There's been much criticism of CSP on the forums in the eSports community since the release of our gameplay video. Many people responded positively to Jared "treehouse" Konczal's playtest write-up, but unfortunately, just as many expressed skepticism, claiming that we had censored his words. Until recently, one of the most notorious CSP "haters" was Gotfrag user "Hamilton." So, naturally, we decided to contact him, talk to him, and offer a beta key to prove that his criticism was mostly unfounded. After several days of playtesting, here's what former CSP-hater "Hamilton" has to say:

"My name, as you probably already know, is James Hamilton. I'm somewhat known for my time spent as an Administrator for CAL and GGL and if you don't recognize me from there then perhaps you know me for my colorful?posts on Gotfrag or the CALeague forums, particularly how critical I have been about CSPromod.

First off I'll explain how I became a beta tester for CSP. I was pm yesterday by Alex Garfield who had questions about why I was so judgmental about the project. We both determined that the community needed to hear from someone other than people that been sold since day one. With that, Alex and Mack allowed me to join them in testing the latest release of the mod - this was a huge risk for them to take and I gained a lot of respect for the both of them because of it.

I guess a good place to start off would be the HUD. I like the design; it's attractive and easy to read, and with ud_drawbg 1?everything can be read without trying to find a dark spot where everything becomes visible. One upgrade that could be seen in the video but was missed by probably everyone that watched it was the outline of two figures next to the game timer, they allow you to see how many players are remaining on each team, a very nice addition in my opinion. The scoreboard has been improved and now allows you to see your teammate's hp.

Visually the game looks good, of course. Most of the useless eye candy that Valve put in to appease the weekend warriors has been removed. You抮e left with Source kind of the way it was supposed to be; just attractive enough for broadcasting and just stripped enough for competitive play.

Functionally there is now a 搘arm-up?mode that the server goes into when it's not live? Every player gets 16000, when they die their guns disappear and they respawn seconds later, with replenished funds. To exit the warm-up mode all players type ready?in console and the config is executed, the round is restarted and you抮e good to go. They're also integrated a new prediction code which seems to work pretty well, but it gets iffy with higher pings.

Now, as far as gameplay goes, I like it. CSPromod seems to have a fast pace to it which opens up the door for quicker rushes and a lot more exciting matches. The recoil seems to be very close to that of 1.5, I opened up both games (the 1.5 port to steam) and played them right after one another, CSPromod was not dead on but impressively close to the recoil in 1.5, this was surprising to me since the patterns in the YouTube video looked like nothing I抎 ever seen. I'm not sure if I like the bunny-hopping yet or not, but it definitely brings you back to 1.3, that抯 for sure.

I do have a few gripes that I'm already spoken with Alex and the dev team about. There is a bug with duck jumping that makes quick climbing boxes next to impossible; I'll told this is being worked on. There are some rystery spawns?in Nuke that are already being fixed and lastly, Source models! I know it's out of the team's control at the moment, but they're just so ugly.

All in all, I opened the mod and was ready to hate it, I figured I'll be looking at a near blank canvas, but instead I found a surprisingly well thought out modification that has come fairly close to being the 1.7 everyone has wanted. I''e listened to the ideas of Alex and his developers and I can tell you that there is a lot more to come."