Another game bites the dust. It was a long-time coming, with the average player count never really pushing past a couple hundred players. Feels like I need to give CS:N a proper goodbye, even as just a formality. It was a pretty important game to me as a teenager back in 2016, despite its many predatory practices and generally poor construction. Of course, the state of it has only worsened with age, and it seems that this chapter of Counter-Strike will come to a rather dull, uneventful and loathed end. Nevertheless, even if no one is around to witness it, I want to impart some parting words, and share some nostalgic experiences I had with this game (all the way back when it was still called Counter-Strike Nexon Zombies)
Big part of CS:NZs identity is the market its in. Freemium feels like an old-lost relic nowadays. Not literally, as games such as Fortnite or Overwatch thrive under this sort of market. It may just be anecdotal, but it feels as if many free games either don't get made or don't get traction anymore, besides the already established ones. No easy-to-find free B-tier shooters or new MMORPGs or whatnot entering the market to help a broke kid fill out his game catalogue while biding his time and waiting for the moment he can take home a shiny twenty dollar Steam card to buy something. With waves of AI-infested porn games flooding the market, it feels hard to find anything like this. Tangent over. Alongside games like Loadout and Dirty Bomb, I got into CS:N a very long time ago as a dumb kid with almost no games to his name. Its free-to-play nature was its biggest boon. The gamemodes, whether they be traditional CS or the many different zombies modes, were the free part. Story modes that were hard to follow, or a sandbox mode where you can edit maps to your leisure, or a survival mode where you need to loot materials to protect a safehouse. There was options galore, all free and plenty to keep a dumb kid entertained for hundreds of hours.
On that side of the freemium coin, it was a nightmare with everything locked behind paywalls. Any cool weapons or cosmetics were paywalled, and not just through a shop. Through random chance lootboxes, which didn't even have a chance to give you the weapon permanently. You'd get the weapon or skin, and you'd be able to use it unabated for... three days, maybe a week tops, before it was stripped from your inventory. Now, when the weapons and characters were just reskins, with maybe one extra gimmick (alternate firing mode), it wasn't as bad. Then they started shoving straight pay-to-win weapons in there. Shotguns that would deal monstrous damage with 30-round magazines, high ROF and infinite range. Melee weapons with extra range that deals high DoT. If these tools were available to every player, I would just write them off as the devs wanting to be silly and add crazy items. But the paywalling of these behind random chance is egregious. Easily the worst part of CS:N, and the main reason why everyone was turned away from it so early on. They never attempted to remedy this, and the game's reputation never recovered.
Even with this in mind, I have a small fondness for all the random items they locked behind microtransactions (even though the MTX can go to hell). You could get dual pistols, or claws, or laser weapons, or LEGO-based mortar launchers, or guns made out of stars, or dripped out warrios and zombies, or even just real weapons that haven't had a place in CS before. As an adult? Clashing styles and nonsensical pieces make a weird blur of colors and lights. As a teen? This was the coolest ♥♥♥♥ under the sun. Even if I only got an item for 3-days from a free decoder, I relished every moment with them. Or even better, when the Auction Hall was active, and I was able to use accrued points from free crates to permanently buy an item from someone. I felt like I had earned something, even though I had the common sense to not spend money on it. It was a feeling I do miss...
Another positive, like I had stated earlier, was the surplus of available content. Even if you strip the game down to the maps and modes... My GOD, there were so many to choose from! Even in a basic deathmatch mode, there were maps upon maps both old and new, all merging together to fill this game to the brim with content. Some of these maps were mode exclusive, and some of these maps even had item restrictions just to make them more thematic? Not really a fan of restricting items unnecessarily, but locking a boxing ring into melee only is pretty fun tbh
I think one more thing that really tickled me about CS:N WAS the way it was played. I normally have to be in a mood with CS, as its a more serious game and it can be hard to commit to if I'm not in that mood. CS:N didn't have this issue, due to its completely chaotic, arcadey feeling. All the modes are not serious in the slightest, being sandboxes to use and abuse your items and just generally ♥♥♥♥ around. No one is gonna be seriously tryharding in the mode where players become huge boss enemies to slam on people. This was another of the things that got me hooked on this game, all those years ago. Of course, this just isn't the reality of the game anymore...
So many items are pay-to-win, and locked behind decoders. You are statistically at a disadvantage to people who have paid more than you. Characters and weapons that will shred you and make you better than anyone else. With that in mind, it makes it unfun to play. An arcade still needs to have some semblance of balance and rules in order to be appealing. It wouldn't be fun if someone got to noclip around and kill people through walls while everyone else cannot partake in that gameplay. Unless you decide to lobby up with bots and play wholly by yourself, this will be nearly every game you step foot into. Despite all my gushing praise earlier, I could never recommend Counter Strike: Nexon to anyone. If not for the fact that the game was about to stop existing, then for the blatant greed of Nexon. Everywhere you go and everywhere you look, it demands your money and that greed destroys all fun surrounding the game.
A final note is just some lack of quality of life in places. A bug that has existed for years, being a gun not having any firing sounds, still persists even months before shutdown. They are so entrenched in pumping out content to those who are addicted that they are forgoing quality in some spots. Its just... guh
Counter Strike Nexon was an experience, and one that most people likely despised. If you were lucky enough to play years ago, when everything was a little tamer, it was more tolerable. Some, like myself, might even call it fun! Unfortunately, as time tends to do, it has taken its course and left us with a relic of an age long gone. And now, its crumbling to ash right before our eyes
