Game Play

Counter-Strike is a team-based, first-person shooter in which players join either the terrorist or counter-terrorist team, and combat the opposing team while fulfilling predetermined objectives. Server settings may automatically balance teams when one team has more players than the other. Each round starts with the two teams spawning simultaneously, as one of eight different default character models (four to choose from for each the counter-terrorist and terrorist teams. Counter-Strike: Condition Zero added two extra models, bringing the total to ten). Each player generally starts with $800, two magazines of ammunition, a knife, and a pistol: a Heckler & Koch USP .45 Tactical for counter-terrorists, and a GLOCK 18c for terrorists. Players are generally given a few seconds before the round begins (known as "freeze time") to buy equipment, during which they cannot attack or move in any direction. Players may buy equipment whenever they are in a "buy zone" for their team (some zones can be for both teams, depending on the map) provided the round has not been in session for longer than a specified time (90 seconds is default). Once the round has ended, surviving players retain their equipment for use in the next round; those who have died begin the next round with the default pistol and knife.

Standard monetary bonuses in the game are:

• Win a round: $3250 (awarded at the beginning of the following round)
• Lose a round: $1400 + $500 per round lost over 1 (to maximum $3400) (awarded at the beginning of the following round)
• Kill an enemy: $300 (awarded instantly)
• Instruct a hostage to follow: $150 (awarded instantly. Only works once per hostage, per round)
• Rescue a hostage: $1000 (awarded instantly)
• Plant the bomb: $800 (awarded at the beginning of the following round, does not matter if the Terrorist team win or loses the previous round.)

The scoreboard shows team scores in addition to data for each player: name, score, deaths, and ping (in milliseconds) on the map. The scoreboard also shows whether each player is dead, carrying the bomb (in bomb defusal maps), or the VIP (in assassination maps), although to obtain this information about players on the opposing team a player must be dead during the round. Killed players become "ghosts" for the duration of the round; they cannot change their names, text chat cannot be sent to or received from live players; and, while voice chat can still be received from live players, it cannot be sent to them (with the exception of a situation in which cvar sv_alltalk is set to 1, in which case voice chat can be freely exchanged between all players on the server at any time). Ghosts are generally able to watch the rest of the round from multiple selectable views, although some servers disable some of these views to prevent dead players from relaying information about living players to their teammates through alternative media (most notably voice in the case of Internet cafes and Voice over IP programs such as TeamSpeak). This technique, known as "ghosting," is considered cheating in many tactical shooters.

Highlights

Counter-Strike is meant to be more realistic than futuristic first-person shooters such as Quake III Arena and Unreal Tournament, but is also built to keep the action flowing faster than more realistic tactical shooters such as the Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon series. For example, relatively few shots will kill a player, and shots to different parts of the body inflict varying amounts of damage, but damage has no permanent bearing on ability to run or jump, allowing a player with just a few hit points remaining to keep fighting just as well as any other player. Movement, however, is restricted while taking damage from gunfire, and a player cannot run at full speed whilst taking damage.

There are several game types in Counter-Strike which define the objectives of each team in the game, and rules which determine which team wins. Each map is of a single game type. DE for Defusal based maps, CS for Hostage based maps, AS for VIP Escort maps. Players also have the ability to create their own maps using the Valve Hammer Editor.