CS: Source at the September Lan party? Anyone? Anyone?

After a three-hour drive, it was a relief to finally climb out of that thing Louis calls a car. We spent a few minutes in the lobby, soon to be met by Jess Cliffe, one of the CS:Source game developers, as well as co-creator of the original CS. He escorted us back to an office, and my first focus was on the machine he led us to. It looked like a standard Dell Dimension mid tower, P4 2.8C processor, 1gb DDR400, and a Radeon 9800XT video card…just your run of the mill gaming box. The display…well, that was another matter altogether. An Apple 23” wide screen Cinema Display hoarded the lion’s share of available desktop space. If you have never seen a 23” wide screen, you are missing a breathtaking sight. The only real perspective I can give you? Two 17” LCD’s joined side by side. You can view a full web page, in half of the desktop. Or two pages, side by side. Great for huge viewable image, but what is the verdict for gaming? The 30ms+ response time made fast action frames “tear” on the screen, making it difficult to focus on the most important portion of the screen, the center. LCD’s can be great for gaming, provided you stay in the sub 20ms category. The Apple was awesome, just not suited for fast action FPS games.

GRAPHICS:
The Map was de_dust, and in game res was set to the LCD’s native resolution, 1920x1200. The 9800XT seemed to have absolutely no issue with running this resolution, even in the most frag filled sections of the map. Graphic quality can be summed up in one word: Amazing. The level of detail is just amazing. The textures on the ground and walls were mind blowing. Individual pieces gravel are visible on the ground, and the mortar between the bricks looks just like mortar, grainy texture, uneven surface and all. All equipment the player purchases at the beginning of the round is visible on the player model as he moves about. You can even see the fingernails in detail on your player model! At one of the bombsites, one indoors, with sun slits in the dome above, the individual dust motes are visible floating through the air. Gone are the jagged lines that previously represented curves, to be replaced be natural looking arcs. Even looking at the player models hands were a study in shapes and proportions. They just looked real. Everywhere you looked, visual improvements had been made.

PHYSICS:
Being based on the Half-Life 2 engine, this play test gives us a quick look into the physics engine that has been the most anticipated advancement the game has to offer, in my opinion. I was not disappointed by me glimpse. The realism programmed into the game is just mind blowing. Things move. LOTS of things! There were loose cinderblocks lying on the ground, and when we shot them, pieces chipped off, the block slid across the ground and spiraled to a stop in a convincing whirl of dust. The block seemed to absorb most of the pistol shot, only moving a few feet, as you would expect from a rather light 9mm round meeting a large block of stone. Spare tires littered the map, and in response to some rifle fire, one of the tires took the bullets impact in such a way that it was stood up, and actually began to roll away. Another squirt from the rifle and the tire gained momentum, hit a wall, bounced off and spun itself down onto the dusty ground. Very realistic! In another scene, the view point is from behind a large crate, near a bomb site. Mini’s team mate runs past, and from behind takes two rounds to the lower leg. The model appears to stumble, as if it’s leg had just collapsed, and takes a final round to the head, splattering blood in the dust. I felt like I was there, in the dust. Of course, all of this watching, and the shooter stepped around the corner and promptly knifed Mini! Also worth mention are the flash bang grenades. Depending on how close you are to the point of detonation determined the time and severity of the effects, as previous, but the EFFECTS! A high pitch squeal fills the air, your vision appears to have taken a frozen, the last image you saw, washed in white, becomes fixed on the screen, almost as if it was a snapshot. Bleeding through this “snapshot” is the action in the area, with your normal vision returning as the snapshot image begins to fade. Your vision wobbles. The realism is almost distracting from the gameplay, it’s THAT good.

ENVIONMENT:
If you have played CS, then played Joint Ops, you will understand what I am about to say; The positional audio on this game is great! Shots sound far off when they are, not simply more faint than up close. Bullets hitting a wood crate you are hiding behind have distinct sounds as they pass through first the far side, then the near side of the crate. Rounds whine off of stone nearby and smack into barrels with a satisfying clang.

IMPRESSIONS AND CONCLUSION:
With the wild popularity of the original CS, and the high expectations of it’s devout followers, this game must deliver. And from what I saw, deliver it does. You will not be disappointed. The CS:Source crew has been working long days as of late…it’s crunch time, and 16 hours/7 days is not unheard of. What must be the high point of the day, the CS:Source development team gets together for about an hour a day to “playtest” the game and see their hard work paying off. A projected August Beta release date has been mentioned, with the CS:Source Beta being offered to Steam Cyber Café members first, followed a week later by opening up the beta to all who have a valid CS:CZ key and the current version of Steam installed.

Our hat is off to the hard working team at Valve for producing such a leap forward in the intense world of gaming. This would seem a suitable predecessor to the original…I just hope it won’t be another 5 years before the next!




Also, looks like HL2 is on target for an early September release. Gaming goodness is around the corner.