Counter Strike Source is a remake of Counter-Strike and consequently maintains its first-person shooter style, objective-oriented, team-based gameplay. The objective of playing a map is to achieve the objective of a map. There are many types of objectives a map can have, but the ultimate goal of the game is to win more rounds than the opposing team, which is achieved by fulfilling the map’s winning conditions. Some winning conditions include defusing a bomb, planting a bomb and preventing it from being defused by the other team, rescuing all hostages on a map, preventing hostages from being rescued, and defeating all members of the opposing team. When playing on an unmodified server, if players are defeated during a round, they will not respawn until the next round, unlike many other first-person shooters where players respawn on a set timer.
Moving and shooting also differs noticeably from many other first-person shooters. Firing while moving dramatically decreases accuracy, and holding the mouse button down to fire continuously often produces severe recoil. Recoil can be difficult for beginning players to compensate for because the player’s reticle does not correspond to where the bullets actually hit during continuous fire; therefore, beginner players may aim too high during automatic fire. The amount of damage done by a bullet varies dramatically depending on which part of the body the bullet hits, with a heavy emphasis on shooting the enemy in the head, which is almost invariably lethal.
Several gameplay elements have been modified from its Counter Strike iteration, such as grenade behavior, physics engine, and weapon recoil. Smoke grenades in Counter Strike Source spread much more slowly than counter grenades, and flashbangs, which now utilize DirectX 9 effects, have a much more pronounced effect and bounce very differently than those in Counter Strike. It also implements physics objects such as locker files that the user can interact with during gameplay. The recoil in Counter Strike Source differs from the recoil, while Counter Strike had perfectly consistent recoil, the recoil in Counter Strike Source is much less accurate. Furthermore, the addition of ragdoll physics marks another difference between counterattack and counterattack: source. The AI has also been improved, its attacks are considerably more accurate and “read” the tactical map. Once alerted to the player’s appearance, they will engage more quickly than in older games. The AI will try to retreat if they encounter snipers.
