You've probably never thought about it, but have you ever considered the trouble and toil it gives us before and after play? More often than not, I think you don't give a crap. After all, who does? It's all a matter of the adrenaline rush than the installing. And for most, installing is something not everyone has to even consider with nearly every cybercafe having the game in nearly every computer. But what about the home users? The ones that go through the trouble of buying the CD's or downloading the software? Considering the lot of the users are home computer users, I guess some of you have had the share of installing, rebooting, uninstalling, customizing and such without much error. But there are a few, or most, who actually have quite a bit of trouble with what they are handed.

    Let's start with the downloading. I don't overly mind the downloading. But for most Malaysian users, the speed of their internet connection can only take them so far. The majority of Internet users here are 56k'ers  which, if you estimate or calculate the amount of time needed to download the CS file itself, is around 4 hours estimate, 3hours 45 minutes tops. Only the lucky few who have higher than ISDN have the luxury of having an hour plus of waiting or less. This actually doesn't really fix everything, as there are the slight problems everywhere, and believe me, I've seen my own share. For instance, the chance that the file you're downloading may not actually be complete is possible. Then there is the possible chance of a corrupt file. Once I did download CS to update, but after installing, I found that a file wasn't too "fit" to perform. So I was a bit stubborn and reinstalled it. Again. And again. And again. In the end I did give up, and had to download it again which took me another few hours to do after installing and such. I can't really say that it's a big matter, but then chances of this happening has occurred time and again to some people, and it's truly frustrating. 

    Comes the point of customizing your CS. I've been to some cybercafes specially devoted to CounterStrike only. The customization of some of the parts in CS is incredible. Ranging from changing your gun skins, sprites, map, cross hairs, even radar. The possibilities of the customization is like, totally kickass, but there are still the haggling problems you can find in this which range from irritating to downright unplayable. For such, some people might have not known, but some, or all the gun's player skins are like totally unchangeable. I learnt that when I changed my AUG skin to a HK 51, with everything, but I couldn't get the gun's player skins to work. It was like, such a bad thing that I couldn't even play because it was not good. So, me making the mistake of not making a copy of the skins folder, I had to reinstall CS. Mistake I won't repeat again. I believe that most of you are like, okay, screw him, mine still work fine... but let's put it this way, say you have fully customized your guns and managed to get them working in game, ever noticed that sometimes your game becomes like, extremely slow? Could be because your computer is near the obsolete pile. But if it was recently upgraded or happens to be the top of the line, best-in-show, blue ribbon winner kind of computer, and yet still is slow, it could very well be the gun. I'm not saying that the gun skin is bad or anything, but take in consideration that the bigger the skin, the slower your "playing environment" will be. So the chance that the smaller and less complex looking your gun, the faster your play and less lag.

    The ability to play online or with friends is like, very thrilling, but what if it turns sour when you happen to be at the bottom of the table or is met up with a huge bunch of loser players. I seriously can't consider myself good, my friends don't consider myself good, I'm rather in the middle. But that wholly depends on who I play with. Seeing that I'm a Malaysian on the Sabahan side, I find it rather hard to find local CS servers. Well, there are, but they happen to be based around KL and when that comes, it's a bit hard to play since the lag is incredible when my actions are like transported through the underground/underwater cable lines to reach the server. So it's like, I shoot, I wait a second or two and then only watch my screen do the action. I seriously cannot play against those fellows on those servers because they are like, so used to it. Whereas if I go to an overseas server, which happens to cater for 56k'ers like myself, I find the chance to actually be able to frag someone instead of being fragged. The lag is at times unbearable, almost unplayable. Too much lag isn't a good thing, and getting used to it isn't very nice. In my point of view, I'm a newbie who is like, not too good against my own players under lag, but can work against foreign players in foreign servers under pressure, lag or no lag. For a newbie like me, I find it hardly playable when I just go under the tunnel in de_dust only to get sniped by a camper on the other side just waiting for people like me. Frustration can lead to both senior player and newbie player as they seniors find it annoying to kill the same people in repetition. Where as the newbies, will be frustrated over the fact that they are like, being fragged instead of actually getting some frags.

    In foresight, I believe that CounterStrike's fast pace action far outweighs the niggling problems you may find every now and then. But then again, I happen to be one of those who are very patient with games. Some people may not be as patient as me to do all the stuff I did or face all the problems I faced. So trust what you believe and think about it for a while.

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