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.

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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