Nostalgia

I had a long salty post ready about Counter-Strike‘s shooting mechanics and how every gun except the dreaded AWP seems to be loaded with armor piercing silly string. Then I realized I was essentially just angry at Counter-Strike because it is, as the title might imply, still Counter-Strike.

And I’m fucking terrible at Counter-Strike.

Of course, I’m pleasantly surprised that the game has remained true to its roots, rather than try to emulate the more accessible shooters it obviously inspired, but I fell out of love with the CS formula back towards the tail end of 1.6. Admitting that I prefer Call of Duty, particularly Black Ops, to the game which arguably established and perfected the genre might lose me some points with the kind of people who give far too much of a shit about which games other people like, but I think there’s something to be said for games that sidestep the usual execution barriers.

There’s treasure in the hidden depths of Counter-Strike, you just have to dig through a ton of frustration to get to it. I think I’ll leave that to players with more time and lower blood pressure.