PC GAMES ROUNDUP OF 2000
Date: 1/17/01
By Rice

    As an avid PC gamer and a reluctant college student, I have to balance the time I spend between them or else I'll end up as a dropout, which doesn't sound so bad to me but doesn't quite appeal to my tuition paying parents. That means with the precious spare time I have to play my games and the sheer amount that is released every year, there are a few that are bound to slip through the cracks.

    However, that doesn't mean I don't try them, or let someone else have the pleasure while I watch. Thus I present to you the first part of this article, which is a roundup of the games I never featured as full reviews on the site, but have adequate exposure to them to form a somewhat subjective opinion for each respective game. Without further ado in alphabetical order:

COUNTER-STRIKE
Developer: Minh "Gooseman" Le
Publisher: Free mod addon for Half-Life
Genre: First Person Shooter (FPS)

Counter-Strike: An online phenomenon.

    I'll give you three guesses as to which game is played most online. Quake 3? Bzzzt! Unreal Tournament? Bzzzt! Team Fortress? Bzzzt! The correct answer: Counter-Strike is the #1 game played online... and not by a squeaker either. At any given time of the day/night, CS is played by twice as many people as the three aforementioned games combined. It's a fact. Wowzers!

    What made it so popular was the mix of reality and simplicity. There are more accurate sims out there, such as Rainbow Six and its derivatives, but those are extremely complex and its learning curve scare off pure action gamers like myself. Counter-Strike's premise is simply terrorists vs. counter terrorists on a variety of maps that feature different objectives. If your team wins, you get rewarded with money, which you can use to buy armor, grenades, and weapons. That's all there is to it.

Waagghhh.... *gurgle*

    I started heavily playing CS in the beginning of October when I first moved back into the dorms. UCLA ethernet incorporates this filter that slows down Napster users, but the unfortunate side effect is it makes online gaming impossible.... except Counter-Strike for some weird reason. Whenever I tried to boot up Q3 or UT, I would lag my ass off the server. However, CS maintains a smooth 70 or lower ping time. My theory is that it's a lot less action fury than the other games. A lot of time people just sneak around, thereby putting less strain on bandwidth requirements.

    Anyways, because of that, CS became the only game I could play during daytime. My opinion on this game is that it really ain't all that. The only times it was really fun is when I play along with my roommate, and when one of us would die, we would help each other locate the other remaining enemies. Yeah, I know, it's sort of cheating that way, but hey, it was a lot more fun that way than playing alone.

Sniper on the roof! Sniper on the roof!

    It's undeniable that Counter-Strike is a bonafide phenomenon created by Gooseman. Its fanbase is absolutely massive. Although I found it a bit on the dull side, I'm sure it's a lot more fun if you're involved in a clan and you play with people you know.

GIANTS: CITIZEN KABUTO
Developer: Planet Moon Studios
Publisher: Interplay
Genre: Action Shooter w/ some RTS

Part 1: The Meccs

    This game got a lot of hype from multiple E3's and other gaming conventions. There were numerous previews all over the web, so being naturally curious, I picked it up. Unfortunately, I was hip deep in American McGee's Alice that time, so I transferred the mantle of this game to my brother to play.

    At heart, Giants is an action game with some RTS elements sprinkled around it. There are three separate sections of the game in which you control completely different characters, sort of like Starcraft's race trio, each of them unique in their own ways. As of writing this, my brother is on the final level of the second arc. A few things that I've noted while watching:

Part 2: The Sea Reaper

• Graphics are really pretty. Huge rolling landscapes complete with bump mapping and light flares from the sun.
• The other shoe dropped when I realized how choppy it was. The system was a 366 Celeron @ 450 w/ a Voodoo Banshee. Mesozoic in today's standards, I admit. After turning down the graphics completely, it was more playable. However, there have been universal complaints about its insane system requirements. That includes people w/ high end Athlons and GeForces!
• The cutscenes are hilarious. Its character animations are slapstick style, and the dialogue is delivered outrageously. Hey, what else would you expect from the people that brought you the original MDK?

Part 3: KABUTO!!

• The action sequences are extremely varied. Sometimes you gotta sneak, sometimes it requires you to race a jetski, and sometimes, you just gotta brute force your way through.

    Check out a full GameSpot review (9.0/10) here: click!

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