Without a doubt, Counter Strike (CS) is the most popular PC game that is currently played online. What began as a free modification for Half-Life that you could simply download off the internet, it's mind boggling how far that CS has come in the past 4 years. Its creator Minh ‘Gooseman' Le must have had no idea where his creation would take him when he first thought it up and to have it go from a free mod that became more popular online than many Triple A, big budget PC games to a complete stand-alone retail release is nothing short of amazing.

Counter Strike is perfect for a system like Xbox Live. Forget downloading tools like ‘Roger Wilco' so you can hear your team mates or installing something like Psycho Stats on your server for stats collection, Xbox Live takes care of all that for you now. With an all new interface, maps and weapons the Xbox version of Counter Strike is the best yet but unfortunately still has a number of shortcomings.

If you've never played Counter Strike it's a team based first person shooter that sees players take part in either the Counter Terrorist (CT) or Terrorist (T) teams. The many and varied maps feature a number of different scenarios that include Hostage Rescue and Demolition. Hostage Rescue features a number of civilians that the Terrorists have taken hostage. To win the counter terrorist's have to either bring all the surviving hostages out to the rescue zone or kill every terrorist on the map, for the terrorists to win they must kill every counter terrorist. The counter terrorist's also receive a nice cash bonus for every hostage they rescue. For the Demolition mode the terrorists must infiltrate a location and plant some C4 explosive on it then defend the bomb until it detonates. To help the counter terrorists they can purchase a disarming tool that speeds up the disarm process but still leaves them open to attack. Smart CT teams will cover their buddy while he goes for the bomb. Smart terrorist teams will be sitting by with a couple of grenades and their guns loaded ready to go. (-:

Depending on how you did during the map, ie, how many opposing players you killed, hostages rescued etc you are awarded cash to buy better weapons and equipment. It's a simple game format and works very well. The Xbox version features most of the guns from the latest PC version although some are given new names and there are also a couple of new weapons included as well. With 25 guns available ranging from the lowly ‘Glock 9' now called the 9x19mm to the M259 Para that looks like it would be home hanging from the door of a helicopter there's something there to suit all tastes and you will quickly favour one or two over the rest. I'm a big fan of the simple MP5 Submachine gun (now called the K&M SMG) and a nice backup pistol such as the Desert Eagle (now called the Night Hawk) or the Five-Seven.

The game itself is round based so if you are pretty gung-ho you will most likely end up getting killed pretty quickly and spending the next 5 minutes watching everyone else play. This isn't vanilla ‘die and respawn' deathmatch action as in something like Quake 3 or Unreal Tournament and you really have to work together as a team, hunt in packs and use the headset the best you can. Counter Strike is all about team work and the Xbox version makes it easier than ever to make that happen. When playing CS in the past on PC the teams were always full of heroes that would just run off and try and get as many kills before dying. Xbox Live encourages players to really chat it up and work together properly which is great to see as games definitely are better when everyone works together. Another great bonus of the Xbox version is no cheaters. Xbox Live does away with all the script bunnies and wall hack losers that used to plague the majority of PC servers.

The game controls pretty well for a console based first person shooter. You move yourself around with the left stick, aim with the right stick, crouch with the left trigger and fire with the right trigger. Switching weapons is done via the Y button, X reloads and B switches between the guns second fire mode if it has one. This might be either a different rate of fire, a cool silencer or a scope if using a sniper rifle. The grenade button has been moved to the black button which makes accessing grenades very easy and there's not much better than having your team weaken the opposition, lobbing in a grenade or two, getting a couple of kills then finishing off the rest. All the grenades, the HE, Smoke and Flashbang have all been included and the mix of equipment and weapons has been handled pretty nicely. There is loads of variety without being too much. The one thing that I wish hadn't been included is the "Ballistic Shield”. This is a bullet proof shield that comes with the Five-Seven pistol. The shield is deployed using the X button for alternate fire but doesn't allow you to then purchase a primary weapon or different secondary weapon. Personally the game would not have been worse off if it had been left out as its pretty much useless.

Older CS fans will be divided with the jumping in the Xbox version as well. In the newer PC version you can only jump once, after that you are slowed down. This was implemented to negate the stupid players that would ‘bunny hop' around the map and it's a bit of a shame that it didn't make it into the Xbox version. You can jump happily all the way around a map looking like an idiot and annoying other players to no end but it must be said that the players you find on Xbox Live are much more mature than your average CS fan on most of the Aussie servers for the PC version.

The graphics for the Xbox version have been ehanced. There are new skins for all the characters (which also feature higher polygon counts) and the texture art on them is crisp and sharp. All the artwork from the levels has been redone and they have also tweaked the layout of the existing levels which was a nice surprise. All up there are 18 levels in total, 10 existing ones and 8 brand new ones, unfortunately for ‘Inferno' fans such as myself it has been left out. One area of the graphics I thought that could have done with a bit more work was the weapon skins as they look fine but could have been a lot more detailed. If you play the PC version with the ‘Fusion Skin packs' the artwork on them is superior so it was a shame that they couldn't have been up to that standard at least. One of the great aspects of the PC version is all the extra skins you can download so I hope they incorporate some in the downloadable content. Everything does look pretty good but the engine used (the Half-Life engine) is definitely looking dated, well it was even 2 years ago, so don't expect to see advanced lighting and architecture like in Rainbow Six 3.

The sound also features a number of new tweaks. You can play custom soundtracks which is always welcome. A lot of the sounds are identical to the PC version but after all, it is the same game. A few new effects are a ringing in your ears if you're too close to an explosion going off and the other sounds will also go all muffled until your hearing eventually returns to normal. The quality of the sound is great and the guns and explosions are all nice and loud with plenty of bass.

A great surprise was the A.I of the bots in the training and single player side of the game. I was honestly surprised how good they can be. Sure, sometimes you still see them get stuck behind barrels or a crate but thats very rare and they seem to know how to work together, wait in ambush and I've even seen them make their way to your spawn area and lie in wait for you! It's just about as good as playing real people and you can adjust their difficulty level until it suits you. They always seem aware of what's happening in the game and will plant bombs, defend areas and generally act the way you would expect them to. They aren't predictable though and there's a rogue element in there which may even see them rush you or fall back to defend an area. Whether the quality of the A.I makes Counter Strike a worthwhile purchase if you don't have Xbox Live is a hard question though as there is no campaign mode or story at all and is best enjoyed online.