Boomtown CS:CZ Preview

[CSN NewsBot]

The guys from Boomtown took a trip down to Vivendi Copenhagen to get a glimpse of Counter-Strike: Condition Zero, and have furnished their site with a nice preview and some great new screenshots of the upcoming title. Of note was their experience with the seemingly incomplete AI, which still needed some polish:

The enemys were from time to time quite oblivious as to where your's truly was shooting from, and sometimes they got so mad at each other that they started slaying each other in cold blood. If you threw a flashbang in front of a pack of terrorists they'd all yell "Argh, I can't see", if you then tried to run in and finish'em off, the blindness would turn out to be a mean mean lie....



Naturally we wondered a little about the sappy AI, but we were told that the AI was one of the last things to be completed.

Otherwise, there's not a lot of new info that hasn't been covered before, but any news is good news after the long wait.

[[INT]BC]

Looking good... Release that bad boy to the consumers soon!

[orphy]

Argh, I can't see! That's hilarous. And some of those screenshots I haven't seen before... w0w.

[Simplex]

I read a review on gamespy for EF2 (by ritual) that said that the game was good an polished, but the AI sucked (page 2, "AI Failures"). They tried to get around that by throwing the guys in battle in a cheap manor (spawning them right behind you, etc).



The same guys coding EF2 probably aren't working on CS:CZ, but upper management is probably the same, allowing similar things to slip through just to hit a good release date.

[FLeK0]

Simplex wrote..

...just to hit a good release date.

What?

[bozer]

Gearbox > Ritual 24-0

[EtErNiTyU]

nice review, well written

[Simplex]

CS:CZ is not done, but they are scheduled to get it out before HL2. That's < 84 days! If they let it slip... well, here's what Gabe Newell said:

Anyhow, how would we actually deal with Condition Zero slipping dramatically? We certainly wouldn't delay HL-2. What happens if CZ slipped again? Then you'd have nothing to sell, for no good reason. All the MOD teams would be sitting around with no new engine to work on. And on and on ... If CZ were really going to slip, we'd be far more likely to postpone it until well after HL-2, and port it to Source.

[gorktic]

To pile on top of the rest of the CS:CZ previews...my head is going to explode.

[[SWE]Twiggy]

didnt that preview have a small taste of negativity?

[ja]2ev]

Gearbox CZ...all about the gameplay it seamed

Ritual CZ...cruel cruel joke



it has been over a year now and it took this review to make me completely pessimistic about this game

[bozer]

My point exactly #10. When Gearbox was working on it, the theme of the game was like Tony Hawk. Now the game is scripted and like every other FPS out there (from what I been reading). Its been pushed back a million times and left me no longer interested. Half Life 2 coming out within 90 days, who cares anymore about Ritualistic's crappy version of CZ. I'd like nothing more then to be proven wrong, but I have a horrible feeling this games going to bomb.

[jumbo shrimp]

no graphic improvement!!?? uses the same old engine??!! That sux, what were they doing for the past 2 years???

[Julio Caesar]

This game looks okay (stops, thinks about the peer presure put on by everyone else) Did I say okay? What I meant to say was crap. (unenthusiastically) Yeah, Ritual sucks.....Go gearbox.....?

[OneWingedAngel-DLCSS]

I didn't know that they were going to add laser sights into the game....did anyone else see that pic?