It wasn't supposed to be this way. Counter-Strike: Condition Zero was, we once believed, the future of first-person shooters. Coming from Half-Life and its expansion pack creators Valve and Gearbox, CS:CZ would - we thought - ride the phenomenal success of online-only Counter-Strike and deliver a single-player version of the classic team-based shooter.

That was the theory. In practice, CS:CZ suffered numerous delays up until the point where the entire development switched hands from Gearbox to Ritual. Rumours had it that all Gearbox's work was canned and development started afresh. Playing CS:CZ now, that's easy to believe.

It was last month's announcement that the game was to be mid-priced that really aroused suspicions though. ‘Mid-price’ sounds great to punters, but behind the value-added price-point of publishers usually cowers a terrified sales team who know that the buying public will refuse to cough up the full price. Software publishers aren't best known for their charity work, so at £24.99 it seemed reasonable to suspect that something may be rotten in the state of Counter-Strike…

Firstly, let's get the multiplayer mode out of the way. It's Counter-Strike; the latest version of which comes complete with the new defensive riot shield and a fancy front-end, but Counter-Strike all the same. Normal online price: free. For those reasons, it won't be discussed here, save to mention that its very inclusion adds 10% to the score.

The single-player game then; first impressions are of a stale - if not yet entirely rancid - 3D engine. Using an admittedly updated version of the Half-Life technology makes for a severely dated look, and while that's due in part to Valve already revealing Half-Life 2, CS:CZ even suffers in comparison with such ageing shooters as Soldier of Fortune II and Max Payne.

Player models may be beautifully detailed, but elsewhere examples of corner-cutting abound, such as using flat bitmaps as bathroom mirrors (complete with supernatural lack of reflection). This game feels hampered by its own technology, or it was rushed. Maybe both. It sounds insane given the protracted development time, but how else to explain away its inadequacies: a completely pointless subway intro sequence, an absence of narrative links between ostensibly unconnected missions, and then there are the puzzles…

Far be it from us to petition first-person shooter creators to add Mastermind-standard puzzle-solving to military shooters, but a little more thought could have been applied without the danger of Myst-ifying the game. As it is, missions have to be regularly started without even the rudimentary equipment needed to complete them; but don't panic - terrorists always leave the requisite kit just a few rooms away. Blowtorches therefore reside a stone's throw from impassable padlocked fences, remote mines are stored on tables in rooms adjacent to crucial targets, and don't get me started on the guns.
Oh, all right then, the guns. Mission loadouts are pre-set (thereby doing away with any of CS's innate tactical decision-making), but - and this is a killer - whacking terrorists doesn't gift you either ammo or weapons. Nope, not even if your last clip's empty. You're being forced to sharpen your knife in desperation, though the shiny shotguns and sniper rifles of slain terrorists carpet the floor. Can you pick them up? Can you hell. For weapons - just like grenades, blowtorches and mines - are only available to collect at pre-set positions throughout the many and varied maps.

Cunning mention of which leads me to level design (Seamless - Ed), and here it's not a bad story. Although lacking the aforementioned explanatory narrative to link the roles you play (one minute you're in Japan, the next you're out of Africa into Arctic warfare), the architecture and (admittedly very linear) missions are all, bar some decidedly tedious sewer sections, well above average.

It's a shame the same can't be said of your enemies' AI, which is mysteriously erratic throughout. Terrorists occasionally dive sensibly for cover in the face of a five-man CT killing squad, but in general display no more wit than a propensity to sprint towards you shouting “Aaaaahhh!” Tsk. Crazy terrorists.

CS:CZ lacks in almost every department. In many ways, it's a clumsy, backward game. It doesn't feature anything approaching the effective skeletal animation and hit-zone technology of Soldier of Fortune II, it doesn't boast anything to match Medal of Honour's attention to detail and mission structure. Hell, it doesn't even let you give tactical orders to your team-mates (unless you count clicking the ‘Use’ key to get them to follow you).

What it does have, however - and it's something no other shooter can lay claim to - is that indefinable Counter-Strike appeal. There's something strangely charming and unquestionably warming about finally playing a single-player version of a game whose history has been exhaustively documented and relentlessly tweaked unlike any other. Ironically, I felt nostalgic for CS while playing this brand new game; for all the times I ever logged on during the early betas; for all the hours spent sniping from the windows in ‘cs_estate’ or charging the tunnels in ‘de_dust’; for the myriad occasions when dodgy hostage AI would make me so furious I'd turn executioner…

Nostalgic, then, but only for yet another game of multiplayer Counter-Strike. Because for all its good intentions, Condition Zero has to be counted as a failure. A brave one, but a failure nonetheless. CS:CZ plays less like the future of the series, and more like the long-distant start point.


Verdict: 65%

<br><br>[Necro]Shmeeus
Day of Defeat - Necrophiliacs “Funus an Formosus”
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Xbox guru
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