CS: Source and Half Life 2
Well I've been recently playing CS: Source ever since Famine mentioned it in one of his half life post. I've played it for the last couple of weeks and have really enjoyed it. It brings back the nastolgia of our old FaMiNe Inc. days and allows me to relive my glory days of being just Wing. There really hasn't been too much changes in the game play compared to the original CS but there are a couple of little differences. Since this is the HL2 engine the graphics are of course a lot better and the physics of the objects in the maps are really cool. Now when you shoot at things it there is an actual interaction, such as when you shoot at a metal barrel sparks fly off of where the bullets hit and the barrel actually falls onto it's side instead of not moving at all. When you use your knife against a wall or piece of wood there actually appears to be damage occurring to the object you're striking and this occurs to every object including the ground. One really cool thing that I figured out is that you now can actually shoot the gun you dropped or someone else dropped and it would actually move. So you could actually shoot an M4 across a hall were some one is camping that hall so you wouldn't have to run across and get the gun. The bomb planting is similar, but again, better looking. You can actually see numbers changing when a T punches in the code to set the bomb and you can the numbers decoding when a CT trys to defuse it. The actual bomb explosion is pretty cool too. Objects around the explosion either fly away or catch on fire. Other than the cool special and lighting effects the game play it self, I feel, is no different from the oldem days. Of course, I've only been able to play de_dust but it's it shit load better looking and I spent an hour of playing by myself on dust just running around shooting things to see what happens, it's a pretty awesome engine. The Night vision is also a lot more useful since it does actually work. Probably the best improvements to the old game would have to be the grenade effects. With the smoke nade you can actually hide in the smoke and people can't see you but you can vaguely see them. The HE nade actually causes a ringing in your ear if it goes off around you and causes your screen to shake a bit, although the damage is still about the same as old. The FB is probably the best affect, it does the same thing as it did in the old one if you're looking somewhat towards it it causes your screen to go all white, but the cool part is when you recover you kind of see a mix of the image that you saw last and the real image that you're seeing now so it is actually extremely disorientating when there are 2 enemies standing in front of you and you keep shooting at the old one when you should be shooting at the other guy.
Speaking of HL2, Source has allowed pre-loading of HL2 so if you were looking to purchase HL2 off source or if you're like me and had the ATI deal and have been waiting for this shit for ever you should sign onto source and attempt to pre-load. Unfortunately the shit is hella busy, as expected, and you have to keep trying because it just keeps saying the servers are busy.
Speaking of HL2, Source has allowed pre-loading of HL2 so if you were looking to purchase HL2 off source or if you're like me and had the ATI deal and have been waiting for this shit for ever you should sign onto source and attempt to pre-load. Unfortunately the shit is hella busy, as expected, and you have to keep trying because it just keeps saying the servers are busy.