Oh man, what's this? A poll question asking about Counter-Strike on a site that used to be called CS-Nation? Wow, that's totally nuts and crazy and so whacky.
Counter-Strike 2 was officially released on September 27th, effectively replacing Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Like, it literally replaced CS:GO. Not only did Counter-Strike: Global Offensive just straight up get updated to Counter-Strike 2, but Valve also kept using the old Global Offensive page on Steam.
This has led to a bit of a weird situation where reviews for CS:GO are contributing to the Counter-Strike 2 review score on Steam. Given the reviews since CS2 was released, though, it seems like there are a lot of people not particularly happy with Counter-Strike 2.
Complaints include issues with random stutter, lack of features that CS:GO included, bugs, and there are many complaints about issues with the highly touted "sub-tick" system that Valve revealed when the game was announced.
So, have you played Counter-Strike 2 yet? If so, what do you think of it? Feel free to leave a comment below the poll telling us what you think of Valve's latest (and greatest?) release of Counter-Strike.



CS2 despite the name is just a graphical update of CS:GO, which was a graphical update of CS:Source with some other tweaks and new weapons and missing old weapons that were then added again later, which was a graphical update of CZ, which was a graphical update of 1.6, but CZ despite being 3 years late and poorly received had the most content of any CS release, with its built in PODBots for its single player challenge mode, graphics update and Deleted Scenes which is very novel for fans of Half Life total conversions like myself, so i've started to think of CZ as Counter Strike 2 :P, a full retail product from a time when a single player campaign was the obvious thing to include.
People were rightfully disappointed in it at the time but with distance it's a reasonable update to 1.6 and will live forever with its bot support, i enjoyed this video from The War Owl.
I think I tried playing CSGO legit like once? I haven't played since the CS: Source days.
And yeah, Condition Zero was fucking awesome. The graphical changes were so refreshing at the time. The improvements to the rescue AI were great. I remember even playing the Deleted Scenes campaign stuff.
My one complaint is the peeker's advantage. It's difficult to hold an angle, and the shotguns are somehow actually a viable choice because they can whip around a corner, aim, and click prior to you reacting in your angle. This results in having to sit there and jiggle peek your corners hoping to time it right instead of having the positional advantage you deserve. It's not as bad as it was in end of the beta, though, so I'm hopeful with all the updates they've been pushing out that they'll figure it out.
The new shadows are kinda fun: there are a few spots with bright lights that you actually have to be aware of because you'll give your position away well before you turn the corner. They're only ever placed in areas that you should already have control of, so it's not like it's ruining a choke point of a bombsite rush, it's only ever punishing you for losing ground or pushing past sites.
As someone who only plays 5v5 competitive, this update feels like it was meant for me, though. I can easily see how people would be upset over a removal of their favorite game mode. So for those people, yes I feel bad, and yes, please complain as loud as possible because they've literally removed your game. The only thing I've lost will likely be soon restored: replays/demos from matches. I'm a fan of those 3rd party statistics websites and not having stats to go over and compare with my buddies is a huge bummer. It appears to be a temporary solution to free up server resources, but time will tell.
...At least the trailer music is cool.