For games with high skill ceilings and delicate mechanics, a new engine is a new game. A new engine can rarely capture the overall feel of the old engine.
Fucking surf man. I have so much nostalgia for CSS it's unreal. Surf, rat, sncoutknives, deathrun, jail, 24/7 single map 32 player frag fest servers. One of the most underrated GOAT games imo. I know the competitive community shunned it but as a 13 yo kid that game shaped me into a PC gamer for life.
You can connect to some servers direct through ip but the server browser is nonfunctional and valve has not released the tools needed for people to port servers over