Counter-Strike: Source

Carbine. Counter-Strike: Source retains its team-based objective-oriented first-person shooter style gameplay. The aim of playing a map is to accomplish a map's objective: defusing the bomb, rescuing all hostages, or killing the entire opposing team. The ultimate goal of the game is to win more rounds than the opposing team. Once players are killed, they do not respawn until the next round, though this depends on which server people play on. This gameplay feature distinguishes Counter-Strike from other first-person shooter games, where players respawn instantly or after a short delay. Shooting while moving dramatically decreases accuracy, and holding the trigger down to continuously shoot produces severe recoil. The severity of damage induced by weaponry is dependent upon the specific locations of hits, with hits to the head being most lethal and shots which make contact elsewhere causing lesser loss of health. Damage is also affected by the distance, and if the target wears protection. ==Development==

Counter-Strike: Source was announced to the public on May 12, 2004, at the E3 presentation as the multiplayer counterpart to Half-Life 2 on the then-new Source engine. It was initially released as a beta to members of the Valve Cyber Café Program on August 11, 2004. On August 18, 2004, the beta was released to owners of Counter-Strike: Condition Zero as well as those who had received a Half-Life 2 voucher bundled with some ATI Radeon video cards. The game was released on Steam for Windows on October 7, 2004, and was later included with Half-Life 2 bundles, which were released on November 16 of the same year. The game was developed primarily in-house at Valve Software, with development contributions from the original co-creators of Counter-Strike, Minh Le and Jess Cliffe, as well as members of the Day of Defeat development team. Over the next two years, through subsequent updates, they introduced bot support and added several classic maps from previous Counter-Strike titles like Inferno, Nuke and Train that were missing at launch. On November 1, 2006, Valve released a major update entitled Dynamic Weapons Pricing. Under this system, item prices were determined based on their demand the previous week. Even before the system was released, there was opposition from the community, and the system was eventually removed. On March 5, 2010, Valve announced the release of games from its first-party library, including games from the Counter-Strike series, for Mac OS X. The ports were slated for release in April 2010. Valve employed Hidden Path Entertainment to provide support on updating Counter-Strike: Source. On May 7, 2010, Valve released an update that includes new features and functionality developed in collaboration with Hidden Path Entertainment. These include 144 (now 146) new achievements, a new domination and revenge system, similar to that of Team Fortress 2, player stats, an upgrade to the Source engine and more. On June 23, 2010, Valve released the beta to the public alongside the promised OS X version. In February 2013, Valve released a port of Counter-Strike: Source for Linux. On February 18, 2025, Valve released the first major update to Counter-Strike: Source in 14 years, upgrading the game from 32-bit to 64-bit binaries for x64 systems. The update also included number of minor graphical, quality-of-life, and bug fixes. == Modifications ==

Counter-Strike: Malvinas Counter-Strike: Malvinas is a custom Counter-Strike: Source map, developed and distributed by Argentine web hosting company Dattatec. The map was released worldwide on 4 March 2013. The game is set in Stanley, the capital of the Falkland Islands, and revolves around a group of Argentine special forces (portrayed as the counter-terrorist team) capturing the archipelago from British Royal Marines, who are portrayed as terrorists. The map is inspired by the 1982 Falklands War, in which an estimated 650 Argentine and 255 British servicemen died. The mod prompted strong controversy in the United Kingdom; Dattatec's website was targeted by British hackers on 27 March 2013. ==Reception==

Counter-Strike: Source was met with positive reviews from professional critics. Metacritic, a review aggregator website, awarded Source a rating of 88 out of a possible 100 based on 9 critic's reviews. Jeff Haynes of IGN said the game was "much more detailed, featuring many more polygons per model, bump mapping and other graphical enhancements" compared to the original. ==Sequel==

On August 12, 2011, Valve announced the production of a successor to Counter-Strike: Source, entitled Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Global Offensives development began in March 2010 when Hidden Path Entertainment attempted to port Counter-Strike: Source onto video game consoles prior to the end of its lifespan. During its development, Valve saw the opportunity to turn the port into a full game and expand on the predecessor's gameplay. In 2023, Global Offensive was assimilated into Counter-Strike 2, which ported the game's content into the Source 2 engine. ==Competitive play==

Counter-Strike: Source has been played in tournaments since shortly after its release. The game received some criticism by the competitive community, who believed the game's skill ceiling was significantly lower than that of CS 1.6. This caused a divide in the competitive community as to which game to play competitively. ==References==