TC:Elite

Recently I got a new computer which allowed me to, for the first time in several years, buy a few new games. Of these I have played Unreal Tournament 2004 quite a lot (almost entirely offline though), Far Cry maybe half as much (a very worthwhile single player experience, though I haven't got around to finishing it) and Halo:PC very little.
That was a few months ago. In the last few weeks a different game has obsessed me. It's a mod for the free FPS Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory called True Combat: Elite.
Five Years ago, when I started playing Quake 3, I discovered an earlier version (I think it was 0.41) of this realism mod and that hooked me. There's something about the feel of the weapons and the total lack of mercy. TC has always been a very harsh game. If you play it the same way as other games you will get killed very quickly because the weapons are extremly deadly. If you get the drop on someone and you aren't a total muppet you will kill them. You must maintain an awareness of all possible sources of fire at all times. Camping is possible but if you don't hear your enemy creeping up behind you he will kill you without a moments pause. These are the constant factors in all forms of TC. Fear, speed, exileration when you get a kill and annoyance when some guy shoots you in the back from somewhere across the map with a sniper rifle, who you couldn't even see.
TC 0.45 followed 0.41 (I think) and was fantastic. It had great maps and weapons and just fealt right. Then...the team who produce the mod gave up and moved on to other things. A new team was assembled and TC 1.0 came out. It had some of the feel of the original but for me (and others) lacked some of the polish.
I didn't play TC for a couple of years after that but when I heard that the original team had got together to make a new TC for W:ET my interest was aroused. I looked at some screenshots and the clever sniper scope idea (where you get the sight picture in the scope and peripheral vision around it) really caught my interest. Of course, those of us of a certain age (old enough to remember Scooby Doo for the ZX Spectrum) should have "never believe the screenshots" as their motto so I wasn't that interested until I actually played the game.
I am a man on Dial-Up. I hate my dial-up connection. But I have no money. Thus, I must percevere. It took 12 hours to download W:ET the first time. It got to 233 MB and then it refused to reconnect to the file. I had to start again. The second time it all worked out fine but the first time still had me scared.
Having downloaded W:ET I didn't know whether I wanted to even try to download the final test version of TC:E. A full version is apparently forthcoming and, if I were a sensible man (rather than a deranged and ageing shutin), I would have waited for that.
Here is my advice: don't wait for the full version. The Final test version is too good an opportunity to pass up. Things feel so right in this test version that I'm a little concerned about what they might change in the full release.
The maps in TC have always progressed and been subtly changed from version to version but here the old ones are radically remodeled (and much larger) and there are several new and impressive ones. I suspect that dem_village is the most popular and it's not hard to see why. It's not a huge map but there's something about the hazy atmosphere of morning about it that gives it a real sense of place.
TC:E is just as harsh as always but in one way it seems a little too harsh. Some weapons are only available after a certain number of rounds or objectives which makes the cooler ones a little difficult to get hold of if you're not a fantastic player.
Other than that minor quible TC:E is the most compeling gaming experience that I know of.

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