When it comes to first-person shooters, one of the games to benchmark this category that comes into our minds is the Counter Strike Condition Zero series. Counter strike has always been a top played game among many others. First released in 2000, the game straight up dominated its category of FPS games.
What is Counter Strike?
For those living in a cave or just woke up from coma for the past two decades, Counter Strike is a tactical FPS consisting of two teams i.e. terrorists and Counter-terrorists which try to wipe each other from the map while trying to fulfill the game objectives. After each round, a specific amount of money is awarded to each team based on the objectives completed of the last round which players use to spend on new weapons in the next round. Counter-Strike1.6 is the game that introduced this concept to gamers worldwide. And as expected everybody loved it.
Release of Counter Strike Condition Zero
Since the announcement of Counter-Strike: Condition Zero in early 2001, the development of the game went through many hands. ROGUE ENTERTAINMENT initially started the production of the game in 2000. But later that year the producer of the company moved to SONY and the company was inevitably shut down leaving only Valve. However, Valve was busy with TF2 and hence handed the production of Condition Zero to Gearbox Software. But Gearbox missed its late 2002 deadline and the reigns of counter strike condition zero were given to Ritual entertainment who completely refurbished the game with 20 single player missions with an added multiplayer mode by Turtle Rock Studios.
Counter-Strike: Condition Zero advances this award-winning series by introducing objective based single-player action, the official CS bot, and special enhancements for online play. Counter Strike Condition Zero is a tactical action game that challenges you to compete with and against cunning computerized opponents in a Tour of Duty across the globe.
With its extensive Tour of Duty campaign, a near-limitless number of skirmish modes, updates and new content for Counter-Strike’s award-winning multiplayer game play, plus over 12 bonus single player missions, Counter Strike Condition Zero is a tremendous offering of single and multiplayer content.
What were the views of Critics as well as public?
Being heavily based on Counter strike 1.6, everybody had high expectations from counter strike condition zero. However there was nothing new in the game except some of the weapons, nades, maps, and of course the newly added singleplayer. Some of the new grenades/throwables introduced for the first time was
- High Explosive Grenade/Frag Grenade
- FlashbangSmoke
- GrenadeDecoy
- GrenadeMolotov/Incendiary Grenade
- Tactical Awareness Grenade
- Snowball
- Diversion Device
Critics gave counter strike condition zero a fairly average rating. The rating was heavily affected due to the similarity of the game to its predecessor Counter strike Some of the review from renowned publications are as follows
- GameRankings 67/100
- Metacritic 65/100
- GameSpot 68/100
- IGN 70/100
Gamers had mixed opinions about Condition Zero. Some had a very positive feedback towards the game while some were not happy. It was also due to the deleted scene game mode which acted as a downloadable content for the game. The game currently stands at a whopping 9/10 on Steam.
Compared to the potential of the technology at that time, counter strike condition zero was simply not good. Added to this, the price of forty bucks was like a deal-breaker. The gamers who previously didn’t own any Counter strike game were attracted to this game. But as the multiplayer game mode was no different than Counter strike 1.6 the sale of the game was not up to par.
What is the gameplay like in Condition Zero?
Since the announcement of Counter Strike Condition Zero, the single-player mode was what everybody was looking forward to playing with. And it turned out to be great. The mode consisted of eighteen total missions. One must complete the 3 sets of missions before advancing. There is a bot available for “purchase” with points that are provided.
The Eighteen missions were divided into six TOURS OF DUTY consisting 3 missions in each tour
The tours of duty consisted of the following maps:
- Tour Of Duty 1 :
- Dust
- Office
- Prodigy
- Tour Of Duty 2 :
- Tides
- Italy
- Inferno
- Tour Of Duty 3 :
- Dust II
- Militia
- Stadium
- Tour Of Duty 4 :
- Chateau
- Havana
- cobbleSTone
- Tour Of Duty 5 :
- Aztec
- Downed
- Airstrip
- Tour Of Duty 6 :
- Piranesi
- Fastline
- Torn
Condition Zero had 3 main scenarios in the single player campaigns. They are
- Bomb Defusal
- Hostage Rescue
- Assassination
Bomb Defusal : It’s a classic game mode that functions exactly like counter strike 1.6. A team of terrorists try to plant the bomb at two bomb sites namely A and B or kill all the counter terrorists. Whereas a team of counter terrorists try to stop the terrorists from planting the bomb or wiping out the terrorists from the map.
Hostage Rescue : This game mode consists of the counter terrorists rescuing the four hostages to the hostage rescue zones while the terrorists try to foil their plans. A team can also win if they kill all of their respective foes.
Assassination : As the name suggests, the terrorists try to asssassinate a VIP that must be protected by the counter terrorists. Counter strike condition zero introduced new models for the VIP as well as a new map (OilRig)
Bots
The Bots fall under 3 cost categories. Total of 8 Tour of duty bots are provided. Each bot uses his preferred weapon for all times. The bots are
- Kirk
- Kirk is a normal bot meaning its skill level is capped at 50.
- Preferred weapon of Kirk is AWP
- Larry
- Kirk is a hard bot with skill level at 75
- Weapon of choice of Larry is M4A1
- Cole
- Cole is a hard bot with limited skill level of 75
- Cole always uses M249
- Maverick
- Unlike others, Maverick is an elite bot with skill level of 100
- He costs 3 points whereas other elite bots cost 5.
- Maverick has weapon accuracy of 100%
- He uses M4A1
The bots that are cheap to buy are generally first to die. The bots are rated in three areas namely skill, bravery, and teamwork. Every bot has a preferred weapon. This gives you scalability to build the team of your choice. This is where counter strike condition zero shined
Most of the maps from the single-player mode are inspired by Valve’s vault, so experienced players will be familiar with classics such as Dust, Aztec, and Italy. The missions start off easy. As the missions in counter strike condition zero progress towards the end, so does the increment in the difficulty. Even the veterans will find it difficult to complete the missions in the expert difficulty setting. Each mission requires the player to either defuse the bomb or rescue a couple of hostages. Moreover, some of the missions have additional objectives like winning a round or getting a kill before a specific amount of time.
Like the good old Counter strike 1.6, you cannot win the single-player missions consisting of the rescuing of hostages unless every hostage is safe. Similarly, for the bomb-defusal missions, you win the round the moment you defuse the bomb without killing every terrorist player.
Though the bots increase in difficulty as the tour of duty progresses, they aren’t invincible.Occasionally you can spot some specific patterns between the bots and easily use this as a vulnerability.
As far as multiplayer is concerned, it is almost the same as the one found in Counter-Strike 1.6. Though there are map tweaks that consist of addition of maps such as corruption, downed, fastline, inferno, dust2, sienna. Overall everything is the same. Counter strike 1.6 being a world-class shooter, there is nothing more to say about it. Even though Condition Zero has the same multiplayer, it didn’t receive a good reaction from the players as the game was not fairly balanced. The HE-Grenade was overpowered while some of the guns were underpowered.
Moreover, in Condition Zero, the wall spamming feature was absent. This was more frustrating as walls were generally a shield unlike in 1.6 where the wall-bang mechanism was perfect. With the overpowered grenade, it was possible to just kill the entire team on the catwalk in Dust II with just a mere HE Grenade.
Bottom line
The only reason copies of counter strike condition zero were sold was because of the free beta access to Counter-Strike: Source, which was about to be released. People still bought it even though they knew that it was basically the same game as Counter strike 1.6. Valve could have called it Counter strike 1.7 or CS1.8. This led the people to think that it was a move from Valve to just earn more money.
Counter-Strike: Source was released in 2004 which made things worse for Counter strike condition zero as Source was a completely revamped version of Counter strike 1.6. Counter strike condition zero sales were nothing compared to that of Source. If it was released on its initial release date then it could have blown among the Counter strike community. But due to the unfortunate delays, it was released way ahead of the decided year.
Bottom line is, though Counter strike condition zero is a good game, it is nothing but an updated version of 1.6 with some minor patches and some new weapons.
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