Day of Defeat: Source Review by djRoME

Day of Defeat: Source is a game that I pre-ordered from Steam early since I'm just hopelessly bored with HL2:DM, and I refuse to play CS:S due to the fact that everyone who plays CS is an idiot.

One rant before I start: Steam has an inherent problem with support, and I've been burned by it twice now. First was when I added my HL2 that I purchased to a new steam account, and found out later that I can't consolidate my two accounts into just one. WEAK SAUCE. The second was I preordered DoD:S from steam, and steam failed to charge me the pre-order price of $17.99, they charged $19.99. REALLY WEAK SAUCE. I won't die because of the $2 I guess, but that's half a pack of smokes, man.

All of the menus are nice and tasty looking, everything ran smoothly, and download and decoding of the files for the game was a snap. After my experience with SuperPower 2, I <3 STEAM.

Anyways, this game is one of the first really polished mods to come out. The new lighting schemes that are involve give the HL2 engine an even more realistic look, and it's beautiful to see. All of you CS:S players should be jealous of the newfound lighting schemes that are available to the mod developers now... HA!

Checking the stats of SteamPowered.com, I notice that DoD:S is 4 to 5 times more popular than HL2:DM, yet still 15 times smaller than CS 1.6. YOU CS PLAYERS NEED TO MOVE ON SO VALVE CAN.

Day of Defeat: Source takes the classic gameplay of the original Day of Defeat and improves the experience with Source, the advanced engine technology Valve created for Half-Life 2. With this technology, DoD: Source offers state of the art graphics (including support for HDR lighting) in optimized versions of popular maps, plus redesigned sound and all new player, weapon, and world models.

That pretty much says it, taken from the DoD:S website.

There's no problem finding a semi-full server of about 20-30 people with a ping under 60 from where I live. All of the players are pretty nice, admins are active, it's a fresh and new budding gaming community out there. Just what I was missing. Most of the people that I have played with in the past few weeks have been 20-somethings that have probably played clan matches for years, so teamwork was good.

Maybe I'll write an article about how gamers are a dying breed. There doesn't seem to be very many 16 year olds into computer gaming like there were when I was 16... They must all be playing WoW.

I think Source DoD plays better, runs smoother, and overall is a better game than the first DoD. Congrats, Valve, for finally releasing something that the community will regard as an improvement (although I don't understand why the CS community refuses to switch to Source).

There's only a couple of cons that I can really list off the top of my head. First, there's only 4 maps that came from Valve, that's going to be a bit of a problem, but there will be plenty of mapping for this one I'm sure. Also, in the game running into another player there is this annoying little bounceback that you do, totally losing your momentum as you run. That doesn't seem like it's working completely up to snuff. My roommate also argues that the fact that your bullet doesn't always go where you point your crosshair is bullshit. Part of me agrees, but part of me asks, "would you be 100% accurate with your bullets running at top speed over piles of bricks with mortar fire everywhere?" It's rhetorical, of course. That question is usually answered by the Quake player in me that gives me an overhand right to the chin.

BOTTOM LINE:

I played the original DoD and hated it. I played DoD:S and now it's the only reason I'll open my Steam account (until a version of Fortress comes out, of course). Same class-based system, new lighting, textures, animations and sound, and IGN gave it an 8.4. I concur.