“The next chapter in one of the greatest first-person multiplayer shooter franchises the PC has to offer, now with added console support.”
―Computer and Video Games
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) is a first-person shooter video game which is a part of the Counter-Strike series. It was announced to the public on August 12, 2011, and is developed by Valve Corporation and their partner, Hidden Path Entertainment. The game was later released on August 21, 2012 for the Playstation 3, Xbox 360, Microsoft Windows, and OS X and later Linux as a downloadable title.
Development
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive started off as an Xbox 360 port of Counter-Strike: Source by Hidden Path Entertainment. Seeing this as an opportunity to expand the franchise, Valve turned it into an entirely new game.[1]
Jess Cliffe confirmed the title "Global Offensive" on the official Steam forums on August 11, 2011,[2] while Valve later confirmed with its official announcement on August 12, 2011[3].
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive uses the latest version of the Source engine and is not built off of Counter-Strike: Source. After the success of the previous game, Valve wanted the newest game in the franchise to cater to both the casual and competitive community by including a matchmaking system as well as support for dedicated servers.
Valve announced the beta would begin in October, but after receiving feedback from professional players who had been invited to playtest earlier versions of the beta, Valve decided to delay the beta [4]. After addressing the majority of the issues the closed beta started on November 30, 2011 to a pool of around 10,000 select players. After almost a year of the closed beta, Valve opened the beta up starting August 14, 2012 to anyone who had pre-ordered the game.
As of yet, the console versions have not been updated and are extremely different when compared to their Steam counterpart. It is currently unknown whether or not Valve has plans for updating these versions.
Updates to the game after its release can be tracked at Valve's Product Updates channel. A community grassroots effort to better document, organize, and track the resolutions of existing bugs and issues has been acknowledged by Valve and the unofficial CS:GO Bugs and Issue Tracker is maintained by the 64bitVPS Gaming Community .
Patches
Valve is known for providing unparalleled support and continuous updates for its titles, and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is no exception. Since the beta ended, Hidden Path Entertainment have stopped its share of the development and Valve has taken over and provided countless updates to the game for everything from bug fixes and gameplay adjustments to new official content, and even added support for the Steam Workshop to allow custom content.
Weapons and Equipment
Weapons
There are 8 new weapons in Global Offensive, and there are several changes to returning weapons, regarding the firepower, rate of fire, accuracy, and movement speed. Weapons in bold are weapons introduced in Global Offensive. Weapons in italics replaced an old gun and its role. They retain the same basic attributes and are officially considered the "successor".
Pistols
Terrorists
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Counter-Terrorists
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* Added at a later date
Heavy
Terrorists |
Counter-Terrorists |
Submachine guns
Terrorists |
Counter-Terrorists |
Rifles
Terrorists
|
Counter-Terrorists |
* Added at a later date
Machine guns
Cut weapons
Equipment
Equipment in bold are new equipment that never appeared in a previous game.
Terrorists |
Counter-Terrorists |
Grenades
Terrorists |
Counter-Terrorists |
Game Modes
Global Offensive contains several multiplayer game modes.
- Classic Casual and Classic Competitive: Classical game modes of Bomb defusal and Hostage rescue. Casual and Competitive have different rules to better suit casual players and competitive players.
- Bomb Defusal: The Terrorists must plant a C4 at a bombsite and the Counter-Terrorists must defend the bombsite.
- Hostage Rescue: The Counter-Terrorists must rescue the hostages and the Terrorists must defend the hostages.
- Arsenal: Two new modes based on the popular Gun Game mod.
- Arsenal: Demolition: Fast paced bomb defusal with weapon progression elements.
- Arsenal: Arms Race: Respawning deathmatch where players must progress through a list of weapons.
- Deathmatch (PC Only): Team-based respawning deathmatch.
In addition, Global Offensive offers Offline with Bots, which offers the same game modes with AI-controlled bots; and Weapons Course, a single player map serving as a tutorial and a training mode.
Maps
At launch Global Offensive had a total of 16 official maps: 8 updated classic maps, and 8 brand new maps for the Arsenal game mode.
Bomb Defusal
- Aztec
- Dust
- Dust 2
- Cache (became official on July 1, 2014)
- Cbble (released on December 18, 2013)
- Inferno
- Mirage (released on June 12, 2013)[5]
- Nuke
- Overpass (released on December 18, 2013)
- Train
- Vertigo (released on October 1, 2012)[6]
Hostage Rescue
Arsenal
Arms Race
* Made available to arms race at a later date.
Demolition
- Bank
- Lake
- Safehouse
- Shortdust (released on November 11, 2014)
- Shorttrain
- St. Marc
- Sugarcane
Factions
Global Offensive features a total of fourteen unique factions, each with their own quotes and voice acting. All factions have five different possible models, randomly chosen upon spawn. The factions are a mix of old and new characters.
Terrorists |
Counter-Terrorists |
Cut Factions
Achievements
Achievements, also known as Awards in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, are retained from Counter-Strike: Source.
Achievements are given for completing milestones or notable actions, such as getting 1,000 kills with a particular weapon, or getting four headshots in one round. There are five categories of achievements, progression in the completion of achievements in each category will award the player with medals that can be seen on the leaderboard during matches. The list of achievements is found in the stats menu.
Miscellaneous changes
- Improved bullet penetration through some walls, materials, and objects when comparing to Counter-Strike: Source.
- New factions and changes to classic ones.
- Instead of having multiple Terrorist and Counter-Terrorist classes to choose from, each map has two opposing factions against other, similar to the Xbox port of Counter-Strike.
- The radio commands for bots and players have been updated, each faction has its own voice actor, unlike previous Counter-Strike games where all factions had the same voice actor.
- The hand models for Counter-Terrorists and Terrorists have been graphically updated and look different for each team and each faction (ex. SAS and Elite Crew factions have different hand models).
- Matchmaking system based on ELO ranks and Skill groups.
- Support for dedicated servers (PC and Mac only).
- Leaderboards.
- Maps such as Monastery, Vertigo, Assault, or Militia can only be accessed through the PC version of the game.
- Model size as well as hitboxes slightly reduced when comparing to Counter-Strike: Source.
- Cross-platform multiplayer between Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. PlayStation 3 was previously said to be included, but later dropped.[9]
- The console versions of the game run at native 720p resolution at a consistent 30fps.
- PC and Xbox 360 versions are rendered in Direct3D, while the Mac OS X and Playstation 3 version is rendered in OpenGL.
- The PlayStation 3 version supports the DualShock 3 controller, PlayStation Move or a USB keyboard/mouse, while the Xbox 360 version is limited to a controller.
- The HUD, crosshair and buy menu VGUI has been updated.
- When dead, players will have the ability to assume the role of a bot if no other players are in control.
- Added support for ATI X1000-series GPU.
- Armor costs money in Competitive mode, while it is free in Casual mode.
- The defusal kit is purchasable in Competitive mode. In Casual mode, every Counter-Terrorist will automatically be given the defusal kit.
- A new piece of equipment - the Zeus x27 appears as a stun gun and provides a one time, one shot kill for $400.
- In the March 21, 2013 update, the Rescue kit has been added to allow a Counter-Terrorist pick up a hostage within one second instead of four.
- Introduced as part of the Arms Deal update, the USP-S and the M4A1-S were added due to community demand, optionally replacing the P2000 and M4A4 respectively.
- The C4 has been tweaked to maintain balance.
- An alternative fire has been added for grenades. Players can now throw a grenade within a very short distance and these grenades can set off faster.
- The first fully automatic pistol, the CZ75-Auto, was introduced as part of the February 12, 2014 update, optionally replacing the Tec-9/Five-SeveN if equipped.
- Originally, the CZ75-Auto would replace the P250, but was moved to the Tec-9/Five-SeveN slot instead after reviewing in-game stats.
- The scope mechanics of the AUG and SG 553 have been changed. Instead of zooming in the player's vision like the older games, the user of these weapons will have a magnified view by looking at the rear of the scope.
- Noteworthy, this is the first game that has introduced low-magnification optics. Before that, the scopes were high-magnification optics intended for sniper use.
Trivia
- Counter-Strike: Global Offensive was announced on August 12, 2011, 12 years (exactly 146 months or 4,444 days) after Counter-Strike was originally released as a modification (June 12, 1999).
- Counter-Strike: Global Offensive did not arrive on the PAL version of PlayStation Store on the offical release date, causing fans of the region to react with anger. Sony apologised for the delay and promised to solve the problem as soon as possible but failed to provide an explanation.
- The Buy menu is based on the Xbox port of Counter-Strike.
- Counter Strike: Global Offensive is the only Counter-Strike game to be rated 18+ by PEGI.
- In the CS:GO icon, a CT can be seen holding a SCAR-H, a weapon that isn't in the game.
- Unlike the other games in the Counter-Strike series, the color of the Terrorist team in CS:GO seems to be a darker yellow with a bit of orange mixed into it, instead of red.
- In the trailer, you can hear some dialogue present in the game such as, "Los, Los, Los!" "Contact" "Target Spotted" and "One Guy Left"
- The in-game files include a language option for "Pirate". This language can be used by setting the
-languagelaunch option toPirate.
Videos
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Gallery
References
- ↑ HLTV - CS:GO - What we know so far
- ↑ Steam Users' Forums - "Global Offensive"
- ↑ Announcement of CS:GO
- ↑ Valve delays Counter-Strike: GO beta
- ↑ CS:GO Blog - 12 JUN 2013
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 CS:GO Blog - 1 OCT 2012
- ↑ CS:GO Blog - 7 FEB 2013
- ↑ CS:GO Blog - 21 MAR 2013
- ↑ Joystiq - Counter-Strike: Global Offensive loses cross-play
External links
- Official website
- Counter-Strike: Global Offensive at Steam
- Counter-Strike: Global Offensive at Wikipedia
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