Well I finally found a game that competes with Counter-Strike! I have been playing CS for many years, and never did a game interest me enough to distract me from Counter-Strike. But with my exposure to Hidden Source, I have to consider moving my allegiance.

Hidden Source pits a team of specialists in a squad called I.R.I.S to root out and kill a rogue creature called Subject 617, aka The Hidden. The hidden is a biological experiment gone wrong; it is almost completely invisible and insane.

In Hidden Source, one player is The Hidden, equipped with a blade and three grenades. The rest of the players (up to nine total) are part of I.R.I.S; the I.R.I.S. team consists of various characters that can play assault or support roles; each can choose from a subset of weapons and gadgets to help destroy The Hidden.

This game is addicting. More than any other game I’ve ever played, it forced adrenaline into your blood when you are part of the I.R.I.S. team trying to root out the Hidden. It’s like being inside of a thriller Sci-Fi like Predator or Aliens.

We have installed a Hidden Source server on Wall Worm. The IP address is cs.wallworm.com:27016. It is password protected for the moment… meaning you have to be a regular Wall Worm player to get in. Otherwise, join a public Hidden server and experience a whole new kind of FPS.

Go to the Official Hidden Source website.

You need to own Half-Life 2 in order to play this mod. If you already have Half-Life 2, Hidden Source is a free mod. Hidden Source is still in a beta mode (not fully released), so it may be possible that the final version will cost money. If so, it's certainly good enough to warrant payment.