The declining state of Counter-Strike

What's next?

Counter-Strike is far from dead, a fact made abundantly clear by the amount of money, sponsorship and players still involved with the game. However, frustrations about the development and progress of the community are beginning to reach boiling point and the vibe emanating from many CS players is that - 'if another game existed that did similar things in a fresh way, I'd be gone'.

And herein lies the main problem - all the main competitiors for popularity to Counter-Strike just simply aren't good enough: Day of Defeat, Battlefield 2 and Call of Duty 2 are all fine games that can provide a huge amount of entertainment - but they lack that special ingredient to really de-throne Counter-Strike 1.6. If Source were to come in and take over the mantle of 1.6 then there probably wouldn't be an issue here but as we've already discussed, the community hasn't really taken to Source.



So where does this leave us? Not in a very pleasant situation, the only glimmer of hope being CS Pro Mod. This mod for CS has plans of modding Source in terms of graphics, whilst trying to keep the core gameplay elements the same. As great as that idea sounds, it's currently being created by a group of amateur enthusiasts who make irregular updates and have made no confirmation of a final release. Like so many gaming-mods this could end up as nothing more than empty promises.

As we look to the future of online shooters, we are greeted by a mixed bag. Battlefield 2142 looks pretty diabolical, World of Warcraft is forever picking up steam and many gamers who once spent their hours fragging in the worlds of de_Dust are now questing in Azeroth.



There are some interesting games on the horizon though. Huxley is an ambitious MMOFPS. Sporting some pretty funky graphics and some rather cool new concepts as well as a thriving community, this could potentially become the WoW of the FPS world. Another game I'm sure you'll have all heard of is Crysis, with developers stating in recent interviews that the game will focus as much on the multiplayer as they will on the single player.

The hope I have is that online gaming communities are similar to migrating birds - that they won't move until the weather requires them to and as such will form a tight knit bond, only migrating once another game is as suitably good enough to replace one of the greatest games of all time, Counter-Strike. Until then... who's for Dust?



A thank you to all those who helped make this article possible, Morpheus for his CS artwork, Marc Mangiacpra from 4Kings, Joolz from Prizefight and Iain 'Shak' Cartledge from UKcounterterrorist.