Fantastic Game, new comers to the game will find it very diffecult but it soon gets better, graphics are good, but old.
The Aim of the Game in CSS is to on de_***** maps for the Terrorists to plant a Bomb in either Bombsite A or Bombsite B, and the Counter-Terrorists have to either kill all the Terrorist in that round or if the bomb is planted, defuse it. This is very exciting when you play it, and with tonnes of maps to play it on you will never get tired of it.
On cs_***** maps the Counter-Terrorists play as the attackers and have to get the 4 hostages which the Terrorist are holding back to there base within a time limit. Although this is also very fun the Hostages are pretty thick, they will get stuck on wall, suddenly stop for no reason, which does get on your nerves but you learn to move with enough space for the Hostages to walk/run freely next to you.
Counter-Strike: Source runs on Valves new Source engine which is also used in Half-Life 2, although it looks great it doesn't take a NASA PC to run it, i could run it fine and still looking good, with a Geforce 4, but now that i have Geforce 6600 it's looks stunning, but i cannot get AA & AF and HDR running all at the same time.
Listening plays a good part of Counter-Strike: Source, you have to listen for an enemy running or firing to know whats going on and how you can counter it. Thats why sound plays a large roll, and to my needs it's good enough, though the sound is a little hollow sometimes. The Audio set up can do up to 7.1 surround sound which is excellent for listening to where your foes are.
After going around servers you tend to find a server you like and keep playing on it, and soon make friends on the server who you taunt and laugh and discuss things with.
Steam is what Counter-Strike: Source and Half-Life 2 and all Valve games play on, it's simple. to get a game which you don't have to play for you just right-click it and install. And installing Steam is easy, it comes with Half-Life 2 and all the other Valve games, or you can download it for free from Steampowered.com, though to get any of the games you need at lease one Valve game which you bought for example Half-Life, Half-Life 2.
All in all Counter-Strike: Source does the job of upgrading from Counter-Strike 1.6, and to get it free with Half-Life 2 just completes the package.