Counter Strike Condition Zero

[Keith Heitmann]

I've been playing this one for the past week. It's greate FPS team-shooter. I've played it through 3 times already on Normal and have started a Hard campaign but it's much more difficult than Normal.

Too bad Valve doesn't support the game with standalone patch downloads and requires you to use STEAM to play online and keep the game updated. I tried it and it was very frustrating. I uninstalled it right away and had to reinstall CCCZ too.

It's a great time killer if you want something quick and dirty to play.

[Keith Heitmann]

Since I have ruled out STEAM, I'll be playing this one solo for the forseeable future. I've played through the entire set of tours of duty three times already on Normal, and have started playing one on the next level up on Hard.

I've been making slow progress little by little. I've been getting killed over and over by shots from around corners from guys that can see me but I can't see and from guys with AK-74s firing from the hip at 100 yards and scoring a kill with a headshot. In short the game cheats severely to make the difficulty level higher.

My team mates (bots) will stand in the open while the other runs back and forth firing from the hip scoring hit after hit until my guy falls. My guy will just stand there trying to kill the guy with ECP90 SMG with a 50 round magazine and miss him entirely during the process.

Other frustrating things is that I can be hidden in a corner in the dark and the enemy will run around the corner looking right at me and kill me with a headshot when he should not have even known I was there.

Another annoying thing is that my guys will have the drop on a bad guy dead to rights, and they'll stand there and not fire. The bad guy may even have his back turned, and just as my guy is about to fire the bad guy wheels around and kills my team mate before he can get off a round.

I just finished two missions I've been getting slaughtered in over the past two days. I finally won them to day. Hooah!

[Galland]

I've not had a problem with Steam as of yet. Though I did have it uninstalled for several months and forgot the "secret question" one must answer to get back the lost account information. That was a real pisser offer. Fortunately I remembered it on the sixth or seventh try.

The earliest versions of Steam were truly awful. The current version isn't so bad. Are you trying to use the latest version or something that came on your game discs?

Galland

[Keith Heitmann]

I downloaded it from their site, so I assume it's current.

I just don't like the thing as a whole. I prefer to maintain more control over what is happening than STEAM allows. At times it seems like a endles maze of menues. Like I said, I let it update and once that was done all the game servers disappeared from my list. So I just got fed up and got rid of it.

[Galland]

Keith said:

I downloaded it from their site, so I assume it's current.

I just don't like the thing as a whole. I prefer to maintain more control over what is happening than STEAM allows. At times it seems like a endles maze of menues. Like I said, I let it update and once that was done all the game servers disappeared from my list. So I just got fed up and got rid of it.

I'm sorry you are having trouble with it. The WON servers are going to be shut down soon. I do remember having a problem with the server list. I was fooling around with the listing filter. After I hit the update button it would refresh briefly, but all the listings went 'poof' when it was finished. I beleive exiting the program and restarting solved the problem, but I can't remember for sure. I suspect it is a bug in the server list applet.

I think they took some of the fun out of CS when bunny hopping was disabled. Sure, bunny hopping isn't realistic, but some folks used it to their advantage very well. It was great for dodging good marksmen.

Galland

[Keith Heitmann]

All I wanted it for was to get the 1.6 update file, but I couldn't figure out where in that maze of menues to go to get it or if it would update automatically. It never seemed to update because my cccz EXE file still showed it was version 1.0.0.0.

[Galland]

Keith said:

All I wanted it for was to get the 1.6 update file, but I couldn't figure out where in that maze of menues to go to get it or if it would update automatically. It never seemed to update because my cccz EXE file still showed it was version 1.0.0.0.

It updates automatically when you try to play the game. Or you can right click on the game and update from there.

I never installed the game from CD. I downloaded STEAM and entered the CD key when prompted. Make sure to write down your name and password and never lose it, as STEAM keeps that key and that account linked forever.

Galland

[Keith Heitmann]

Well, I don't think I'll worry about all that. I'll prbably play it through one more time on the hard level and then uninstall the game. I'm about 2/3 the way through the tours of duty and working on the hostage rescue at the militia house. I've already completed the two others in that tour, after that there is only two more tours left to complete on the hard difficulty level.

[Keith Heitmann]

Well, after upping the difficulty level up to HARD and playing through 2 of the tours of duty and getting stymied by the super intelligent AI that seems to know where I am hiding even when I hadn't been spotted at all prior to that, I got frustrated for a while and gave up playing the AI team death matches.

I could have a perfect spot all laid out and the guy with the AK-47 would fire from the hip at 100 yards and kill me with a head shot the instant he jumped around a corner. Plus, the usual problem of getting killed by shots from around the corner even though I was not exposed at all and could not see the guy shooting at me.

I went on and played through the "Deleted Scenes" section of Counter Strike Condition Zero. These are more suited to solo play.

In these missions you are part of a elite team from various countries, USN Seals, Uk SAS, German GS9, etc. You either rescue hostages, or have to stop a mad man from doing something. The Russian missile silo was a lot of fun. I didn't care for the two jungle missions as much, in in the Philippiens and one in Argentina. There are twelve missions in all and the last one is tough one. You have to enter a building in the UK occupied by Irish terrorists armed with all sorts of heavy weapons and a nuke.

Your first task is to cross the high rise bridge from your building to the heavily defended other side. Dashing across a open air bridge under heavy fire from machine guns snipers and men on the bridge is my idea of suicide. If you are fast and accurate you can reach the other side and get in through the opening before you get killed. After that it's a hard slog up to the top of the bulding through endless waves of terorists. There is one section where you have to solve a puzzle on how to get to the the top floors even though the elevator you were in was stopped and attacked by the terrorists. Providing you survived you had to figure out how to get up the elevator shaft.

The key words here are "SAVE OFTEN" while playing this part of the game. You'll often find yourself running low on health points and ammo. At some points you may be taken prisoner and have to find a knife and kill armed guards with it. It might take you a few tries to get through this task. I was playing at the "medium" difficulty level on these missions and found that difficult enough.

This part of the game was good enough to sell on its own, but you also get the other half of the game, the counter strike missions where you play the team style death matches and, of course online play provided you don't object to using STEAM for all updates, etc., etc.

[Keith Heitmann]

Well, after upping the difficulty level up to HARD and playing through 2 of the tours of duty and getting stymied by the super intelligent AI that seems to know where I am hiding even when I hadn't been spotted at all prior to that, I got frustrated for a while and gave up playing the AI team death matches.

I could have a perfect spot all laid out and the guy with the AK-47 would fire from the hip at 100 yards and kill me with a head shot the instant he jumped around a corner. Plus, the usual problem of getting killed by shots from around the corner even though I was not exposed at all and could not see the guy shooting at me.

I went on and played through the "Deleted Scenes" section of Counter Strike Condition Zero. These are more suited to solo play.

In these missions you are part of a elite team from various countries, USN Seals, Uk SAS, German GS9, etc. You either rescue hostages, or have to stop a mad man from doing something. The Russian missile silo was a lot of fun. I didn't care for the two jungle missions as much, in in the Philippiens and one in Argentina. There are twelve missions in all and the last one is tough one. You have to enter a building in the UK occupied by Irish terrorists armed with all sorts of heavy weapons and a nuke.

Your first task is to cross the high rise bridge from your building to the heavily defended other side. Dashing across a open air bridge under heavy fire from machine guns snipers and men on the bridge is my idea of suicide. If you are fast and accurate you can reach the other side and get in through the opening before you get killed. After that it's a hard slog up to the top of the bulding through endless waves of terorists. There is one section where you have to solve a puzzle on how to get to the the top floors even though the elevator you were in was stopped and attacked by the terrorists. Providing you survived you had to figure out how to get up the elevator shaft.

The key words here are "SAVE OFTEN" while playing this part of the game. You'll often find yourself running low on health points and ammo. At some points you may be taken prisoner and have to find a knife and kill armed guards with it. It might take you a few tries to get through this task. I was playing at the "medium" difficulty level on these missions and found that difficult enough.

This part of the game was good enough to sell on its own, but you also get the other half of the game, the counter strike missions where you play the team style death matches and, of course online play provided you don't object to using STEAM for all updates, etc., etc.

[Keith Heitmann]

I'm still plugging along on CSCZ on the HARD setting. It's taken me several months but I have finally overcome the last three missions that the game threw at me. They were nearly impossible to complete at times and more than once I came within a hair's breadth of completing the requirements only to lose through a fantastic string of bad luck or due to a computer lockup.

You have to meet 3 or 4 requirements for each mission, such as killing "x" number of enemies, killing "y" number with a certain weapon, and killing "z" number with a certain weapon and survive the turn.

On top of this you have to also win by a total of two games over the enemy terrorist bots, i.e., 3-1, 4-2, 5-3, etc. So you could actually end up playing a huge number of games until all the requirements are met and you get the 2 game advantage.

You don't know the number of times I've been frustrated by the game, such as having a 10 victory to 1 loss lead in games won, and while attempting to meet the last requirement I need such as killing with a certain weapon, end up losing 10-12.

I must have been working on this past set of three missions today for three months or more and finally completed them successfully.

For the past few weeks I've been playing the first of the next three missions, which was a castle like setting with a high roof vantage point to snipe from and lots of interior corridors and floors and ambush points. I had to kill 15 enemies total, 5 with a Bullpup automatic rifle, and 2 with a pistol. Sounds easy.

It tooke me forever but starting out with the magnum sniper rifle, I picked off my required 15 overall kills and gained a 5 win 1 loss record, I then had to switch to the Bullpup for my 5 kills, and managed to get two kills with that before I got taken out myself (which happens all too frequently due to some strange ground to elevation line of sight rules the game gives the bot players.)

That left me with just three Bullpup and 2 pistol kills to go.

So on the next mission I moved up to my roof position and sent my bot teammates off on a seek and destroy mission with a storm the front command. This hopefully would catch the enemy bots in a move and keep them off my back. I waited out of site up on the roof walkway. I could hear firing going on below and behind me, and then I could hear foot steps and spotted the first enemy bot with the bomb back pack down below heading for the bomb site area.

I used the zoom sight on the Bullput and picked him off from behind with a 2 burst shot which sent him and the bomb pack flying. I faded back and waded again and heard more foot steps, and spotted another enemy bot heading for the backpack on the ground and repeated the process.

Then I hear an exchange of gunfire below, with a enemy bot and one of my teammates in a corridor exhanging fire. The enemy bot was halfway up the ramp to the bomb are and the bomb pack, so my guy was having a problem taking him out. With his attention focused on my teammate I zoom sighted him in and fired a 2 burst shot to his head just as he took out my teammate below.

That finished my 5 kills with the Bullpup. I only had to make 2 more kills with a pistol. Luckily, I had purchased the Nighthawk automatic pistol, which uses a magnum round and can stop a enemy with one or two shots even if he's got a bulletproof vest on.

I hear footsteps below and I almost used the Bullpup but quickly switched my pistol and with three shots managed to bring down the enemy bot just as he reach the top of the ramp and started to turn towards the bomb.

All was pretty quite, most of my five man team was already dead. The enemy usually starts with 7 or 8. I kept checking left an right to make sure that one fo the enemy bots didn't suddenly appear in the opening on either side of me, which the have done in the past, and take me out before I can get a shot off.

So I waited, and then heard more footsteps below and saw the last enemy bot running up the ramp and heading towards the bomb and I opened fire from my perch with the Nighthawk automatic and brought him down with 4 quick shots! Yeah! I had finally done it!

I must have played and replayed this particular mission 100 times in the past week. I played it for nearly 5 hours last night without success.

Now on to the next two equally difficult missions of the set....