e3 impressions
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It was a very exciting day that ended with sore legs and heavy eyelids. The main thing about the E3 floor is sound: Everything is loud. You leave E3 for a second and you'll be surrounded by chain smokers. Buy a soda and prepare to pay $3.
But it was an excellent day full of gaming goodness. You're swarmed by hype, boothbabes and horrible music.
CS: Condition Zero had a small area on the Vivendi booth where you could botmatch on CS 1.6 or watch a non-interactive demo of the SP game. It's not that big of a deal so I'll skip it for this article. The biggest new thing is CS 1.6 bots, and those were already announced. The game should be shipping very soon and for more info you can read our recent Levelord interview.
One of the first things I did was check out Counter-Strike's Xbox port. You can skip my write-up on CSX and read our Half-Life 2 report here.
Counter-Strike on the Xbox
Underneath a huge artist's render of three Counter-Terrorists and the large title "Counter-Strike" stood dozens of fans. The CSX display was always crowded and the eight systems there weren't enough to feed the hunger. So a few dozen were always waiting for one gamer to relent and hand the controller over. Finally, I got my hands on a controller. A half a minute later:
"Don't worry, no one saw."
That's what Joe Waters, a programmer for Counter-Strike for Xbox (CSX) and employee of Ritual Entertainment whispered to me jokingly. Indeed, I am thankful that no one saw my first round of Counter-Strike played using Microsoft's Controller S.
I'm glad no one saw, but I'm ecstatic that no one knew that I am rizzuh, being webmaster of a large CS fansite and a dedicated player of the game for nearly four years. And boy, it didn't show.
And, really, it—any skill or experience you have now—won't show for anyone else once they play CSX. Counter-Strike for Xbox, co-developed by Ritual Entertainment (also working on Condition Zero, more on that later) and VALVe Software, is a different game based on a different type of skill and a unique type of play. It's not a threat to PC Counter-Strike, it's just different. Okay, this is starting to sound like a PBS after-school special on racism, but the point is important to get across.
Let's talk about the game. Firstly, the controls. I made this spiffy diagram using PowerPoint and thirty cups of coffee:
If you're an Xbox fan, you can probably tell that the analog sticks are used as they are in Halo, the first and most popular first person shooter title on the platform. Overall the basic control setup is very well done. The radial options menu, accessed by pressing the start button, will allow you to increase or decrease your sensitivity and invert your controls. More options, like the ability to change teams, will probably be added but I saw no signs of them at E3.
Switching guns is a bit haphazard because, unlike Halo, you hold three weapons: your primary gun, your pistol, and a knife. If you accidentally switch to your pistol and want to go back to your primary, you'll have to go through your knife first which can cost time.
Aiming is solid. It's like Halo, which works well enough. There is a noticeable auto-aim which results in a lot of headshots. The game is a lot more arcadey because aiming isn't as tight. Generally, this means that it is not necessary and even silly to burst fire on most occasions. Certainly bursts themselves, if used, are much longer. That two round burst is now a ten round one.
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