In case you've been living in a small metal box somewhere in the deepest darkest depths of the sea, you may not have heard about this phenomenon that has totally overwhelmed the on-line fps gaming community called Counter-Strike.

Well, for the uninitiated it is a mod for Half-Life, which as we all know is one of the best selling games of all time and is still to this day still ranking high in the game sales charts. Not bad since it was released back in December 1998. Counter-Strike changes the core game play of Half-Life into a different take on the original fps game. Counter-Strike is a very simple concept, but it most certainly is a difficult game to master.

Basically it pits Terrorists (T's) against the Counter-Terrorists (CT's) in a wide range of maps in 4 different modes.

Detonation maps mean the T's have to reach a specific point in the map and plant a bomb while the CT's have to do their damn best to stop them.

Counter-Strike maps are where the T's have captured some hostages and its up to the CT's to go in and escort them out. Of course the T's are always hot on the heels of the CT's.

Assassination maps are where one person is nominated to be a VIP who must be protected at all costs by the CT's from being blasted away by the T's.

Escape maps are where the T's have to escape from an area while the CT's are trying their best to bring them down before they reach safe haven.

Of course, what I haven't told you yet is that this mod is 100% multiplayer. You MUST be online to play against anyone else. However, don't let this worry you, this is literally one of the biggest and largest games to ever hit the online world and there are literally tens of thousands of servers running at any one point and people are normally quite friendly to newbies.

One of the other features of Counter-Strike is that rounds will only last for 5 minutes maximum. This is because once you are killed in a map, you have to wait until the rest of your team has been killed, the enemy has been killed off or the map objective is complete. However, you do get to float around the map watching other players, which is sometimes a good way to find out the other teams tactics!

The current version (7.0) of Counter-Strike weighs in at a hefty 67.4MB download. This may be a lot for most people but you can normally find versions floating about on a Magazine cover cd. The folks at www.pczone.co.uk normally feature any updates on their cover cd. However, once you have downloaded the full executable, future releases are in smaller upgrade packs. For example, the current version can be upgraded by a smaller 30.4MB download making it a hell of a lot more friendly on the download time.

So all in all, is it worth it? Well, I could go on for a heck of a long time about how good a game it is. If you are a fan of FPS games, you will most definitely find it at least interesting. It has certainly captured far too much of my time, but does that make it worth yours… well, yes. This game has it all. Keep your eyes peeled for a complete review and breakdown of the Version 7.0 release once I get some time to play it more!

//mr flump. [mrflump@wormsmart.net-games.com]