And the moment has finally come. Valve has officially announced Counter-Strike 2, an upgraded version of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive in the Source 2 Engine. Counter-Strike 2 will release this Summer, and below you can find its first details.
As Valve noted, Counter-Strike 2 is the largest technical leap forward in Counter-Strike’s history, ensuring new features and updates for years to come.
Counter-Strike 2 will feature overhauled graphics and maps. Valve has rebuilt from the ground up numerous maps, leveraging all of the new Source 2 tools and rendering features. Furthermore, the team has upgraded other maps that use new Source 2 lighting, including a physically based rendering system that produces realistic materials, lighting, and reflections.
Moreover, Valve will release the Source 2 tools and rendering features to the community map makers to make it easier to build, experiment and iterate.
One of the biggest changes in Counter-Strike 2 is its sub-tick update architecture. Thus, regardless of tick rate, your moving and shooting will be equally responsive.
Another big new feature of CS2 is its smoke effects. Smoke Grenades are now dynamic volumetric objects that interact with the environment, and react to lighting, gunfire, and explosions. The shape of the smoke cloud can be pushed and carved by bullets or grenades.
Valve also launched today a Limited Test for select CS:GO players. During this testing period, they’ll be evaluating a subset of features to shake out any issues before the worldwide release.
Counter-Strike 2 arrives this summer as a free upgrade to CS:GO!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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Kudos to Valve, nobody manages to disappoint quite like them.
Didn’t disappoint me, it’s exactly what I expected and what most people predicted.
CSGO on Source 2
This is everything the players wanted and more
What did you expect? LGBT characters and realistic graphics?
More of the same?
And more, really?
Then again, since fans dont expect anything from Valve, I guess even this lazy joke is more.
You still haven’t answered the question of what exactly did you expect? This looks like a very nice upgrade to a very solid game.
I just did. As the old meme says, I expected nothing and I’m still disappointed.
yeah all i see here is minor graphical effects.
Their competitive MP games were always designed to scale down to even potato PCs. Eg in internet cafes, children playing on cr@ppy laptops. Why would they change that philosophy all of a sudden? Aiming for bleeding edge hardware would automatically vastly limit the reach of their MP games, that would be incredibly stupid.
I’m happy that they’re smart enough to not listen to graphics wh0re clowns.
Who’s talking about graphics?
Valve being valve pure gameplay no diversity or cinematic BS !
Wrong on both counts. Half Life series pioneered the “cinematic” linear fps and added diversity even in the first Half Life.
They pioneered a cinematic experience without cutscenes interrupting gameplay, the diversity in HL2 is far from being as annoying as nowadays woke BS, they added women which helped the game be more realistic than a man-only world (except for the BO assassin)
I’m not hating Valve btw, it’s just that people have prejudice against the words “cinematic” and “diversity”. Don’t make excuses for innacuracies or false info.
“They pioneered a cinematic experience without cutscenes interrupting gameplay”
Do you count the train ride and the walking sim first level as “gameplay”? People used to mock MGSV style of cutscene where you could move the character, but it’s not that different from those levels.
” the diversity in HL2 is far from being as annoying as nowadays woke BS”
It is still diversity, in fact, the number of black male scientist npc’s in black mesa is clearly way above average in terms real life. And the female BO was an oversight of mine, clearly unrealistic portrayal of women on the frontlines. Imagine that the most dangerous military operatives you face are women, lmao. Diversity is a 100 year old project, it used to be subtle but not anymore.
The train ride is still more interactive than a cheap pre-rendered movie, back then it was very impressive, a bit long especially after then 1st run, but nothing really annoying
Black Mesa is not a Valve game and i’m not counting how much black or orange dudes there are in a game, sometimes i can be annoyed by a black knight in a medieval setting but that’s it, western media portrayed Jesus as a white dude for decades but no one said anything about that.
“I’m not hating Valve btw, it’s just that people have prejudice against the words “cinematic” and “diversity”. Don’t make excuse for innacuracies or false info.”
True, nothing to say about that.
“The train ride is still more interactive than a cheap pre-rendered movie, back then it was very impressive”
Hence the word “pioneered cinematic fps”. They changed the way cutscenes work and plenty of games took inspiration.
“Black Mesa is not a Valve game and i’m not counting how much black or orange dudes there are in a game”
I’m talking about the setting, not the unofficial remake, and it was in response to the claim that there is no diversity at Valve games, which is just plain false.
“western media portrayed Jesus as a white dude for decades but no one said anything about that.”
Don’t know if this is a strawman or if you live under a rock, because they never shut up about the supposed race of Jesus (anything but white).
honestly the hl1 scripted moments were awesome , instead of that we got open world boring copy paste repetitive crap in modern games.
they hired the firewatch devs solely because they made a narrative walking sim and put them in charge of haly life alyx.
Not very impressive. Source engine 2 is disappointing so far.
CS is what it is, HL Alyx is impressive tho
Their competitive MP games were always designed to scale down to even potato PCs. Eg in internet cafes, children playing on cr@ppy laptops. Why would they change that philosophy all of a sudden? Aiming for bleeding edge hardware would automatically vastly limit the reach of their MP games, that would be incredibly stupid.
I’m happy that they’re smart enough to not listen to graphics whxre clowns.
What some people fail to realize is just how important Valve/Steam was and still is for the survival & prospering of the whole PC gaming scene.
Remember for how long Epic Games completely ignored & even ridiculed PC gamers?
The same Epic Games that now unashamedly begs for your money on that store of theirs.
BTW, where can I buy Gears of War 2 & 3 for the PC on there?
Seriously, it was Valve that single-handedly turned the dying PC gaming market around.
And now, (ex-Microsoft employee) Lord GabeN is the only one who has the balls to take on MSFT’s iron fist on the PC consumer space, which they lost focus on ever since the release of the first Xbox.
In fact, the current Indian CEO of Microsoft cares so much more about the professional markets, to the point that he’s willing to become one of the major sponsors of Linux:
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/99b71750c403648150eee97a641c0f63fae0b03d97b6c90b4a3d3b506ca9aa4b.png
“BTW, where can I buy Gears of War 2 & 3 for the PC on there?”
Gears series belongs to Microsoft, not Epic. If you really want to play those games i suggest you emulate it, Xenia is a pretty good emulator.
Which is exactly the point I was trying to communicate:
Neither Epic nor Microsoft cared enough about the PC to release those games on the platform, whereas Valve always put it first.
Too bad i’m not interested in neither Valve, Epic or Microsoft recent games.
I know Counter Strike is not known for graphics BUT it looks like sh*t
I agree, but they should be pretty old videos, pretty much everything you see should change, i don’t think by much, it’s still the same franchise after all…
who cares, it looks as good as it needs to
I don’t play Counter Strike so I don’t really care but I expected it to at least be comparable to Half Life Alyx which is a VR game.
well for the millions of us who do, we don’t care about the graphics, gameplay and feel are more important.
Only some maps look old. The game looks great in 4k. Also you have to realize it’s a competitive game that desires extremely high fps. They can make it look better but aren’t going to have f*king ray tracing dude.
This game is extremely popular in Asia and Eastern Europe, where people are playing it in internet cafes and on toasters. CS has a perfect balance between looking good, while being able to run on basically any setup. They are not going to exclude the majority by pleasing the minority graphics wh*res.
Not a player of CS myself but I like that after all these years they still spent time and effort on it and it’s actually pretty cool. (I’ll always whine they’re not making anymore HL2 derivatives or HL3, wish they spent time on that because it’s such easy guaranteed money)
Not really, free to play games like CS is easier money making machines for them.
they should have used the engine that drives Half Life Alyx. This one looks more like a mod lol.
This looks like more like a patch of a game as opposed to a new game.
exaclty!!! anyone who plays counter strike didnt want a new game.
Of course it’s just going to be an upgrade to the existing game. Valve are smart enough to not want to piss off their userbase with potentially $100s/$1000s IRL money invested into cosmetics, by making them start from scratch with an all new game.
The fact the Valve is doing this in house scares the hell out of me, but surely they wouldn’t mess with the game that lays golden eggs.
They will 100 percent buff the smoke mechanic so that it’s not interactive.
There’s a 3rd video about the maps with graphics and structural changes
https://youtu.be/ExZtISgOxEQ
Interesting game dynamics. Might be worth giving a try. I don’t normally play Counter Strike games.
New FPS games now have to compete with Steam that will plaster and promote Counter Strike 2 all over its store.
And those same FPS developers need to give 30% of their profits to Valve, which will use that money to further promote Counter Strike 2 over alternative games.
This is the exact same problem with Apple and Apple music competing with Spotify.
Maybe now you understand why Ubisoft and Activision have their own store, and why the Steam monopoly is a problem.
“why don’t they release on Steam, durr durr durrrr” îdiots
CoD is sold day 1 on Steam again as of last year (+ EA games as of 2-3 years ago), so so much for that example of yours.
Ignoring the vast Steam userbase can more often than not be the kiss of death for an online MP focused game on PC, especially so for PvP. Just look at the likes of Predator: Hunting Grounds (Epic timed exclusivity) and Rogue Company (still Epic exclusive), dead playerbases. Only really SP focused games with small-mid budgets can afford to take to timed Epic Game Store exclusivity bribes.
The industry standard 30% sales cut is usually countered by the potential for high sales volume possible thanks to Steam’s very large userbase.
Cs:go with a bit better graphics. Of course they needed a new name for marketing purposes. And that smoke looks incredibly dumb. Smoke does not behave like that IRL.