'Remove Any Doubts In Your Head; Its Either Us Or Them': The Tactical Intervention Story

Tactical Intervention is a first-person shooter made by the co-creator of  Counter-Strike, Minh “Gooseman” Le. Minh Le started development for Counter-Strike as a mod for the videogame Half-Life while in his senior year of college. In June 1999, Le released the first beta of Counter-Strike. Countless hours of development later, Valve, the developer of Half-Life, began assisting Le in his project, and in 2000, Valve bought the rights to Counter-Strike. From there, Le continued to work with Valve, where Counter-Strike 2 was reportedly in the works as well. But unfortunately, in 2006, Counter-Strike 2 was shelved. That led Le to leave Valve that year and make what he felt was his ideal version of the Counter-Strike formula called Tactical Intervention. 

Picture of Minh 'Gooseman' Le (2018)

In an AMA on Reddit in 2013, Le mentioned leaving Valve, saying,

“I decided to work on the game I always wanted Counter-Strike to be.  After a number of years, I eventually ran out of funding and was encouraged to move to South Korea to continue development. That is when I teamed up with FIX Korea to continue my new project, Tactical Intervention, adding features that I always wanted to implement with CS, such as active civilians/hostages, human shields, attack dogs, riot shields, rappelling, and the ability to drive cars with your buddies leaning out shooting. I was finally able to make the game that I wanted.”

A clip from the teaser trailer released in 2013

And that is exactly what he did for his new project. Being the co-creator of the game that inspired Le’s new project, there were obvious similarities. The same basis of Counter-Terrorists and Terrorists killing each other in a round-based match was kept. But with the new additions that he added, this cranked everything up to eleven. But maybe cranked it up by too much.

Hostage holding on the map 'Construction'

So much so that reviews were mediocre at best when the game was released in March 2013. And reviewers were right. Gameplay was too sporadic and wonky. Driving the cars was a mess. The muzzle flash of weapons made it seem as if each time you shot a weapon, a mini flashbang came through the screen and hit you in the face. But to put things bluntly, the game was a ridiculously fun mess. These shortcomings created some of the funniest, most outlandish moments. These were highlighted in the Hostage and Highway modes. Hopping into a car with your friends trying to kill the enemy, whilst blinded by the gunfire of your friends’ weapons was a chaotic and hilarious experience to endure. Or seeing a teammate get shot in the knee, hold their leg and jump up and down, then be decimated by a barrage of enemy bullets always gave players a laugh.

Shootout on the map 'Highway'

But the smaller moments in this game couldn’t save the broader player base for long. On June 10, just three months after its initial release, game servers had already shut down due to a lack of player base. The game was then relaunched independently by FIX Korea in October 2013. The game sustained a few more years of life, but in 2017, FIX Korea made a statement saying their European server had no choice but to shut down.

For years, news had gone dark about the game, with subtle updates on their Facebook page every now and again. But on September 2021, a Discord user made it so you can play the 2016 version of Tactical Intervention. It’s a cool gesture to do so, but upon inspection of these servers, only thirteen people are active.

I feel this can be some sort of a lesson taught by looking at the recent history of gaming. Here is this fun, yet dingey game that came out and received a lot of flak. Especially from the free-to-play perspective. But here we are, 10 years later, in the same exact place. But this time, it’s something that is generally considered to be the status quo when new games are released.  In this day of age, this model of releasing a buggy, unpolished game out of the gate has run rampant in the gaming landscape.  At least with Tactical Intervention, the lack of polish was due to the minimal personnel working on the project and the lack of funding.  Now, with the incredibly inflated budgets of AAA companies, they can back up this method of unfinished releases by promising to fix the issues, when it should not have been released that way in the first place. 

The difference is that they can afford the mishap.  Now all consumers can do is live with it.  If these companies weren't hellbent on the idea of appeasing shareholders and focused purely on the same passion that Minh Le had, the gaming landscape would be in a much better place. 

Minh Lee was still able to add all of the features he wanted and create a game he was proud of. All be it, the game did not last long. Hopefully, in the near future, this same leap of faith and determination can be implemented with greater success in the near future.