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Comment by skocznymroczny | Hacker News Reader

I consider CS 1.6 a bit of a phenomenon. I could never get myself into it. I love most competitive games, shooters included, but CS feels so bland to me. Everyone plays de_dust, as if there was no other maps. Everyone picks the same gun (m4a1 for CT, ak for terro, or the sniper rifle), as if there was no other guns. Also since the maps are fairly linear, the tactics for each round are basically the same. I could never understand why the game is so popular.

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I no longer enjoy first person shooters, but I was a teenager during that era and loved the game. The lack of variety that you found boring was what made the game fascinating to me at the time. Its simplicity and repetitive nature allowed one to achieve mastery through practice. Playing it, I felt the same feeling that I had after I had played ping pong regularly for several years.

Exactly this. The fact that a few maps and weapons dominated CS is what made it so unique, because you were forced to learn those few maps and weapons in extreme detail. When people couldn't distract themselves with fancy, shiny other things, they were forced to master those fewer things that were available (or were practical) and that many others had already mastered to a greater level than you. Your skill gap was was blatantly apparent to you and others, so you were very motivated to resolve your shortcomings.

There were only a handful of useful weapons, the others were crap, and most the time if you had one of them you'd waste the round.

Same with the maps, the more complex maps would turn into a silly game of people being completely lost looking for the bombing sites, trying to find each other and not knowing were to go.

The same maps and weapons was the only way to have a direct match with full action.

Anyway there were some more maps that were usually played beyond dust and aztec, like dust2, italy, inferno, nuke, cbble, and also the fun ones like rats, or the ones that changed a bit the rules of the game, like pool, sniper maps, and so on.

But you could tell that you were playing cs too much, when you found yourself playing jumping maps...

I felt the same to a large extent. But still played it because moving on to the next game was what everyone else I'd played with did.

I think Medal of Honor: Allied Assault came out in a similar period and I ended up playing that for longer. I'd go back to playing dust on CS occasionally though - as a one map wonder it was good.

Occasionally today I'll turn an Xbox on and play some Battlefield, but I do miss FPS games of that era on a PC, with Teamspeak or whatever else we used.

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