Counter-Strike 2 is now out, available for free to anyone. Mechanically the same as Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, this is a full remake that has, by and large, remade everything from CS:GO inside a new engine and made things look much shinier.
The biggest innovation for me - beyond the beautiful smoke that shifts according to the world around it - is the addition of two new assists that are turned on by default and should help players get to grips with the overwhelming noise and fury of Counter-Strike 2 as they’re just starting out. After all, while this game is new, it is mechanically identical to a game that people have been putting thousands of hours into for the last 11 years since Global Offensive launched in 2012. Getting on board with this game is going to be more difficult than most multiplayer games because of that core of hardened experts, and that could make the free-to-play curious drop it in favor of something a little more immediately gratifying.
The new assists take the form of a sound indicator that appears on the minimap as a circle, telling you how far the noise you’re making is traveling, with sound splashing onto the minimap. Suddenly, it’s easy to realize why someone heard you and pre-fired your spot, whether that’s because reloads are noisy or because you sprinted up to that last enemy with all the stealth of a cement mixer filled with ringing alarm clocks. By quickly glancing up at your map, you can easily see how much noise you’re making, allowing you to adjust your approach accordingly.
Hard Counter(-Strike)
The second big addition is a crosshair that follows your recoil pattern. Everyone is familiar with a crosshair, the cross (or dot if you play with the classic Counter-Strike crosshair) planted in the centre of your field of view to tell you where your bullets are going. This can get bigger or smaller depending on how fast you’re moving or what stance you’re in to give you a visual indicator of your accuracy, but a new addition for Counter-Strike 2 is that it will now move with your gun’s recoil, giving you accurate feedback on when your rounds are going. This means that when you’re trying to offset this recoil by dragging your mouse, you can see real-time feedback on how that’s going and don’t need to spend time learning, for example, the weird question-mark recoil pattern of the AK47. You can just see it and adapt in real-time.
These additions have made it easier for me - a man that played CS1.6 and was terrible at it so grumpily went to play Call of Duty 2 - to get back into the game, but also provides an avenue for more casual players to have all the knowledge a pro does, even if they don’t have the muscle memory yet.
Now, all they need to do is add a tooltip to remind me to crouch while firing every single time I fire a weapon, and I might actually get more than four kills a game.
TRG’s review on Counter-Strike 2 is in progress, but you can give the game a go right now if you fancy trying it out for yourself. If you want something tried and tested, here’s a list of the best FPS games for you to check out.
