Condition Zero dev change explained

Media shy developer Valve [ho ho! -Ed] has spoken out about Counter-Strike: Condition Zero, the maligned single player adaptation of the renowned multiplayer mod, clarifying the role of Turtle Rock, the third developer in the game's troubled history after Gearbox and Ritual respectively took swings at it.

Referring to the departure of previous developer Ritual, Valve's Doug Lombardi told GameSpot: "Roughly four or five months ago, through internal play tests and from early press reviews of what was to be the final [version], it became obvious that a change was needed to deliver a high quality experience in CZ." (It's true. Of those reviews we've seen, the authors generally agreed that the single player section of the game was a bit crap.)

According to Lombardi, Turtle Rock CEO Michael Booth had been working on the CS bot aspect for over a year. "An interesting bot was something we've wanted for quite a while, so we partnered with him and tabled the 'how to distribute it' question until it became compelling."

Beyond that, Lombardi would only clarify that "Turtle Rock was in charge of creating the official CS bot, designing the final CZ game, and doing all the necessary code work to pull that together. In terms of art, they chose to leverage the extensive CS art library". Perhaps the real question is "what did Ritual do, then?"

As for the game going gold, Lombardi was quite adamant that it was finished and on its way to duplication, ready to launch on November 18th at US retail and via broadband content delivery service Steam. Whether Valve's still-rickety download system will be able to cope with the demand for a brand new, high profile game is something that remains to be seen.