Be Excellent To Each Other

You likey? I had fun with the trial earlier on - my timer had reset to 45! I kicked ass though - so many noobs!

We had one or two minor problems with matchmaking, but as I thought, Counter-Strike is excellent, even on a shitty old console.

Hi, sorry for the mix up with the party thing last night. I didn't know what it was so I mashed some buttons. And then played Skyrim. And I didn't knnow who wanted me in the party, either.

It was my fault. I was trying to drum up interest, but by the time you'd joined our party the game forced us to use game chat instead, so we couldn't tell you.

Buy this, btw.

No worries, it confuised me greatly. Also, I was then worried you'd hear me muttering whilst playing Skyrim.

I won't, for several reasons I'm afraid:

i) I'm shit at FPS games
ii) I'd die in about 5 seconds each time, then have to wait a round to die in seconds again
iii) I don't really pay online multiplayer games anymore
iv) The only window I'd have to play would be between 4pm-6pm and 8pm-9pm.
v) Soz.

Me too
Me too
Me either
Me too (ish). We should play more games together.
Don't apologise.

This is the first game for a while that's had me looking forward to playing it as soon as I get back from work, it's like the fucking olden days!

I like to start off with a humiliation kill, headshot someone with a Desert Eagle and then steal their gun.

Just had a go on Arms Race and it was great fun! Managed to get 19 kills - only 7 off what is needed to win.

More people should get this (once the play with friends search is fixed).

Tonight? After 8:30

Nay. I am out.

I'm around all tomorrow and Sunday though.

Arms Race is a gorgeous game mode, yeah I know it's basically a copy of Gun Master in BF3 and whatever CoD calls it, but for some reason it really appeals to me more than the other games' implementations of it.

Here I am at 26 and lamlan beats me with 27, me and him finished off the round with a knife fight and he won

My KD ratio was better than his though

Fab game, loving it to pieces. Strips away a lot of the 'noise' that modern games have added and really just takes it back to the brilliant basics.

I want this for 360. But I want them to fix party play first. And now I find myself thinking about getting it on PC to tide me over. That's surely a silly idea. Apart from anything else, it'll be pennies in the next Steam sale.

There is something primal about it though.

I can't put my finger on it yet, but I think it's something to do with the 'back to basics' approach it takes to things.

I'm a big fan of BF3 but the sweary voiceover with all its talk of cocksuckers and getting fucked in the ass and 'I'M GONNA KILL ALL OF 'EM' is rather silly (me and my chums take the piss out of constantly when we're playing). Add in the bombastic music and general 'glitz and glamour' of the whole thing (see also.... CoD), plus the fact that in non-hardcore modes the soldiers can take a huge amount of punishment, and of course all FPS games have auto-heals now, plus you can speed things up as a medic or going to a health pack - well, it ends up feeling whatever the opposite of primal is, I suppose.

On top of that, BF3 and CoD have no 'penalty' for death, after a few seconds you respawn, you get to pick from the entire list of weapons, change your class, pick all the goodies and off you go again - it engenders a very gung-ho attitude towards the whole thing.

CSGO strips all that back, in the normal game modes, if you do something stupid and die then tough shit, you wait until the next round starts. Spunk all your cash and do something stupid, and next round you can't even buy a decent fucking gun.

In all the game modes, all the guns are DEADLY, even the crappiest pistol will put someone down with a headshot, you can't stomp around the place like Mr Invincible, every foe is potentially deadly, all he has to do is out-think you.

Primal is the right word, a tidy headshot from an enemy with a pistol, that horrible 'bullet breaching head' sound, a splat of blood on the wall, and it's round over - a far cry from running around like fucking terminators in BF3.

Why not give it a go DocG? At £12 it's hardly expensive, although of course we all know it'll be £2.99 in the christmas sale......

Why the fuck is it that all FPS games are utterly shit at this? I really can't see how it can be as difficult as it appears. CoD, BF3, BF1942, and now CS - they've all had an utter bug-ridden mess of lobby/party play.

Well, it is inherently tough, I guess. The game modes we played yesterday were five a side, so putting even three players onto a server together on the same side in a timely manner isn't easy.

It never seems to be a case of not being able to find servers with space to put you all on the same team though, but more one of either

1) Not even trying to do so (BF3)
2) Joining but leaving people behind in the lobby (CoD)

Played for 20 minutes. Well, I say 'play' but the lag has made it unplayable. Anyone else, or have I just turned it on at the wrong time of the day?

Is it running P2P on the 360 or off dedicated game servers?

If it's dedicated servers do they give any indication of latency?

I know what those words mean on their own just not in that order.

Do you get to choose from a list of servers to play on? Or is it just a sort of 'find me a game running this mode' arrangement?

EDIT - Yes I know PC SPOD QUESTIONS, but when it comes to CS more than any other FPS game I can think of, latency will kill you quick as a bomb up your arse.

I just clicked Quick-Play and it dumps you in a game.

I don't know what's so special about this yet. You could play sabotage on CoD and get a similar game. Or more lethal bullets in hardcore sabotage if that's what you like.

CS has being doing all this shit for about 12 years.

It's the original and best.

For an old time CS player like me, getting back into the familiar maps, albeit with a lovely modern lick of paint, is like slipping into a favourite pair of brain and blood soaked slippers.

NOTE TO SELF:

This is not a good game to try and play when a bit drunk.

PWNED. PWNED. PWNED.

(Also, some kind of fucking voodoo going on, I had TUNES playing in Winamp before I launched the game, some sort of 'auto-fade' thing kicked in when I launched the game so my tunes was like background music to the game instead of destroying my hearing which is the volume level I normally like (headphones at this time of night innit), then when I quit the game it went back to destroying my ears again, very clever and that, but I didn't configure anything to do that, so a bit scarily sentient too.)

Its in the settings option...I think the default is reduce other sounds to 80% or something whilst in game. Quite a nice feature, particularly when using voice comms.

Well it's poker/BF3/DiRT2 night tonight with the chaps and I am simply going to harangue them all, all evening, until they all buy CSGO.

They'll like that.

I just tried the 360 demo, and, as I expected, I hate it to bits.

I might have a look at it myself, just for curiosity's sake.

I truly can't imagine playing CS with a pad. OK, fair enough, everyone else will have the same hindrance, but even so, how the hell do you quickly and accurately headshot someone from mid-range with a Desert Eagle when you're aiming using a little analogue stick?

Hmmmm, just fired up the 360, can't see the Counter Strike demo in the list?

You bought the PC version Grim...? It's superb, I bullied all my chums into buying it last night so we'll all have it installed and ready to go for next week.

I can understand that - it's almost a different game. It would drive me mad on the PC though, because I was never a fan of twitch gaming like Quake 3 etc.

It basically gives me more of a chance.

It's like playing in glue!

Yeah I've decided I'm not gonna bother with the 360 version. I've played Counter-Strike since 2000 (Christ!) and I can't get used to it with a pad.

According to one of my chums the PC version runs fine on a relatively modest PC.

He's got an i3 CPU (dual core with hyper threading), 4GB RAM and a Radeon 5770 graphics card, which wasn't a particularly impressive card when he bought it a couple of years ago.

He's running CSGO comfortably at 1920x1200, albeit with a fair few compromises on the graphics options.

Point being, you don't need to chuck any sort of monster hardware at it, and most folks will be running at a lower resolution than that too.

My PC is a shit heap and the beta ran fine. It's just tarted up Source. Valve always make their games scalable.

True enough

Considering it's an iteration of the elderly Source engine I'm impressed by how good the game looks, it's not gonna give BF3 any sleepless nights but it's still very pretty, and a definite jump on from CSS.

I know graphics don't make the game, but CSS was just a bit too primitive for my tastes, so CSGO has really given it the shot in the arm that it needed.

Add in that delicious £11.99 price point, and Valve have properly delivered the goods.

So if I get the PC (well, Mac) version, is there going to be any Beexgaming?

I'll likely be playing it regularly until the next game comes out, as I have done for 12 years! When I buy it, that is. Skint at the minute. So I'm in!

Probably slightly less than TF2, considering that's free.

The problem with TF2 is it's shite.

Well, the base game is excellent, but as I've said on here before, it's impossible to find a decent server that isn't ruined with mods and shite maps and weird noises, which more or less makes it shit.

Ironically, the 360 version was the most fun I had with TF2 because it was as Valve intended.

I can probably run one.

Stand by.

I would happily play TF2 on PC as I tend to be a medic or engineer anyway. No reactions required!

I now have my own csgo server setup, so if any beex games are arranged, I could password lock it to keep Joe Bloggs out.

Server is 85.236.101.33:29815

I've never played such buggy shit.

Started a game and now there's no lag but I can't press any buttons or shoot. Fucks sake. I've not played one single fucking game.

Oh fuck that. Now the lag is back but I can't do anything other than move.

Deleted.

Haha!

The only thing I see of Ramsea now, is the back of his head with a headset on, or him asleep. I wish they'd released this ages ago, before his CS:S dependence wore off

Well I've been playing this for, erm, most of the day

It's awesome, I'd forgotten what a fantastic, undiluted, pure, brutal, FPS experience it is.

For some reason I'm finding that the best games are to be had on French servers, although maybe that's just all the crazy French talk over VOIP that amuses me.

Such a mature, gentlemanly player base too - the number of times I've seen opposing teams compliment each other when one side pulls off a really good victory. No malice or abuse, just folks wanting to enjoy a solid team-based game, to the extent that they'll gladly give a 'gg' to their foes.

I've moved up from the 'CASUAL' class games to 'COMPETITIVE' and am sort of doing alright, still rusty, but getting better.

I fear I may have to put my foot down with my Saturday night games chums and refuse point blank to play BF3, it's CSGO or nothing, motherfuckers.

Well I'm flying the flag for TEAM BETEO, even if no one else is

I would like to perhaps purchase this. Have they fixed the Xbox 360 party problems yet?

APoD and I tried on Thursday but it appeared that Live was having general problems with voice chat, so we couldn't really test it properly.

Do you have any time left on your trial?

My trial keeps resetting its timer.

Yeah, a bit. 20 min or so I think. I also installed it on my second Xbox and I don't know if that gives you another 45 min or not.