Introduction

While playing, be prepared to do anything: it is a world where anything is possible and fast thinking is required. Your team’s victory will depend on how each member is able to gather information, and react to it. In order to achieve optimum game results, make sure of the following: Your selected resolution is the highest your computer can cope with, without displaying a slow game. A high resolution allows you to see details far away. Get an optical mouse, their precision is worth it; ideally with 5 buttons. You can hear sounds from the game: not only the rounds you shoot, but the footsteps of the players around you, enemies reloading Avoid listening to music while playing. Prefer headphones over loudspeakers for increase sound accuracy. Position yourself comfortably. Achieving victory does not happen because of luck, but because of a set of events that bring your team closer to victory step by step. Therefore every player has to keep in mind that this game has to be played as part of a team and not as a lone player. Staying alone will: Get you killed (very probably you will not be able to achieve much that could help your team before dying). Diminish the strength of your team. Make it harder for your team to complete its objective. Bring victory closer to the enemy. It is preferable to die to help the team achieve an objective, rather than stay alive and be defeated. In order to win, the team has to play as one to reach of their objective. The tough part is that each team members’ role cannot be defined once and for all: they have to be dynamic depending on the situation the team faces.

Abstract

Counter-Strike is a modification of Half-life, which is an online video game of the First Person Shooter (FPS) genre. This game splits the players into 2 teams: the terrorists and the counter-terrorists; one of them has an objective to complete (i.e.: rescuing hostages, blasting a bombsite with C4, rescuing a VIP) while the other one has to try and prevent them achieving it. The type of objective that one of the team will be asked to achieve is defined by the map (the pre-defined world where the game will take place), and the game on each map is sub-divided in rounds. A round ends when one team is dead or has achieved their objective, or when the timer reaches 0. When a player is killed, he re-spawns at the beginning of the next round. This game modification was developed in 1999 and is -over the last 4 years- the most played multiplayer online game. This guide has been written for a variant of Counter-Strike, called “pistols only” where only handguns, grenades and knifes are considered as valid weapons. The set of guidelines in this document should be considered as suggestions to players regarding the strategic aspect of this game, they are not a way to achieve guaranteed victory.