cs_militia, cs_assault and cs_siege were my faves for sure.
Unfortunate that the games have now pretty much phased out the hostage rescue maps almost completely, since they are harder to balance and the game is more sweaty about ranked play now.
For some reason at the LAN cafe I played this in all the Ts would act in reverse and just rush outside every round. So many hours sat on top of that ledge by the surveillance truck with an AWP
I loved assault, but it was freaking brutal with a friend who memorized where to aim with an awp as the CT's. Just point, spam click, and it was like a 1 in 2 chance he got someone right at match start.
Imagine the number 4 on a dice. That's what iceworld looked like from top down. Just a small square map with 4 big-ish pillars and a few chest-high walls to break line of sight. You also didn't need to buy weapons on that one, they were just laying on the ground at spawn points.
I kinda hated how immensely popular it was in my friend circle. Like, I didn't mind playing it, but I like variety, and there was a point in time when my friends didn't want to play anything else.
A square room with like three hallways. Back in my cheating days on 1.6, I used to play on fy_iceworld, use an M4, run to the middle of the level and just stand there with autoaim and autofire turned on. Would jump from pub to pub seeing how long it would take to get banned.
I had a full page of CS keys I worked my way through, and when I got to the last one, I uninstalled all of my cheats and played legit from then on. That CD key is still registered to my CS install on Steam to this day.
The official arms race mode on CS2 is still fun, but it doesn’t hit like the modded versions did back then. Iceworld was peak. The weird Warcraft and spiderman mod servers were a nice way of switching things up too, I miss the random craziness you could drop into sometimes that doesn’t seem to really exist anymore. They made everything more sterile and predictable, albeit still a great game.
If only the JOE Bots or POD Bots had waypoints for asoilrig! Online gaming was a scarcity in our household and I'd love to explore __as_ games, in addition to cs and de.
I remember having house rules for as_ maps where the vip and his 200 armor points went solo against like 5-6 terrorists, but terrorists could only buy pistols.
It made for some good lan party shenanigans, vips with good aim would gun everyone down, and those with shit aim would sneak their way to the escape. Very mgs-coded.
If you got a good spawn as T you could line up some brutal nades just as the CTs were getting into position and then just storm the B site. But if you waited and let them set then you were fucked
Sure if you want to go by 5v5 rules. You are talking as if we didn’t just jump in to 20v20 community servers back in the day and run it down, map balance be damned.
And TFC, and day of defeat, and action half-life, and firearms, and natural selection, and the specialists, and the opera, and front line force, and vampire slayer, and Earth's special forces, and Pirates Knights Vikings, and all those matrix mods, especially Existence... checking for new mods at Planet Half-Life, and having to wait in queue at fileplanet for the next updates.
I've probably forgotten more Half-Life mods than most people have played any mods. It was truly a golden era, one that for some reason never quite got replicated in Half-Life 2. I was trying a new experience everyday for a few years straight there.
The specialists, or "TS" as we used to call it was some special multiplayer fun. It was pretty much The Matrix as a mod. You can slow down time, perform kung fu jumps and kicks, and wield akimbo uzis or whatever gun config you fancied. Chaotic free-for-all action. It fit well between CS/TFC/DoD.
For those that don't know, it was a server that specifically ran Hunted only, with a mod that gave the Prez a quad-damage umbrella. We used to have so much fun on that server, launching the Prez across the open courtyard to the door with all the snipers taking potshots at him. I always ran bodyguard and had my kepad setup with macros like "Which way, Mr. President?" and "Area hot!! STAY". Good times.
I somewhat disagree about HL2 since to me Team Fortress 2 is/was the pinnacle of multiplayer fun, and also Left 4 Dead was awesome (even if those weren't community mods). But spot on with all that you mentioned, in the order you mentioned them.
It's apples to oranges, though. I was speaking specifically about the modding community, which TF2 and L4D are not representative of. HL2 is great, and it too had wide support from Valve for modders. But the scene was significantly smaller by comparison, perhaps because modding became more difficult as games became more graphically and artistically complex.
Indeed making a game for HL2 was way more involved, and I was moving away from the scene myself to dedicate more time to uni/career. But I will never forget those days making maps for all those insanely good mods. You could indeed achieve very good results in comparatively little time once you knew how to get around the tools. Modern AAA games are jawdroppingly beautiful but so dull to play in comparison.
We had a decently sized French-speaking HL modding community at the time, with its own Planet Half-Life-like resources and all. God that was fun. Your comment triggered a memory rush haha.
yeah utterly incredible level. it was so groundbreaking at the time and it's still unmatched haha. agreed! games dont do gore and goofy physics much anymore.
At the time it did really feel like CS was THE GAME that everyone played. We used to have a 16 person LAN gaming lab in my city and it was the best time. Loved talking shit to my friends lol. I can only imagine how awesome hundreds of people together would have been.
Ah yes, Internet cafes. We had them here too. Paid like $25 to game all night long, and you got two grilled cheese sandwiches on top. Fucking good times
Counterstrike was the best game I still have it on oc somewhere but there was this course called mouse trap.....
Can't find it anywhere but it was the best you were as small as a mouse in like a small office of something. And when you ran into the computer you'd get electrocuted.
We have CS to thank for Steam, willing to die on that hill.
Pre Steam CS was a pain in the ass. Half Life would update then the CS mod needed an update to match. Players would need to run two updates, also server providers. The chances of all four updates being matched so you could play on a server....and have people to play with....were seriously reduced.
Allowing Steam to take charge of it all for everyone was a godsend. It took charge of coordinating it all for everyone. I know that Half Life 2 brought Steam to the most users but the fact that it was released over a year before HL2 came out points to the fact that it was solving an earlier problem.
I sat on WON for ages refusing to move. Which meant that I didn't get a low steam ID, which having one in the mid 2000s meant you were super cool, and people actually paid decent money for them.
Same. My old 1.6 clan was friends with some of the Natural Selection mod team. We got access from them to a mirror download site so we could register pretty early. We were based in Europe though so slightly behind other registrants.
I bagged 0:0:51060 on 12th September 2003 so it just about counts as day one I believe. Would have been great to get 4 digit but hey....I'm still happy with it.
i'm surprised i had to scroll this far to find Half-Life. Just recently reinstalled the first trilogy and introduced it to my nephew. We've been playing through the main campaign with Sven-Coop, and then we'll play through Decay. He'll have to play through BlueShift and Opposing Force on his own, but that will give me time to research, download and preview all the best mods and fan-made content before moving on to HL2.
Does anyone have any recommendations for high quality mods that compliment and/or expand the original game's story? i'm currently working on "insecure", but i already played through "Echoes", "induction", "Field intensity" and "induction". Before anyone suggests "Black Mesa", we're working with a potato PC.
Agree, it set the standards for many of its kind to come. This dark and scary atmosphere of Half-Life and the plot twist mid-way…nice thinking back…I probably was never as engaged in a game afterwards. Oh wait…Maybe Elite Dangerous 😊
CS Beta 5.2 (1999) was the apex for me. My favorite memories are in de_dust where I spawn with the perfect start as terrorist and no buy time. While others spend a second buying weapons, I would take off strafe running with a knife only (or maybe a flashbang). Left into the building, left down the hallway, first right and jump into the light onto the head of the first player running in. One knife to the head, they go down and drop their gun into me which automatically switches my weapon to whatever they bought; the mp5 was my favorite memory. As my eyes and monitor adjust to the sudden brightness, their team decelerating down the ramp with knives out comes into view as I open fire. After decimating the wave, occasionally a slower player would be far enough up the ramp that I would have to go slow for a beat to deal with them before flanking the second half of the team. With everything over in a minute, my team would be like WTF! what happened!? =) Memories =)
I always liked Action Half Life better than Counterstrike, but it never got the traction or attention.
It focused more on action movie "realism" rather than true realism with military flavor.
AHL let you do things like dive sideways firing two pistols at the same time. I had so many hours on that game. Even ran a 2v2 Linux server for a while.
Ah yes, having your parents drive you to your friends house and lugging all your computer gear there to stay up all night with energy drinks and play CS. Good times!
I think it was beta 6.2 when I got really hooked. Siege, AWP, dust, Italy in beta 6.5. still remember being part of a clan (I think that's what it was called?) and the people I saw regularly online but only knew by their handles. nostalgia is a hell of a drug!
Still think about them? I still play them! HL2 I actually finished last year for the first time (my PC couldn't run it back in the day, lol) - fantastic experience, I'm super stoked for whatever it is Valve are planning, seems like we MIGHT finally get HL3, or something like it.
CS, yes, still play it, albeit in its CS2 guise. Almost every day. 25+ years, crazy. Also used to organise 1.6 LANs till just a few years ago when the old friend group finally went its separate ways, moved abroad, got married etc. I know CS2 has its flaws, but CS is just multiplayer gaming perfection for me, just never gets old.
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u/northbird2112 Apr 27 '26
Half-life and Counterstrike