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I believe that part of the mod's tremendous popularity has everything to do with Half-Life's terrific mod support. Unlike a lot of other games to come out in the past few years, the ease of start-up in the Half-Life system has led to allowing more and more people the opportunity to pick up the mod and play it. They are not discouraged by any complicated installation instructions, and getting started is about as easy any mod I've ever played.
Finally, the game is supported by its fans in other manner. Through dedicated servers, the popularity of Counter-Strike has grown steadily. Servers that once were mostly Team Fortress servers slowly switched over to Counter-Strike servers as the game began demanding more and more servers. I also had an opportunity to run a Counter-Strike server in mid-March of this year. Like the mod installation, running a Counter-Strike dedicated server is remarkably easy to begin, provided you have the hardware and the connection. To make things even easier, Counter-Strike was also ported to the popular Linux operating system, for servers.
Game FeaturesSo the incentives to pick up both Half-Life and Counter-Strike are evident. Two games in one; a free-add on; popular game type; and an easy installation.
Fig. 5. My Steyr AugCounter-Strike is a mod which turns Half-Life into a 3D tactical shooter, and that is the most important feature to understand. Like any other 3D tactical shooter, the game is define by its attempts to breach the realism issue. Counter-Strike brings together both a great selection of realistic looking weapons, along with a true sense of realistic gaming. While your character can pickup ammo, for the most part, you're still going to be pretty vulnerable. Head shots count for a lot in this game, so careful, well-placed shots will yield more kills and a longer game.
In order to select your weapon (and so that players don't automatically start off with the best guns available), a mini-market economy is in place. Counter-Terrorists and Terrorists can both buy guns from a selected list of guns (for example, CTs can not buy AK-47s). The money comes from accomplishing certain tasks, such as making a kill or winning a round. Because Counter-Strike is so heavily team-oriented, the game emphasizes that aspect by granting larger sums of money for team wins. So, when the next round starts, the players on the team that previously won will be allowed to purchase more expensive and therefore better guns.
