalk across the room towards the middle exit, and thereby end up in the hands of a teammate. Similar methods can of course be used to move guns out of the enemy's reach.



Something we were hoping for were using barrels instead of players to jump to higher locations. This would give map creators an easy way of deciding which places should be in the players' reach. These hopes were lost pretty soon, as it appeared to be almost impossible to get up standing on a barrel and then jumping away from it. The barrels are also very difficult to raise once they’ve fallen, so we aren’t talking about any greater height differences anyway.



Generally barrels, and other big moveable objects, shouldn’t make any bigger impact on tactics or serious gaming. It sure can be cool to roll a barrel in front of you to use it as protection, but it doesn’t actually provide much of that, as it’s very easy to move away. It’s also pretty difficult to move barrels to the specific place where you want them (or maybe it was just me being untrained in the noble art of moving barrels in Source)



One of the biggest advantages of the Source-engine is that the bodies now act a lot more realistic. One can now find the most peculiar positions among the fallen (see the picture archive) A good example of this is a person who fell from the catwalk on Dust (the only map available in the Beta version) He landed on his back with his legs leaned towards the wall to the great amusement of the passing players. The bodies are just like they should be. You could say that this is where Valve has added a big portion of realism.



Since the bodies can be affected by the physics they can be moved by being shot at. I haven’t found any real use for this yet, but maybe I'll find a way to put it to use…



The physics also affect the weapons when thrown. Now you not only hear when a weapon is picked up, but also when it falls or hits a wall.

Graphics

The first thing you notice when taking a look at CS: Source is of course the graphics, and the reason for noticing them is that it really looks nice. The indoor environment at Dust is wonderful both to look at and to play in, since the effects don't appear to have a very big impact on the FPS.



Dust particles are flying around looking nice in the sunshine while gunblast lights the smoke coming from a smoke grenade. The details astonishes me.



The playermodels are high quality even though they sometimes seem a bit unnatural. The weapon models on the other hand are a home run. They offered one positive surprise after another and I had nothing to complain about.



One thing that I noticed was that Valve have chosen to stay on the same road they started walking with Condition Zero concerning the blood, in other words there is even more blood on display in Source. When someone dies you can be sure of seeing a rain of blod, when someone is shot you're likely to find a splash on the nearest wall and next to some corpses you can even find pools of blood.



Concerning the light I have no complaints at all. It may not look as cool as in Doom 3, but then again half the maps in CS are not pitch dark. The flashlight in CS: Source, though, is a whole new story and it looks like it can really do some damage – if people will just give it a chance. Player's shadows were thrown believably and didn't leave me with any doubt.

New settings

We took a quick look at the user config for the beta. Most of the old commands are still there but some have been modified or removed. Except for lots of graphic commands we found these new commands that appear to deal with the mouse acceleration.

m_customaccel "0"

m_customaccel_scale "0.04"

m_customaccel_max "0"

m_customaccel_exponent "1"

m_mouseaccel1 "0"

m_mouseaccel2 "0"

m_mousespeed "1"

This might mean that we in the future won't have to add things in the "Launch options". They've also added new commands for the crosshair and the radar. It appears that you're now able to set the opacity for the radar and crosshair much more precisely. It also looked as if you could customize the size of the crosshair far more than in CS 1.6.



We're approaching the end of this article. Before we're finished we'll bring up a small issue regarding one of the basic aspects of Counter-Strike – the ability to penetrate walls with gunfire. When we tried the Source engine some objects appeared to be impossible to penetrate. They looked like ordinary boxes made of wood. Stone walls on the other hand seemed to pose no problem to the guns. It's probably just a small bug in the beta and it seems very unlikely for Valve to take away or limit the ability to shoot through objects.



To sum things up I think CS: Source seemed really good. The new spectator options together with the new grenades and the physics will probably help CS: Source to compete with Doom 3. Even though it was just a beta, the game was very entertaining and Valve has achieved a very good balance between new and old things. If you'd like to look at more pictures we have an entire image archive at your disposal. We've also got a movie coming up later. If you'd like to try CS: Source yourself I recommend visiting one of the not so many cafés in the Valve Cyber Café Program.