Right, I've got Counter-Strike loaded up and here we are at the main options screen. Hmmm, that title music sounds familiar - is it Ghost Recon, is it Return To Castle Wolfenstein, why do all these shooters have such similar themes? Right, what options do we have here? I'll take a look at the Training in a minute, there's the Single Player game… no wait, that's just to do a level against bots (computer controlled players). Xbox Live, System Link, Options, Change Profile… hang on, there's no single player campaign to play through. This won't take long to review then.

Actually it did take a long time to review; I've put a lot of hours into this game and I'm glad to say it's been overall a very enjoyable experience. After completing the inadequate training and having a go at a few levels with bots (and getting bored) I decided to jump in at the deep end and learn how to play against real people. And boy, is it a tough learning curve! The premise of the game is very simple - there are two teams, one of terrorists and one of counter-terrorists. There are two types of game, in one the terrorists must plant a timed bomb that must detonate for them to win and in the other the counter-terrorists must rescue hostages from the terrorists to win. In both types you can also win the game by killing all members of the opposing team, which is most often how the game is won. And that's it. There's also one other catch - no respawning. That's right folks, when you're dead that's it, you have to sit and watch the remaining players until the game ends.

Whilst this concept sounds pretty radical for lovers of games like Unreal Championship and Return To Castle Wolfenstein (as I am), any given game will rarely last more than five minutes and so it's not too big a deal to have to watch. In fact, watching the tactics of your enemies whilst you're dead can often be the key to formulating a winning strategy against them. But, as I said, the learning curve is a real bummer and for the first few hours of play every game went much like this: run around the level, hey there's someone, oh I'm dead. And that's if you're lucky, because half the time you'll see blood spurting out of your head as you drop dead without any idea where the lethal shots came from. After a few hours of dying over and over, celebrating the rare occasion when you manage to actually kill someone before dying yourself, the average player might well be fed up with constantly losing and watching. However, perseverance is really worth it with Counter-Strike, as a few more hours will see you getting used to the aiming system, learning your way around the current level and becoming more wary of places where enemies might be lurking and then all of a sudden a couple of games will pass where you kill a couple of enemies and don't die yourself. And doesn't it feel great!

When you hit your stride and begin to survive more and more matches, become a more and more pivotal team member and forge successful strategies with your teammates, the game really hooks its claws into you and doesn't let go. This is the kind of game where four or five hours can pass without your noticing. The one more go factor is intense, whether you're trying to score a victory after a string of defeats or holding onto your winning streak for dear life. It's also a very tactical and strategic game, despite its simplistic nature and fast pace (whilst you can sneak around sniping a lot of the time you'll be running full pelt and shooting a rapid fire weapon). The victory will often be determined by clever positioning, choosing routes wisely and anticipating your enemies' movements and tactics rather than simply running in guns blazing. The fact that you can run faster when you have your knife out also means that the great players all run around with knives to get to good positions extra fast at the start of a match and this is something you'll need to learn if you want to survive. Just get on a team with a great player and follow him around; you'll soon pick up everything you need to know and throw your own ideas into the mix too.

Graphically Counter-Strike doesn't particularly harness the power of Xbox but the graphics are good, approaching Wolfenstein in their quality, plus the amount of detail on the players and their weapons is outstanding. Player animation is generally pretty good too and the range of scenery and settings of the twenty levels available (with more to come on Xbox Live no doubt) is often quite eye-catching. A jungle airstrip complete with mist hanging in the air and trees all around, a big house out in a barren wasteland, a Chinese mansion complete with ornamental fixtures, a sprawling office, a bank, a Middle Eastern village and many more settings await and each looks as good as the next, yet none is outstanding or breathtaking. The sound effects that accompany the levels are spot on, particularly the sound of your footsteps on various surfaces and the way you can hear the weapons fire and explosions of nearby skirmishes and tell exactly where it's coming from (if you're hooked up to 5.1 sound) makes for very immersing and tense in-game action.

There is no music in the game but a soundtrack option has been included and this is a revelation - shooting terrorists to your favourite tunes is great fun. So far I've tried a mix of music including Leftfield, INXS and Madonna plus the soundtracks from Danny Boyle movies The Beach and Trainspotting, some of which fit the action perfectly and some of which don't. My favourites though have been the Frank Sinatra classics (the first time I listened to Fly Me To The Moon, New York New York and I've Got You Under My Skin I couldn't stop laughing for the first two games and it really cheers up the gameplay) and my Halo CD soundtrack (yes, I've got the book, poster and CD and want the T-shirt). The Halo soundtrack is perfect, from the eerie tunes that make everything seem tense to the rousing Hunter theme and the soothing Halo monks. It fits perfectly.

Sorry, I got a bit carried away there, but I do like my music and being able to listen to my favourite tunes and play games at the same time is definitely a good thing. Getting back to the game itself, the level designs are generally excellent. There are a couple of less interesting levels and a few that are very biased towards one side or the other, but for the most part they are full of opportunity for hiding, sneaking, blindsiding and surprising your opponents. The best ones have a number of routes for reaching your destination and so you never know where the assault is coming from. For example, in the Miami level, set in a bank where there are hostages to rescue, you can climb through the vents to go in through the bathroom, get into the ceiling to drop down into an office near the hostages or even get into the bank vault itself, where two hostages await your help. There are five different routes you can take on either team and when there are five or six players on each team it's total bedlam! Most of the levels are so good that you can easily lose a couple of hours before you decide you'd like a new level to play on and a clever voting system allows the players in a game to cast votes, changing to a level when it receives enough votes.

I've taken a long time to get to the weapons and whilst there's a good range available, the system of selecting them is to my mind the game's biggest downfall. You must purchase your equipment and weapons at the start of each match and the winning team gets more money than the losers. Thus the winners are able to buy better weapons, kill the losers more easily and perpetuate an enduring winning streak, simply because they can afford to get full armour and a top rifle and you can't. This is really annoying and seems a stupid way of doing things to me (wouldn't it be better to handicap the winners to try and keep things balanced?) but you have to like it or lump it.

As to the weapons themselves, there's a lovely range on offer from pistols (generally a last resort although the dual pistols are good fun when you get the hang of them) through machine guns to rifles (automatic as well as sniper) and heavy weapons - shotguns and a heavy machine gun. The counter-terrorists can also buy a riot shield, which comes in handy but is surprisingly difficult to use effectively. You can also buy body armour and a helmet, which is pretty much essential, plus there are grenades, smoke bombs and flashbangs available, the latter of which temporarily blinds everyone in range (the way your vision goes white, then black, then readjusts is actually a very cool effect).

The game's other potential downfall (at least until you adjust to it) is the accuracy of the weapons. In fact, they are terribly inaccurate at first as your gun sight judders all over the place from the recoil of the firing gun and you'll see most of your bullets hit the wall behind your target for the first few hours of play. Crouching stabilises your firing a bit (in fact many of the pros will crouch to kill you) and the body is damage mapped, meaning that you only way to go is shooting the head - shooting the body takes too long if the other guy is shooting you in the head. As you learn to cope with the erratic movement of your gun sight and become more accurate with your shooting you'll begin to win some encounters, but at first you'll become frustrated that you never seem to hit your enemy! Patience and perseverance really is needed here, but it's definitely worth it.

Counter-Strike offers one of the best Xbox Live experiences for sure, as long as you aren't put off by constantly losing until you get the hang of it. Other players will generally be happy to help you and when you get a group of people together that have a laugh as well as plan out tactics and communicate with each other, it really is a very satisfying experience and a very team-orientated one as well. Of course, you get the players that delight in killing the "newbies" (that's you, newbie!) to improve their stats and will sneer at you, but you can just tell them where to go or find another game (or tell them where to go and then find another game when they kick you out!) But I've made a number of friends on this game, more so than most others I've played.

Counter-Strike is a difficult game to score; whilst there's no doubt that it's one of the finest online gaming experiences available, it's also incredibly tough and unforgiving at first, meaning that many players will give up before they discover what a wonderful game it is to play when you're winning. The lack of a single player campaign or story mode means that this is only for those of you hooked up to Xbox Live and although there's not exactly a shortage of shooters available for Xbox, this one can mix it up with the best of them. If you're a fan of shooters then you have to check this out and when you do, remember you have to play for at least ten hours before you'll start to reap the fruits of your labour. And when you do, they'll taste oh so sweet.

Reviewed by Geoff Holland for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).