Someone tell me everything I need to know about Counterstrike.

[Feek]

I've got the original Half Life which I own, purchased, paid for and never completed.

What's Counterstrike all about? I've never played it. I understand it hooks into Half Life somehow. What [exactly] do I need to download/do?

Am I so far out of date that it's not usable and I need to get something else?

Explain to this luddite what it's all about. Use simple terms and links. Treat me as though I know absolutely bugger all about it, this should be easy because it's accurate!

[Dymetrie]

Install the game, install Steam from here

shout at me when it's done and i'll make a server (must find bots)

[Haly]

Nooooo it's not out of date.
Original CS (1.6) is much better than the crappy Source that comes with HL2.

What you do need to do though is get a copy of Steam from www.steampowered.com then it'll download a mass of files from the installer and check with you what games you've got. Tick for CS and HL1 and it'll download the relevant files and should ask you at some point for your CD key (it's been a while since I installed so I can't remember exactly I'm afraid).

Right, an explanation of Counterstrike.

It's a team FPS game. Basically there's two teams, Terrorist and Counter Terrorist.
You load up the game and connect to a server (there's thousands of them available) and you'll start playing a map. There's loads of maps too, most common are de_dust and de_dust2.

The point of maps beginning with de_ is that the Terrorists have to plant a bomb at one of two designated bomb sites, while the Counter Terrorists are meant to stop the bomb being planted. If it is planted then the Counter Terrorists need to defuse the bomb within a short amount of time before the bomb goes off.

There are other maps such as cs_ maps (such as cs_office). These are hostage maps. In these the Counter Terrorists have to rescue hostages from a set location and return them to their hostage drop off point (always by where you start the map/your spawn point), and the Terrorists have to stop them.

Maps typically last 30 minutes with a round lasting at most, 3 minutes or so, unless the entire of one side is killed or an objective fulfilled.
Unlike other FPS games such as Unreal Tournament, you have to be a bit more careful. It's easier to get killed and once you do get killed, you're out of that round of the game. Also sound plays a crucial point to the game, you can hear people running and shooting, and can pinpoint where they are if you're any good and got a decent set of headphones.
There's also some interesting recoil on the weapons so you have to get used to that too.

There's a point, when you start a round, you're able to buy weapons, armour and grenades by pressing the 'b' button. You are allocated money according to how many people you've killed, how many your team have killed, whether the bomb has been planted or defused in the previous round and a few other bits and pieces.
Just experiment with the weapons first of all, best weapons are the ak-47 (for the terrorists) and the colt (for the counter terrorists) but you do have to get used to firing them.

I'll have a look for some links for you now as I've probably just rambled confusing crap at you

[Davey_Pitch]

Good explaination Jen. I got quite into CS:Source for a while (I never played 1.6 so have no idea what I'm missing), but I went away from it and never went back. If you get into it then it's definitely a very addictive game.

[Feek]

OK, I've done the Steam thing and accepted everything it's offered to download, looks like about 4 gig of stuff so it'll take a while as I've got other stuff downloading at the same time *cough*

/edit
It's downloading:
Counter-Strike
Day of Defeat
Deathmatch Classic
Half-Life
Half-Life: Blue Shift
Opposing Force
Ricochet
Team Fortress Classic

[Matblack]

TFC rocks, I prefered that to CS tbh

MB

[Belmit]

I still have my original copy of HL and have Steam installed for HL2 etc. I was put off playing online by the amount of idiots but loved playing it over LAN. If someone from here is setting up a private server I'll gladly start playing again - I really liked just Halflife deathmatch, especially the level with the nuclear bunker.

[Haly]

TFC was a great game I played that originally before CS and it was really good fun. Pity there's so few servers around for it now although there's still enough to make it worth a game.

Day of Defeat is pretty good too although I never really got into it.

CS1.6 though, last Summer I played it sometimes for 12 hours a day Which admittedly wasn't healthy, but just an example of its effect on me

Source is good but I just don't find it's got the same draw as 1.6 does.

As an aside: 81.19.209.5:27015 is my Clan's server IP address. Have a play on there if you want and if you have any trouble, i'll kick the gits for you I play as either Haly or HalyBadger.

[Feek]

Well I'm really crap at this sort of game but if there's a server I can attach to with people I know to just practise a bit and and at least work out what I'm doing without getting ganked in a few seconds then that'd be superb.

I didn't like any of the Feek options I was offered as a name (damn internet people stealing my name. I'm therefore AnjinSahn.

I take it all the things it's downloading are just variants on the theme?

[Haly]

Nope they're all different games thrown in with the package
Counter-Strike = one I described above.
Day of Defeat = WW2 FPS multiplayer team game. Bit reminiscient of Call of Duty.
Deathmatch Classic = just deathmatch, a la Unreal Tournament/Quake 3.
Half-Life = Half Life
Half-Life: Blue Shift = Half Life expansion pack which is a different take on the original story.
Opposing Force = another Half Life expansion pack
Ricochet = I can't remember
Team Fortress Classic = team based multiplayer FPS game where you have to choose from different classes, i.e you can be an engineer or a scout. Matblack may be better at explaining this because my memory's fuzzy.