If one had a device that allowed one to look back in time (N.B.: The Light of Other Days, by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter), and one were to look back upon me during college (especially my first year), one would regularly witness the following schedule:
- Wake some time between 12 and 4PM
- Eat at the "Rain Garden," a crappy little "restaurant" in the student center
- Go to class until around 9 or 10PM
- Grab Mountain Dew, cigarettes and sandwich, head back to room
- Play Counter-Strike until 7 or 8AM
- Sleep
Counter-Strike was my life. I started playing CS back in high school when the very first beta was released, and I got more and more attached to it until my second year of college, when my right arm pain got to be too much for me to play any longer. That was a sad, sad time. Since then I've not returned to the first-person shooter genre via a PC (except to play Half-Life 2, which was painful but worth it), but instead have relegated myself to console gaming, that which luckily doesn't hurt my hands or arms.
One of the great things about Counter-Strike was the "realism" of how the game played—instead of instantly re-spawning when you die, you would have to sit out for the remainder of the round (usually no more than five minutes), and you had to buy your weapons with money you earned by doing well in the game. Effectively, it was a more reality-based version of your standard deathmatch FPS game, and it was loads of fun.
I've not played in a long time, but last week I came across the news that they've instituted a CS Weapons Market in the game, and I was instantly jealous. The new global system for weapons prices keeps all weapons in a constant state of flux depending on world-wide demand. If everyone buys a sniper rifle one week, it will become very expensive and therefore the next week most people won't be able to afford it. I love the idea of using the power of the internet and community gaming in this way, and it takes the realism to another level.