Yeah that was my arguement in the beginning of the thread. I haven't really wanted to play it for a long time as it is really dated. However all my friends have inferior pc's and still love playing it, so I am usually forced into playing it if I want to play multiplayer with them.

However things changed a few months ago, when I started playing UT2K4... It is such a good mutliplayer game in comparison to most games old and new, maybe not quite so engaging as BF1942, but damn close. CS:S finds itself at release with stiff competition and due to the lack of vehicles and free-roaming landscapes seems to fall short of the benchmark.

Fired up CS:S this morning for a couple of hours. 900 servers and quite a few with low latency. The new maps are ok, but still have a nasty quake engine feel to them. The physics, lighting and audio is worth praise though... makes it a bit more entertaining to spectate. In terms of what it offers over CS I cannot really see a lot to be honest, might just come down to the new graphics engine for all of us DirectX9 generation. I feel somewhat puzzled as to why they bothered releasing it as a new product in the first place... Could of been updated in increments over the last 2 years or so.