COUNTER-STRIKE 2

Anyone seeking clues to the inscrutable Valve’s grand plan for Counter-Strike should look back at CS:GO’s release back in 2012.

What CT did next

Here was a game intended to finally break Counter-Strike into the console markets after a decade of popularity on PC. It felt alarmingly different to Counter-Strike: Source. The community feared the skills they’d honed over years would become redundant in order to let a new generation into the streets of de_dust2. That very well might have been the case, too, before Valve took over control from erstwhile developer Hidden Path and performed an about-turn over a period of years. By the time it was pointing magnetic north again, CS:GO became something nobody could have anticipated – not just the bedrock of competitive FPS esports, but a prototypical cryptocurrency economy where tradeable cosmetic items hold a market cap of billions of dollars. So, what’s Counter-Strike 2 like? Ask again in a decade.

The current stage of its metamorphosis is familiar. Now it’s the CS:GO community’s turn to become concerned about time-honed skills becoming redundant in the process of welcoming a new generation of players, only mildly placated by how good their skins look in Source Engine 2. There are wholesale changes to player movement. Weapons feel different, and a ‘follow trail’ option gives you much more recoil information from your crosshair. The grenade game has already been transformed in numerous ways, from the removal of low skybox ceilings which CS:GO players used to exploit for fortuitous deflections to jump-throwing being made into a bona fide mechanic rather than a cvar bind. The minimap even shows you the range at which enemies can hear your footsteps. There is consternation on the streets of dust2.