Well, I know I'm about a million years behind everyone when it comes to CS, I bought it on sale for £2.99 on steam and played it for about 20 mins, got bored, un-installed and left it alone. Until tonight.

I was farting around on Splinter Cell, sneaking up on people and lamping them in the face before they could fire on me, or grabbing them and dragging the poor sods around for ages before punching them in the kidneys and letting them be unconscious, when it dawned on me that I wanted something different. I wanted whizz-bang shooty fun. I wanted to be thrown into the action face first and experience a hail of lead, and, if possible, deal out some lead of my own.

I proceeded to install CS again and was excited to be firing at people, rather than shaking them down for information or to push their face into a retinal scanner and make them open doors for me. When it was all installed, I waved goodbye to Sam Fisher and said hello to my source rendered alter-ego.

All set up and ready to go, I chose my first server, UKCS, a good choice, after all we do DJ for them. You know what the first thing I did was? I ran out, guns blazing and immediately took a munitions dump to the face and had to wait until the round was finished before I could have another go... I was not impressed, this is not fun gameplay... I don't want to have to wait until all the Ritalin fuelled maniacs had cleared the map of all the other team before I had another chance to jump on people with my rubbish weapons.

The reason the weapons are rubbish is because you need to buy them, but to buy them you need money and to get money you need to kill people. Now, there are a few scenarios that may have taken place for me NOT to kill people and NOT get money and therefore be stuck with default crappy pistol, armour that has the bulletproof properties of spreading whipped cream on your crotch and a rifle which would have been more accurate if you put it on the floor and tried to fire it with the power of your mind... Those scenarios go thusly:

1. I'm not very good at it - A distinct possibility as I'd not really played it much before tonight.
2. Everyone else is on Speed - Another great possibility, there seemed to be no way I could mimic the speedy movements and twitchy trigger fingers of my foes.
3. Counter Strike is incredibly unfair to the new people - I think this was the deal-breaker. You see, it's all very well and good having a buying system where you can buy your favourite weapons etc. However, if you are just starting out on a server and everyone else in there has been on for an entire afternoon, they can buy all the best kit and force-feed you a 'bullet and shut the fuck up' sandwich before you've even had a chance to fire on the sods.

That said, CS is a lot of fun, I enjoyed the challenge it gave me. To become one of the caffeine driven loonies that populate the CS universe and ultimately become one of the smug bastards that call you a loser when they've pwnd you with their chain gun whilst the others fart around buying sniper rifles that are completely pointless in closed environments. In fact, it's enough fun for me to say that despite being about as friendly to new people as a brick to the skull of an already unconscious man, I'll be playing it again and hopefully enjoy it more now I'm finding out the nuances of CS.

There is a blanket statement that can cover all multiplayer games, and that is that, the games are only as good as you are. It can be said for WoW or DoD, in fact, mention any multiplayer game that doesn't comply with the above statement and I'll give you a medal. If you are, a crappy level 1 Elf in WoW and getting owned all the time by the bigger boys who want your lunch gold, you are going to think that the game is shit. The better you get, the more enjoyment you have from them, it's about perseverance and the desire to become better. If you don't have the drive to do that, you'll never survive in the multiplayer world...