It’s been a long time since I donned the reviewers cap, but when asked if I would like to run a review of the upcoming CSPromod I felt that I couldn’t refuse. So much has been said and written about the game that I wanted to know just exactly what we would be dealing with and have some measure of what to expect from the community.

For many the game seems to be something of a focal point for a largely uncertain future, a game that could do what had previously seemed unthinkable and unite two very distinct gaming communities. By the same token, if the game was anything like the previous version then I think people would start losing the faith.

I was highly critical of version 1.03, but then again it was hard not to be. Somewhere between spawning inside a wall for the twelfth time and being killed in spawn by a phantom nade that had been thrown in the previous round it dawned on me that the game was a long way off. I wrote a lot about how the game was completely unfit for public consumption and even banged on about in on my radio show. I told Alex Garfield all this before the review and he didn’t seem to mind. He was confident that this would be a drastic improvement.

So, here was a chance to present to our readership exactly what they could expect and maybe clear up some of the mystifying misconceptions surrounding the game. For example, people labour under the delusion that the game itself will be limited by the coding of the HL2 engine. Yet the fact is, that despite the game’s name, it is not a mod. It’s not possible to mod 1.6 or CS:S because nobody has the code to do it. The game is built from scratch, 100% custom coded from the ground up, and only shares some of the models and textures from CS: Source. As such, the proposals laid out at the start of the project aren’t unrealistic as anything is possible.

Anyway, I unburdened myself of my preconceptions and ran the install.

I don't know why I got excited by this

First Impressions

OK, the first thing that’s going to cause a twang of mild excitement is the loading screen. Yeah, it looks pretty cool, the CSPromod logo lovingly rendered and the 1.6 style font presenting you with your options. Now, cruising through the menus it has to be said that they have given you a vast array of customisation options. Obviously when merging the two games people are going to want to have it their way, so the option to have graphical settings that make both sets of players comfortable with the game makes perfect sense and would, hypothetically, help ease the transition.

The major ones that stand out for me are the radar and wall impact options. With the radar you can choose between an opaque or solid classic 1.6 style radar, or use the options to create something of a hybrid between the CS:S style and the 1.6 style. These changes are mostly aesthetic though and the functionality remains the same. One of the major points that will cause problems for Source players is going to be how they adapt to the old style of radar again. After Valve dumbed down the radar in Source a lot of players will have got used to this new method and even with the option to make it look more like the CS:S radar, the fact is it functions just like in 1.6.

The game is designed to present aesthetic preferences from both versions of Counter-Strike

The wall impacts allows you to have your bullets either leave the CS:S style decals, or to have the 1.6 style, replete with orange sparks and white and black flecks. It may not sound a huge difference immediately, but having seen how resistant to the idea of anyone altering even the tiniest aspect of their game the 1.6 community can be, these are exactly the sorts of tiny details that need to be incorporated if the project is to have any chance of success.

It is probably worth pointing out that you can also now choose to have “Quake” style fast weapon switches, without the animations, which is something the 1.6 community have especially asked for. I imagine it is one of the settings that will be well received.

I go through and check the options that will make my game visuals conform to the most like 1.6 the game can be. After all, as much as this review needs to be a measure of how well it plays as a stand alone game, it is really a review of just how much like 1.6 the game is. It is this measure that will dictate whether it is a success or not, at least in my opinion anyway.

de_inferno has been lovingly recreated

On The Server

I connect and spend a moment or two just moving around the maps to get a feel for the game. Let me say immediately that this actually feels like a real game and not some half-baked, bedroom coded mod. The visuals are crisp, the maps are completely free from the clutter and garbage that Source is saddled with and the landscapes seem at once familiar but also new. Movement feels just like 1.6, the same speed and fluidity. You can crouchtap just the same as in 1.6 and there’s no ridiculous CS:S like bunnyhopping to worry about. It feels like you’re playing 1.6 even if your eyes are telling you something different. As I would find out later, when you are shot you slow down, no more quick Source style getaways. The HUD looks great, again a sort of cross between the two games. Name, status and money all clearly displayed when you bring up the scoreboard.

It also has to be said that the maps themselves look great, a glorious reimagining of some timeless nostalgia, like the first time you saw Homer Simpson rendered in 3D in that Treehouse of Horror episode. Although no expert I had a good look around the official maps and did some comparisons of common spots and the dimensions look just about spot on. It is hard to tell of course because the models are from CS:S, which means the size and therefore the view height is slightly different.

About The Models

Now, this version does have the Source models, which is something 1.6ers aren’t going to like, but it has been said that the next version will include 1.6 scale models and 1.6 style animations. This was always one of the long term goals, but for now the game has come out with the CS:S models and it doesn’t feel that strange. If anything it brings the two games closer together in the short term, sort of like a phased integration. While Source players are adapting to the more difficult aspects of the 1.6 game, they can at least console themselves with the fact that the Source models and hitboxes remain the same.

Although these models will be phased out, this is what you will see in 1.04

FPS

As anyone will tell you, CS:S FPS doesn’t seem to have any exact science to it. Some parts of some maps are so awfully rendered you will experience massive FPS dips. Sometimes if you scope with an AWP into smoke you get about the same frames-per-second as you would playing the game on a ZX Spectrum. It is something that people have come to reluctantly accept while trying to find the combination of hardware and game settings that eliminate most of these problems.

With CSPromod it quickly became apparent that not only was I getting more FPS than on the Source equivalent maps, but I was also getting more stable FPS in general. I got a colleague to throw some smokes at me and I crouched in them double scoped and it was fine. The game really does have a nice clean feel to it, more stable than Source and certainly not going to require a top of the range computer to run smoothly. I couldn’t get enough people together to rush me on the server I was on, so that test will have to wait until the first tentative mixes get going.

Weapons & Recoil

For now the game will only feature the weapons that you would most likely use in a competitive game. That list would be: USP,Glock, Deagle, MP5, Famas, Galil, M4a1, AK47 & AWP. The full list will obviously be introduced eventually but with matching recoil patterns having already taken up so much work it makes sense to wait before filling out the complete armoury.

Recoil patterns were going to be a “make or break” deal with Promod. As such I paid particular attention to how the guns reacted when I was firing them. First thing to say will be if this game does take off competitively the days of the CS:S WASDA Warrior will be numbered. The moment you start to spray, or run and shoot, you can forget about accuracy. No more emptying a clip while running backwards, only for the last bullet to snap to the head. Believe me, I tried to recreate that time and time again only to be one-bulleted from the other side of the map. So sure, it’s not like Source, but that doesn’t make it like 1.6, right?

The recoil patterns were identical as far as I could tell and look at the sparks too

Well, wrong… I spent a good while spraying at walls and having a good look at the recoil patterns, then comparing them to both 1.6 and Source. If it isn’t identical to 1.6 then it’s 99% at least. I couldn’t see or feel a discernable difference with any of the rifles. I spent a good three hours just flicking between the two games and trying to find anything different between the two sets of recoil patterns, but couldn’t. Appreciate though that they are nothing like CS:S and anyone who has spent a while mastering the art of recoil control is going to find that time wasted should they decide to move over.

Pistol recoil and accuracy again felt the same as 1.6. The Deagle took some getting used to as it no longer seems to be the random headshot machine that it had been in various incarnations of the game, especially Source. Again, it handled like 1.6 and I think it’s safe to say that this aspect is going to be a huge triumph in terms of gameplay.

AWPing felt weird at first and I was convinced that I was quick-scoping in a CS:S way when I wasn’t supposed to be abled to. But again, after playing CSPromod and 1.6 back to back, the speeds are completely identical and the AWP is probably the one thing you could safely say has been replicated perfectly.

For all guns the hit-boxes married up perfectly and I didn’t find myself calling “bullshit” on any of the shots, or complaining about bad reg. Quite simply, if you sprayed, you could see exactly how you were missing, the bullets landing elsewhere, and if you tapped while the crosshair was on someone’s head then it was a kill. I won’t stir up the hornets nest regarding netcode again, since as everyone will come out of the woodwork with their technological voodoo that either proves or disproves the problems with CS:S, but I will say this – everything that is good and proper about 1.6 can be said about CSPromod. Your aim does have to be perfect, lucky shots are few and far between, and when you hit something the bullets are actually effective. CS:S is the only FPS game I can think of that has fallen down on these fundamentals and still gone on to be successful competitively.

WallSpamming

We had a lot of fun with this and if anything it feels like an improvement has been made over 1.6 in this regards. Now ignoring the whole debate about whether it’s realistic or whether it is skillful, the fact is it has always been a part of the competitive game and it was something that CS:S never got right. Some surfaces that clearly weren’t meant to be spammable were, map glitches were quickly discovered and exploited for wallspams, and a thousand yawnsome movies were born.

Not a particularly impressive wallspam, but hopefully it illustrates the point

In CSPromod everything you could spam through in 1.6 you can do here, and it might be my imagination again, but it feels more effective. Bullets travel through the surfaces and you can see the exit points. Maybe it’s because I was expecting to be so bad at it, but it didn’t take long before I was killing people through concrete walls, or pinging headshots through corners without peeking. Even the noise it makes as you do it is the same as 1.6 and it feels as satisfying as it ever did.

Flashes, Smokes & Nades

This is also the other big talking point. Flashes, nades and smokes in CS:S are all hugely flawed. We’ve all seen flashes that have hit an opponent full in the face that don’t work, we’ve seen ones that fly well behind us only to leave us white-screened for a full ten seconds. We’ve all had a nade stick to us, make that awful rattling noise like the last throes of a spinning penny, yet do about 9 damage. We’ve been shot through double smokes, or cruelly cut down by the tactically deployed “one-way” smokes that now make up a large part of the games tactical element. In short, they bungled that side of CS:S probably worse than any other.

CSPromod sees a welcome return to the old style of smokes and flashes. Smokes plume immediately upon deployment and the smoke seems to be completely consistent no matter where you deploy it, from both sides. It also looks nice too, more clearly defined than the smog-like blur that Source players will be used to.

The smokes emulate their 1.6 counterparts to near-perfection

The flashes are also fully effective and near identical to 1.6. If you’re hit full in the face you are blind and they fade at the same speed you would expect from 1.6. If they miss you, then the degrees of partial blindness are clearly defined. I also didn’t see any examples of the weird screen blur that occurs in CS:S, where it looks like two photos have been merged together. The fade is clear, consistent, and matches up with 1.6 timing.

The effects of a fully faced flashbang over approximately ten seconds

Nades seem to be more of an amalgamation of the two games, but this thinking might be down to the use of the CS:S model, rather than the chunky 1.6 version. They do damage through surfaces as you’d expect, they don’t seem capable of sticking to people, but throwing them doesn’t quite feel like a 1.6 grenade. Whether it is the timing on how long it takes to prime, or whether it is something more obscure, In the time I had to review the game I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. However, it was a minor point and they certainly aren’t so radically different that I would expect it to have an impact on gameplay.

Conclusion

Well, let’s be frank. As a faithful adaptation of 1.6 the game absolutely succeeds. Playing the two games back-to-back really left me struggling to tell the difference at times and once the models fix come in CSPromod will be more like the game it so desperately wants, and needs, to emulate. But be under no illusions, what it takes from Source is so minimal it is barely worth mentioning. It is everything Source should have been – a graphical improvement of the greatest FPS created and it really is a triumph in that respect, especially if you recall the hideous 1.03 version.

I’ll also say completely earnest, that if I was a competitive Source player right now I’d not hesitate to make the switch over. The game feels right. It makes you remember why you started playing Counter-Strike in the first place. When you shoot people, they die. It's about your aim and your brain. There seems to be less about the game that can go wrong, less random elements down to weird, needlessly showy coding. Consistency is key to competitive games and this delivers roundly on those fronts. Even if it doesn’t pull in the 1.6ers, who for me would be splitting hairs by complaining about any differences, the Source community should take a long hard look at what their game should have been five years ago.

The best selling point for me is the fact this game could be ported to any engine, meaning there’d be no reason to think it would ever get left behind, or that it wouldn’t be here in fifteen, or twenty years in much the same format without it ever feeling dated. In that respect, it does have a potentially bright future. With further improvements to come, including the models fix already addressed in this review, the game will be better and will be even closer to the 1.6 ideal.

Will the community think that CSPromod is "The Bomb"?

I know this has been a thoroughly detailed review, but I felt we should do it justice given that the game could play a big part in the competitive future of maybe two large communities. I came in as a sceptic, but have been won over by what is a hugely impressive feat. For them to make a convert of a critic is something they will have to do if they are to be successful and I couldn’t tell you which way that will go, even though I might want it to succeed. And that has nothing to do with hope, but simply because it deserves to. They said that 1.6 could never be replicated. CSPromod is almost there and with a few more tweaks could be what everyone should want it to be.

CSPromod is released on the 31st January