I dunno, Counterstrike is a much maligned game. But in the right environment, in the right hands and with the right people playing, it doesn't really have an equal in terms of gameplay, skillfulness and risk/reward factor. Let's not forget this either : It's the most popular multiplayer FPS ever. For the last six years it has ruled the roost. Tens of thousands of servers, crammed to the gills night after night.

There's a marvellous simplicity, a purity of design, which the player can interpret and unravel into an eventual vehicle for his own unique style. Exploitative tactical wizards, ekeing out every last scrap of combat value from each map. Gung-ho Arnie types, mowing down opponents with sheer bravado and bulging forearms. Patient bushwhackers, lying in wait, thumbing the safety catch for the sound of your bootsteps. It is all of these things and much, much more.

Arnie uses his modified Pea Shooter

Yes there are the idiots, the hackers and the noobs. Yes, there is a learning curve which many feel is just too much trouble to circumnavigate. Too many vapid, cursory deaths at the very beginning of a round. Then having to wait several minutes only for the exact same thing to happen again. I too swear and rant at the intransigence of die-hards, the luck of noobs. The same guy killing me five times in a row. While I spray armour-piercing rounds directly into his face with no effect. But, you're missing the point. It is this unique aspect of the game which makes your life special. Your life is precious. It should be preserved. Care should be taken. Fools rush in, there's one born every minute, etc

You died because you deserved to, however unfair it feels. Your penance? You won't respawn in a second to carry on the carnage. Moreover - and this is a massive consideration on the road to the right mindset for this game - If you die, the cause is lost. Those hostages won't get to see their families. Those bombers won't get their gold-plated redemption. You have to care, it all depends on you.

Having said that I'm not here to sell it. If you're reading this and you've played it, you aren't on the fence. You either love it or hate it. I'm not here to change your mind about that, but to describe possibilities that you surely haven't yet unravelled yourself, because neither have I. Nor do I fully understand it's pull to an otherwise rational, even traditionally staid mind.

What do you mean you don't like Counterstrike!

I attempt to explain that here too. Because I believe it will give some insight into not only why we play games, but how games affect us where we live, where we can't always see or demystify. We know our buttons are being pushed, we seek the pleasure of that. But who is doing it so artfully, that we never even consider peeking behind the shower curtain in the morning? We just dress and go about our daily lives. At least I do. The day is work and the night is pleasure. A night in which an unseen mistress, a sorceress perhaps, entrances me. She is so puissant, so laden with pheromonal lure that I am blinded to aught else but her heady scent, forgetting all in the morning for another day of routine. Now tell me. Can a collection of pixels and code can do that?

Because, whilst all of this strikes a chord for you and your favourite gaming pursuit. For me, counterstrike is the ultimate FPS multiplayer twitch challenge, with a built-in community purpose, if we did but know it.

Well, I care about those hostages when on the side of good. And the towel on my head on the side of satan sits there with a sort of unwieldy, dishcloth-chic pride. I mean to plant that bomb and smoosh me some infidels. I can even twirl an imaginary tache while doing so. I'm imbued with idealistic rage against those blue-garbed arbiters of world peace just as I'm a stoutly implacable harbinger of righteousness when preventing the carnage. Genuinely. Fervently. So what am I killing you for? What am I rebelling against?

I play counterstrike, yes. I always feel like I have to add an apologetic addendum to that, and maybe a shrug. Yes, I'm sorry. I play counterstrike and I'm a grown man, with kids a wife and everything. I wear a suit by day and by night a bandanna. I garden at weekends, and after that? Why, I might just blow up a nuclear reactor with some mates. Yin and yang. Secateurs and defuse kits. Cabbages and Kings.

It's just that whole hand-eye, search/rescue, good vs evil schtick that turns me on. It's the same skill and mastery of repetition required to clear waves of galaxians, but it's being in a movie at the same time. Hell - it's writing starring and directing in your movie on the fly. Box office flop, or surefire hit. It doesn't matter. You are Buster Keaton in the first, heady scrabblings of an interactive entertainment empire. You are Edward G Robinson, scowling your talent through the careless minds of those near or foolish enough to belabour. You are Alfred Hitchcock even. Marshalling an array of disparate, abstract concepts into something gripping and fluid. Taking only a modest cameo role for yourself.

Blockbuster Appeal

You begin to see nuances of humour and tragedy in game situations, and feel a vague desire to orchestrate it, share it as a spectacle. Improvisation is using a crouched teammate as a stepladder to an otherwise unreachable spot. Here is the comic aspect of a double take. There, the practical fillip of a plot development. The zany sight of a dead terrorist, his foot caught in the rung of a ladder, his body dangling like a plumbob. The vaudevillian timing of a fool and a hand grenade, their messy tryst forging a wave in time a space, a spreading tide of hilarity, with ripples of copious blood as black-comedy garnish. We laugh, watching. Entertained. The comedy is a benison for otherwise impatient, nervous spectation.

So you are the audience. At least when you're dead. While you wait to be reborn, you get to see how the movie plays out. You want to be the lone survivor against four or five opponents? Then it's Bruce Willis time, or conversely Alan Rickman, the archetypal crack-toothed English baddie. You switch roles with ease, settling into your persona with a diffident calm. Impossible odds, and yes - Nine times out of ten you are sent to your doom, quite against expectation and cinematic rule. But that one time? A buzz of adrenaline which is somehow channelled into unwavering, deadly calm? A surge of arousal which builds incrementally with each fallen foe. The knowledge that you are being observed, willed on even, by your teammates. A surety that shreds doubt. A feral, otherworldly disdain, as claws of intensity clasp at the very heart of your rising mojo.

Every single person watching gets a scrap of that intensity, is borne by that tide of hopeful endeavour. It is the digital blowback of the gaming drug, which the player is only too conscious of imparting. Indeed, the knowledge gives him strength. The threads of his and their lives are buoyed along by ghostly wills, intertwined in adversity. As a spectator, you wish then that you'd done more. It could be you out there, fighting the good fight. Elevated above judgement and reproach, the fate of all life in your hands. To achieve this, you have to watch what unfolds before you. Maybe even - gasp - learn from those who always seem to finish the round relatively unbloodied. Controlled aggression never had a more pertinent meaning in a game primarily concerned with conflict and bloodshed. One thing is sure and certain - you need to do it again. Can't wait to get out there, in fact. This time it will be different.

If this comes across in any way preachy or condescending I have no apology. I've served a degree course in counterstrike, and this, if you like, is the dissertation. Six years of addiction. There is nothing I haven't done. No map I haven't played many thousands of times. It's Casablanca with a million endings, it is Titanic where the hull is breached by C4, and the bitch dies. You have a voice that counts, a striving belief that you can shape destinies with your unflinching will. You don't come consistently at the top of servers by actively seeking kills, it simply isn't enough for longevity. No, you subscribe to the whole ideal, or you're the wooden bit-part actor, who always gets it by the second act. You embrace the concept, then the rhythm, then the flow. You become a pocket philosopher, an amateur psychologist. You predict and anticipate, by the gentle art of observation, the keenest time of which will be when you're dead. Which is lucky, really. There's a ritual abundance of that.

Lego + Counterstrike = Perfect!

So you get to see the good player. The virtuoso, the pro do his thing. And by god you'd better treat the opportunity to watch everything he does like a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see Brando mumble to a mirror. What you've gleaned may be just as useless. But you will see the same events play out timelessly, with altered conclusions. Eventually, you will realise the pro is subtly controlling these little outcomes, by the knowledge hidden in his brain, by the indivisible marriage of gamble and predictive skill. Finally, you realise it is how you interpret these vignettes of the game world, and turn them to your own ends, that sets you apart as a player.

What am I talking about? It's a game. Right? Yes, of course. There will always be the same immutable laws that you cannot change. The same combination of luck and flaw that sets you right or sinks you fast. Percentages will rule the bitter ashes of your constant demise, the majority of the time, at least. What you can control is the heartbeat between the bullet's release and the smack of hard calibre. What you can affect is the surge of a manic rush, adding weight with your number, or subtracting decoy teammates for a winning ploy. It's like tunnelling with a spoon, be under no illusions. And if you never get to be Bruce Willis, you will at least do a half-decent Danny Glover, trust me.

Lovely Balaclava, where d'you get it?

I intend to write what I hope is a story-driven walkthrough of the most popular maps in counterstrike, based on rounds I've actually played recently. If you glean nothing from it but a mild sense of being entertained, it is enough. In any case I have to put this stuff down. Whether you read it or not is immaterial. It sweats from the restless pores of my gaming being, if we're being wanky about it. So to that end, it serves a purpose too, the one that means we have to understand what we've become, even if that thing is fulfilling and good.

Read on, if it pleases you....

July 2006

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