I admit it - in a moment of weakness, and desparation to see Valve's HAVOC physics engine, and Half-Life 2 graphics, I bought a copy of Counter-Strike: Condition Zero so I could get into the CS:S beta.

...and, it turns out, $29.95 wasted for the time being, because i'm being hounded by the 'CTD (crash to desktop) bug'.

Still, there are numerous fixes on Valve's forums, which i'll try when I get home this afternoon.

But I digress - has anyone else out there been lucky enough to get CS:S working? Thoughts? Opinions?

Well if my mom wouldn't have been seriously gay there was a gfx card on Ebay that came with a Half-Life 2 coupon (free). But, sorry no.

That was a worthless post, sorry again. :(

Okay, Valve's updated CS:S, so I can actually play.

After about 4 or 5 matches, I have to say i'm impressed - although the graphics aren't quite Doom 3, I'd say that's because of the limitations of the map (de_dust) rather than the SOURCE engine itself. By far the most impressive thing is the 'Video Stress Test', which is nice little on-rails real-time rendered environment showing off the beautiful water effects.

But of course, the main draw card of SOURCE is the physics engine - and it doesn't disappoint. Valve was nice, and completely littered de_dust with all sorts of cans, milkbottles, bricks, and gallon drums to shoot and kick to your heart's content. Apart from a few minor clipping bugs (it is a beta, after all), SOURCE's de_dust feels a lot more livable than CS 1.6's.

As a relative Counter-Strike n00b (before buying CZ, I only ever played in a few matches with my friends), I was dead on the ground more often than not, and got to experience a lot of nice effects through the fly-by - explosions are absolutely superb, and the audio effects are terrific. When a HE grenade goes off, if it's to your left, your left channel is actually deafened, with a ringing noise like something had actually just exploded to your left. Instead of flashbangs just sending the screen white, they deafen you with the same ringing effect, and there's a motion blur effect as you regain your sight. Very nice.

Particle effects are nice too - the air in de_dust has a slight haze of sand, as you might expect in a town in the middle of a desert.

A note too - my PC isn't exactly a powerhouse (a Celeron 2Ghz, 512 SD and a 256 MB Radeon 9600XT), and I was getting 30 FPS on High detail, with no anti-aliasing (AA x 4 only dropped my FPS by 10, but that's too much in CS. I'll probably have it at that playing Half-Life 2, though.)

Probably the main thing chugging up my system is the Celeron processor... hopefully by the time i get HL 2, i'll have a P4. Only time will tell :p