Counter-Strike: Global Offensive proves that if you have a competitive first-person shooting experience players enjoy, you don’t need all the condiments. You know — the classes, the leveling, the unlocks, the vehicles, the kill streaks, the customization, or any of the other digital bells and whistles that have been added to the genre over the past 12 years. If anything, I might actually enjoy the classic de_dust map more now than I did when I first played it because it has such a welcome, stripped-down, bare-essentials feel in this Call of Duty era. Even after all these years, there may be no better place to put your shooting skills to the test than Counter-Strike. If you don’t already have a copy, CS:GO is the place to start.
Not a Sequel, an Overhaul
First thing’s first: a disclaimer. For those of you looking for the next installment in the Counter-Strike franchise, this isn’t it. CS:GO isn’t a sequel, it’s an overhaul, one that brings a major graphical update that puts it visually on par with Modern Warfare 3 — though not Battlefield 3. Some new maps, a handful of new weapons, and a bunch of cool new character models (the Reservoir Dogs-esque Terrorists on the new Bank map are my fav), have also been added, but as far as “new” goes, that’s about it. Valve pitches CS:GO’s Arsenal modes, Arms Race and Demolition, as new, but they’re actually just official versions of the enormously popular Gun Game and Reverse Gun Game mods for Counter-Strike and Counter-Strike: Source.
Among those all-important new maps (there are a grand total of 16, eight of which are new), Bank and Shoots are the standouts. Bank, a Demolition mode map, pits a skinny-tie-and-sunglasses-wearing heist crew against a SWAT team on a small map with a tiny bank building near its center. It’s a slight reframing of the classic terrorist bombing objective — the robbers are trying to blow the vault and the SWAT team is there to stop them, and the fluid mix of tight indoor and open outdoor environments makes it a playground for different styles. Shoots, an Arms Race map, is set in a South American shanty town of wooden shacks that provide a fast game of in-and-out-of cover peek-a-boo.
So how does CS:GO play? Just as fast, tactical, and team- and skill-based as the original Counter-Strike. Hardcore CS players will notice tweaks such as nooks and crannies of classic maps that have been added or removed, sprays are disabled by default, and the lack of opera music playing in Italy (a shame, really). Tweaks to weapon power and recoil are a hot topic of debate in-game and on forums. As it stands now, recoil is more pronounced than in the past, and that works for me. MacGrubers are severely punished for holding down the trigger and praying for lucky shots instead of shooting in short, measured bursts, and nailing those well-aimed headshots. More than ever, it puts the focus on skill in Counter-Strike, and CS:GO is better for it.
Speaking of skill, the most welcome feature Hidden Path added to Counter-Strike could be the Elo rating system. Long used to determine a player’s skill in Chess, Elo ratings have become popular in competitive multiplayer games of late in an effort to improve matchmaking. There are Casual and Competitive modes in CS:GO, and in Competitive matches, players establish their Elo rating based on wins and losses. Once Valve has a number for you (the higher the more skilled), it will be able to pit players of relatively similar skill against one another to create balanced games.
At this point, with so many new players of various skill levels logging on for the first time this week, it’s still too early to tell how effective the rating system is. With 15 hours under my belt, I still feel like I’m thrown into Competitive matches I have no business being in. But for anyone who ever wandered into a Counter-Strike match and walked out moments later frustrated and with a head full of AK-47 bullets, the Elo rating system should go a long way in helping newcomers learn the ropes (along with an option to train against a team of bots and try out weapons on the gun range) while still giving veterans the challenge they seek. In theory.
Is that a Snickers in Your Pocket?
In the final days of the beta (I’ve actually been playing CS:GO since November), I hit a ton of lag. I don’t know if it was the servers I was on or a net code issue, but it made me fear opening day would be a stuttering train wreck. While there were, and continue to be, occasional lag spikes in matches on official servers, I’d say Valve and Hidden Path Entertainment have succeeded in a fairly smooth launch. And even with those graphical updates, my Core i7 3.6GHZ and GeForce GTX 560 TI runs at an average of 202 frames per second. So yeah, CS:GO runs smoothly, and that’s an absolute must given its focus on no-nonsense competitive shooting.
One bump in the road I did hit was startling enough to nearly jolt me out of my seat: commercials. For those of you that remember the 2007 debacle where Valve managed to piss off even the most devout of Steam worshipers by inserting commercials in between Counter-Strike matches, well, it appears it’s at least considering the move again.
On launch, a “Message of the Day” offered a thanks and a promise of much more to come from Hidden Path. The day after (specifically the morning of 8/22), I ran into a handful of matches where “much more” included frickin’ commercials for Snickers candy bars. Or at least I think that’s what it was an ad for because I only saw a few milliseconds each time before closing the Message of the Day screen out in shocked horror. An hour later, the commercials were gone and I haven’t seen them since. I contacted Valve to get the skinny on CS ads, but have yet to hear back. I hope it was just a funky, short-lived bug or an allowance for private/sponsored servers that snuck its way in. If it’s not, Valve’s got some ‘splainin’ to do.
No Faking it in CS
Unwanted intrusions of chewy nougat and caramel aside, I’ve had a blast playing Counter-Strike: Global Offensive this week (and throughout the beta) — more fun than I thought I’d have on my return to the eternal struggle between terror and anti-terror. I’ve enjoyed the many new features and additions that have been plugged into the shooter genre over the years, (especially the ability to aim down the iron sights of most weapons,) and I long considered the ever-unchanging Counter-Strike to be a bit outdated for my tastes. I’ve discovered that the pure simplicity of this formula still works as well as it ever did.
Playing CS:GO reminded me just how much many of the new shooter features out there — the Air Strikes, the perks, the tanks — can help make up for a lack of core FPS skills. There’s no faking it here, and if you really want to get right down to it and find out just how good of an online gunslinger you are, the crucible of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is a great place to do it.
Spy Guy says: I was initially worried that CS:GO would be a consolized version of a PC classic, but nope: I get killed just as quickly in GO as I do in Source. Hopefully that matchmaking will level the playing field and put us terrible players together at last. What say you: is it time to party like it’s 1999?
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