By far India’s most popular game, CS is played by millions across the globe. We’ll try and help you get a little better and frag your friends

Counter-Strike is still one of the most-played games in our country, despite its age. It’s really cheap now, and there is no shortage of servers to play on either—there’s V-Street, Indian Gamers League, FragShack, Indian Gamers Community and many others. You can find most of them in the server list for the Asian region.

Group Rush
One of the most effective ways of defeating the enemy is to rush them—it’s both useful and great fun, too! The rush should be either at the very beginning of the round or a delayed rush at a set time. Use in-game voice chat to communicate with the rest of your team.

Managing Resources
Weapons require money, and there’s not a lot of it to be had if you keep on losing rounds, so don’t unnecessarily stock up on clips that you won’t use. Keep the team’s economic situation in mind before buying anything. If required, choose to go through a round on only pistols, or if a member is really good at sniping, for instance, let him buy an AWP and let the rest give him cover.

Using Weapons Sensibly
Every weapon in Counter-Strike has its characteristics—firing rates, recoils and so on. Single shot sniper weapons like the AWP and AWM for example can’t be used effectively while moving or jumping. So make sure you have your feet on the ground—even better, crouch—while taking shots. While zooming with the AWP / AWM, the sensitivity is generally slower. You can choose to change the ratio with the command zoom_sensitivity_ratio [value]. Other weapons: the AK47 and the M4A Carbine have a recoil—the AK47 generally more than the M4. Use short burst of bullets to get more accurate kills.

Connection Settings
You should set Counter-Strike up to work well with your Internet connection—there are a few commands that you can use in the console to get shots better.

The /rate sets the limit on the speed that the game downloaded. Use cl_updaterate to tweak the rate at which the client receives updates from the server. Increasing this will increase the download rates. cl_cmdrate is like cl_ updaterate, and is used to specify the rate of refreshing the server with your moves. The default value of cl_updaterate is usually 20, 30 for cl_cmdrate and 9999 for rate. Increase these settings to suit your connection, but don’t go overboard—you’ll end up with a plenty of lag on your connection. To get an idea of how well your connection is coping with the settings, type net_graph 1 in the console. There are 2 other net_graph views that can be used—net_graph 2 and net_graph 3. net_graph 0 turns off the net graph completely.

Fast Switch
You can switch to weapons using the numbers on the keyboard, but this isn’t always convenient. If you use the mouse’s scrollwheel, you have to scroll to the gun you want and then click to confirm—another waste of time. To switch guns quickly without needing the confirmation click, enable fast weapon switching—type hud_fastswitch 1 in the console.

Widescreen Counter-Strike
Even the latest games can have problems with widescreen displays, so it’s refreshing that you can enable widescreen in Counter-Strike. Thanks to Steam, it has the advantage of getting regular updates. Go to on Options > Video. Under aspect ratio, select Widescreen. On the right, you’ll see the list of widescreen resolutions. Select the best one for your screen and click OK.

Counter-Strike Controls
Like in Quake 3, you need to get your sensitivity and acceleration right in Counter-Strike. First, disable mouse acceleration: go to Start > Control Panel > Mouse or by starting your mouse driver’s application. Disable any mouse precision options that might be present in the mouse settings. From within Steam, you can set Counter-Strike to have no acceleration in-game as well. Once Steam is running, right-click on the Steam icon in the system tray and select Games. Right click on Counter-Strike and choose Properties.

Click the Set launch options buttons. Enter:
-noforcemaccel
-noforcemparms
-noforcemspd and click OK. Then start Counter-Strike.

To set a sensitivity, type sensitivity [value] in the console. Counter-Strike players generally use low sensitivities—around 1.5 to 5—depending on hardware and selceted DPI settings.