I’m actually very happy with the game that CS:GO has become, but if you’re looking

to relive the good old days- or didn’t experience them back them and want to know what all the

fuss was about- then you can now try CS:CO. Don’t be fooled; it’s more than just CS:GO

with a bit lopped off. It is an ambitious mod that hopes to bring

the thrill of 1.6 to the new generation of players. And most incredibly, it was almost

all created by one man named ZooL. And when I say almost, he borrowed some maps and skins

from other places, but he has singlehandedly put it all together into a working and polished

mod that’s very easy to play. All you have to do is to download the 300

MB file, place it in your sourcemods folder and then to restart Steam and it will show

up in your games list. It even uses the workshop maps from your CS:GO installation, so it’s

very easy to get working with all sorts of stuff. And aside from a few assets he built

the rest from the ground up in about 10 months. Not bad for a lone developer.

Once you load it up you’ll find all of the old weapons, maps and character models, all

modernised for the Source engine. The blood trails are a lovely touch and will be familiar

to anybody used to frag videos from 1.6. The first version of this was released on Christmas

day, 2016 and since then has had several updates. This mod is very much alive and well and has

a thriving community around it to stop it from slipping into obscurity: you can check

out the serverlist over at onepointsix.org right now. ZooL remains busy developing the

mod itself and is allowed to do so undistracted thanks to his friend Dayik, who handles the

public side of things. It is he who has helped me with this video and who has revealed a

bit about the future of this project. For a start, they made a poll a while back,

asking whether people wanted an accurate copy of 1.6, or the ‘best of both worlds’.

The result was the best of both. It will take a while to incorporate this result into the

project, but this is the direction it is set to go in.

This approach might help ZooL who has made it very clear from the beginning that he can’t

fully recreate 1.6. There are things that Source simply can’t do, like the Russian

walk or magic bullet. And there are many elements where changes are limited, like the HUD and

physics, which they can’t get around without purchasing expensive licenses for engines

and exclusive permissions from Valve- which they don’t expect to be able to obtain.

But driveable vehicles from the days of Source may one day be a possibility! We’ll see.

Speaking with Dayik they have certainly thought it all out and are aware of the limitations

with this project, so if you wonder why a specific feature is missing or different then

the chances are it’s beyond their control and not through lack of trying.

The next major update will be V1.2. Other people have joined to help with this release.

Slothsquadron will be on hand to help balance the weapons and Bez the Bot Whisperer will

be there to buff the bots. An instagib 100% accurate railgun mode may also be coming.

This release also removes any copyrighted assets from the game, which will be a major

turning point for this project, paving the way for third-party tournaments, and further

down the line the possibility of greenlighting the game on steam. Doing so would give the

project an auto-update feature among other things, which would make it a lot more user-friendly.

Which is what this mod needs if it wants to survive in the long-run.

When asked when this 1.2 release would be out, Dayik erred on the side of caution and

made me aware that he doesn’t want to put deadlines on things, but when I asked if it

was a matter of days, weeks or months, he said that weeks was the most probable timescale.

In the even longer term he’s hoping for third parties to host their own leagues and

tournaments for the mod and has a number of semi-pro 1.6 players who may help provide

feedback on later versions of the project. Pro player Sixer from Envyus has also expressed

an interest. But Dayik wanted to stress that they are taking

a very slow and methodical approach to this whole project as they want to get it right.

They don’t want to make promises they can’t keep or have what they say twisted out of

context used against them later on. The development team behind this mod is tiny, yet so far has

been incredibly productive and successful. CS:CO is definitely a mod that deserves your

attention. Thanks to Dayik for helping me with this video.

I wish him, Zool and the rest of the team the best of luck with future versions.