Counter-Strike: Condition Zero

Counter-Strike: Condition Zero is a single and multi-player player extension of the popular team based multi-player on-line game Counter-Strike.

Developer: Valve Corporation, Gearbox Software, Ritual Entertainment, Turtle Rock Studios
Platform: PC
Release Year: 2004

Basic Plot

The original Counter-Strike did not contain a single player mode of game play, so this was new for the franchise. The original release came with a campaign called Tour of Duty. The plot loosely bound together various multi-player missions together into a basic story, utilising computer controlled team mates to simulate the team based mechanics of the on-line game.

Gameplay

In a nutshell, Counter-Strike: Condition Zero (referred to as CS:CZ) is a single and multi-player team based first person shooter. If you have never heard of the original game or simply want a re-cap on the mechanics of the game you can see my previous blog post here.

I'll talk about the mechanics of the single and multi-player aspects of the game separately, but there were also some game-play mechanics related to both.

Most obviously, the player and weapon models were re-worked for this game to be more detailed than the original game. It still used the same underlying engine (GoldSrc).

Single Player

The single player campaign simulated some of the experiences you might obtain during the multi-player part of the game but from the perspective of the Counter-Terrorists. Despite being single player, the game is heavily team-based and involves working together with a team of bots to achieve victory on each mission.

As the player progressed through the missions they were able to unlock new maps that they could play on, but most importantly could obtain more effective bot team mates to carry with them as they went.

The objectives of each mission were the same as multi-player, a combination of:

• Defusing bombs
• Rescuing hostages
• Killing enemies

Playing through campaign provided a new player a decent introduction to the skills they might need to play against real players on-line.

An example of the updated game models.

Multi-player

The multi-player game functioned the same way the original Counter-Strike did but with the addition of new maps, weapons, and player models.

The multi-player part of the game never took off, and most players continued to play the original game after release.

Positives

It was a nice idea; to put a single player perspective to the game, provide a way for new players to learn the basics without being reamed by real players on-line, and to add some additional back story to one of the most successful games in history.

Negatives

The most memorable part of the game was how buggy it was. I gave up on the single player campaign after two attempts in which my save game got corrupted or part of the game glitched out and I was unable to proceed. As a bit of back story:

• Development initially started in 2000 by Rogue Entertainment.
• Later that year Rogue Entertainment went defunct, handing over development to Valve.
• Valve handed development over to Gearbox Software (who developed Half-Life) so they could focus on Team Fortress 2 and the new Source engine.
• Gearbox over-hauled the game to contain updated models and new weapons, but they missed their late 2002 release date and the development was handed over to Ritual Entertainment.
• Ritual Entertainment completely re-started development and created a 20 mission single player campaign, and focusing on developing an updated AI system for bots, due for release in early 2003.
• Valve released Ritual's version of the game to reviewers, but it received a rating of only 60%, so they scrapped all of Ritual's parts of the game and handed over development to the newly created Turtle Rock Studios.
• Turtle Rock Studios took over from where Gearbox left off, and the final 2004 release was primarily focused on the updated models and weapons, as well as AI, but also included 12 missions which were left over from Ritual's development period.

It's no wonder the game was so buggy, with such a delayed development with so many vendors involved. For those of you interested, Ritual Entertainment's single player campaign was eventually released as Condition Zero: Deleted Scenes.

The multi-player aspect of the game didn't take off either. It didn't add anything significantly interesting to the mechanics of the game, and people preferred the tried and true original (plus it was less buggy).

An in-game cut scene from the single player campaign.

Memorable Moments

Like I said, I tried to play this game twice but the bugs prevented me from being able to complete it - very frustrating. I was pretty excited to try it out, as Counter-Strike was the most important game for me when I was at university, something I played many hours of every day.