If you liked the popular custom game mode “Zombie Escape” from Counter-Strike 1.6, and you always wanted to play an original version of this game mode, as part of an entire game officially made by Valve, this is this game. But with a Korean, Nexon twist to it that turned this game into a wild mishmash of designs and styles with a small taste of lag and pay to win. But if your interest is still there, which it should be because it has some good and crazy ideas, then continue reading!
INTRODUCTION
Counter-Strike Nexon: Studio (from now on called CSNS) is a game that was formerly known as Counter-Strike Nexon: Zombies prior to the inclusion of the Studio mode, and is the Western version of Counter-Strike Online, an official Counter-Strike game made by Valve and Nexon for the Asian market. The game features over 30 game modes, which is impossible for me to cover all in this review, and so this review will mainly focus on the Zombie-Scenario mode, which is also advertised in the main menu as the main mode of the game, and it is also the mode most of the player base seems to play.
GAMEPLAY
CSNS plays at its core exactly like the GoldSrc version of Counter-Strike, because it has been made with the GoldSrc engine. So the physics, the walking, jumping and shooting will feel instantly familiar. You can play the the “Classic” mode which is bomb defuse, you can play team deathmatch and PvP zombie modes, and you can also play user generated maps out of the Studio mode. But as mentioned before, the PvE Zombie-Scenario mode is what should you download the game for.
In the Zombie-Scenario mode you will play through a scenario in the games story with up to 9 other different players against hordes of zombies and bosses. When you first spawn in, you will have some money in your pocket you can buy weapons and gear with, like in your classic Counter-Strike games. You will then kill zombies, accomplish different easy tasks and earn money to buy stronger guns within later buy zones when your group reaches one.
Keep in mind that you can only purchase a gun with your earned ingame money, if you also have it in your inventory outside of the Zombie-Scenario mode. Weapons in CSNS will also have secondary fire modes and functions that will be far more extensive than in the classic CS games like firing rockets or putting up a barrier. They will also function differently in certain game modes. This will make the weapons harder to learn, but most of the time a player should ask if it is even worth learning a weapon because most of the weapons you will get are going to be only temporarily available. Getting permanent weapons isn’t that common.
If you would play the game solo which is absolutely not recommended, the shooting will quickly become very boring, due to the lack of feedback. Blood effects on the zombies and hitmarkers when the player hits them do not appear consistently at all, and pain states and animations are very rare. The game banks highly on other players and all of the special effects and sounds that will attack your senses while playing that will distract you from the fact because the zombies also all die much faster. The old graphics and compressed sounds will definitely force you to turn your brain off and relax, and playing the game can be fun for around 2 hours until it gets boring.
The maps are all very linear and most of the tasks will include shooting a barrier until it breaks, holding a position until an NPC says that the group can continue, shooting certain targets or pressing buttons. Once you accomplish one of those tasks, mostly in a room, you will continue in a corridor until you encounter the next task. This can get very tedious especially when the barriers start having lots of health points and it takes long to get rid of them.
Another weakness of the game is the game over system. The group will only lose and get reset to the next checkpoint or buy zone when the last person of the group dies. That does not happen much, and most of the time only a few players of the group will die and will be on a timer until they respawn. Players can respawn an infinite amount of times, just the respawn timer will be longer each time you die, depending on the difficulty. That means that, if the group encounters a more difficult part of the map or a difficult bossfight, the group can be stuck for a good hour trying to beat the part with constantly missing fire power, because people are constantly dead and respawn. And that is not an uncommon occurrence.
On the bright side, the longer you play the game, the more you will find different tactics to beat each scenario, which can feel very satisfying once you figure out a good way of beating a scenario fast, and then farming the scenario for a reward you want. You can also earn level ups within a scenario that will increase the amount of health points and armor your character can hold, and the amount of ammo you can carry. The levels have to be earned over again when starting a new scenario and joining an already ongoing scenario can end in some quick deaths because you are stuck at lower health points until you have leveled up a few times.
While playing the game you will unlock more guns you will want to use in the Zombie Scenario mode, and there are an insane amount of them. After 17 hours of playtime, I have over 100 unique weapons sitting in my inventory. And they range from a normal Ak-47 assault rifle to a bullpup sci-fi rifle that can shoot guided rockets as its secondary mode, or a scythe that can reveal 5 blades. Or how about a shotgun that shoots a volley of multiple fireballs as its secondary? And that is not even the strangest thing in my arsenal. But that is the biggest catch why I am playing the game. There are so many guns to try out, a lot of them function in unique ways, all of them look cool and that is definitely the most fun part of it.
It is just a shame that they are being held back by almost everything else the game has to offer.
Other than that, there isn’t too much to say on the gameplay side of things, it plays and feels like the Counter-Strike Zombie Escape mode, but on crack. So why not take a look at the technical side of the game now.
GRAPHICS
Since the game runs on the GoldSrc engine, it looks rather bad. And if you play earlier scenarios, you will find that some of the maps are extremely lazily designed. GoldSrc still relies on entirely pre rendered lighting, but some parts of the lightmaps are wrong and have errors. While trying to pull off more advanced graphical effects like an underwater effect, bugs will happen.
On the other hand, the new weapon models look very good and the textures are fairly high resolution. The reload animations of some of the old guns have been updated to work with some of the edited models.
The game has also taken some liberties of using assets from Half-Life and Counter-Strike, which isn’t all too surprising but worth mentioning. The newer maps also look a lot better, but there are also bugs with showing weapon animations at all, displaying decals and particle effects. A lot of the choices for textures are also just strange and objects are out of scale sometimes.
Graphics options for fullscreen and windowed mode as well as resolution are there, but you won’t find anything above that. However in this case I don’t see it as a huge issue because I would imagine that every computer at this point should be able to run the game.
SOUNDS
The Sounds are also mostly taken out of Counter-Strike, but there are also a lot of original sound effects in the game. Every zombie has their own sounds which you will hear more or less. Sometimes sound effects are also missing from the environment, and music does play in inappropriate situations and can spawn on either the left or right side of your character, which will sound bad. All of the sounds in the game are heavily compressed, probably due to engine limitations and to save file size, but they will all blend in quite well with the already oldschool style and “non-caring” atmosphere of the game overall.
In the Audio options you will be able to reduce the quality of the sounds even more, and change the volume of the sound effects as well as the music.
TECHNICAL ASPECTS
As written earlier, the game has a lot of graphical and audio bugs, but the issues do not end here of course. I don’t know where their servers are hosted, but I am constantly getting a bad ping, which admittedly adds to the nostalgia, just not in a good way.
Then are the menus outside of the gameplay only available in a fixed resolution that can’t be changed in windowed mode, which might cause issues with players that use higher resolution monitors, like 4k. Sometimes, the game has to load a new map, which will result in a loading screen that will have the issue that it also runs in its own, not changeable resolution, and that will cause issues with people that use a multiple monitor setup, and will temporarily mess with the desktop icons and other opened applications.
On top of that, and that is the reason why all screenshots are in German, it was not possible to change the language of the game. Not in Steam, and not in the game itself. So the language is either based on the Steam Client you are running, or based on the country you are installing the game from. It is hard to tell.
CASH SHOP
Here I will have to give the game some credit first. Every item in the shop is labeled with a clear price tag. That means that you will always know exactly what you are going to pay for when you click on something, and you don’t pay with some imaginary currency. Even when the prices are high, the game does not make a secret about it and there are less tricks.
However, the shop is a pay to win shop. You will be able to buy weapons with better stats and perks, characters with better stats and passive abilities. A character can cost you around €10, but at least you can buy them directly. Weapons you can either get from lootboxes which are called “Decoders” in the game or packages.
Those Decoders can also be earned via gameplay and events, but there is always a luck factor involved, and I can imagine that it will get quite expensive trying to get the weapons you really want out of the shop, let alone gameplay. As always, I would not recommend trying my luck on those, and rather just buy where you know what you are getting.
CLOSING THOUGHTS
While CSNS has nothing really in common anymore with classic Counter-Strike, it is a fun time killer for an hour or two. However, the messy menu might be a turn-off when first starting up the game, and a new player will need a few rounds until comfortable with the game.
It also has absolutely nothing to do anymore with the military style that Counter-Strike has, but it definitely has a particular trashy charm.
Since the cash shop is a pay to win shop, I will only recommend playing the Zombie-Scenario PvE game mode and nothing else, because you will get destroyed by players with high stat weapons. You will be able to earn some of your own powerful permanent weapons without paying a cent however, but only if you are lucky.
And here is to who I will recommend the game to: It is only for people who have heard of Counter-Strike Online but live in western countries and want to try it, since it is basically the exact same thing, or people that liked the Counter-Strike Zombie Escape custom game mode. And it is great for someone who likes a lot of crazy guns like me. Everyone else should avoid it.
Counter-Strike Nexon: Studio is a free to play first person shooter that was developed by Nexon Korea Corporation and Valve Corporation and published by Nexon Korea Corporation.
Counter-Strike Nexon: Studio was released to the Steam platform on the 7th of October 2014.
Every piece of media used in this article was captured by me on the 1st of August 2021 except another source is given.
Additional Sources:
Featured Image: https://store.steampowered.com/app/273110/CounterStrike_Nexon_Studio/ 1st of August, 2021, 3:50am