It’s been a quiet time for Counter-Strike. It’s been almost a month since the last
update, and even that was just a few, vague bug-fixes. In fact, scrolling back it’s
been a number of months since we got ANYTHING other than bug fixes and community map updates.
So what’s Valve playing at? Elsewhere, Hell is freezing over with Left 4 Dead 2 getting
a new campaign, which I very nearly covered on this channel just for the lols. And even
Team Fortress 2 has had a number of updates- something I discovered when suddenly, the
usual daily comments this channel receives, moaning about the game being ignored suddenly
subsided. So perhaps over at Valve, they’ve been elsewhere,
and haven’t been working on CS:GO at all. But… what if? What if, behind the scenes,
they’ve been working on a big update for the game that’s soon to roll out?
The end of the year has historically been a great time for big updates. Last year we
got a new operation. A year before that, a new gamemode: Danger Zone. And with Counter
Strike turning 20 next month on November 9th , I’m hoping Valve will do SOMETHING to
celebrate it. A new operation, perhaps. Or a new map. Or at least a new sticker collection
with lots of 20’s in I don’t know.
A new map would be nice wouldn’t it. Or better still: a prettier version of one we
already know and love! Valve went through a stage where they’d remove a map from the
game, then it would come back a year later with a beautiful, colourful, cartoonish facelift.
This happened to Train in 2014, to Nuke and then Inferno in 2016, and to Dust2 in 2017.
Other maps haven’t had quite the same graphical overhaul, but over CS:GO’s lifetime, Cbble
and Vertigo have both been majorly changed, with graphical improvements made to them from
time to time. It would make sense to get the gameplay right
with these before considering a proper facelift, in which case… neither of them are ready
for that just yet. Which leaves Mirage as the obvious choice
as the map to be remade, because it’s popular, and the most visually dated out of the Valve-made
maps currently in the game. And they still haven’t fixed this. Valve pls fix.
What about the possibility of a new operation? The last one broke a 2-year silence, and although
people ended up complaining about how boring it was, lets face it, you did kind of enjoy
it didn’t you. It rolled out with other stuff as well, like custom character models.
This lead to complaints about poor visibility which took them months and months to find
a working solution to. The game’s just about recovered now.
We got new knives, new cases of community-made skins, stickers, graffiti, new maps, new operation
missions… and of course, Half-Life Alyx. I’ll let you speculate about what could
be in a new operation. It would be the perfect opportunity to introduce some cs 1.6-version
maps like they did with Dust2 last year. This would let players relive their nostalgia,
and discover that perhaps it wasn’t as fun as they remembered it being.
And what about Source 2? A Source 2-CS:GO update has been something that’s been whispered
about for years. And Valve themselves have said that parts of the game might be updated,
depending on whether there would be any benefits to doing so. The new Panorama UI springs to
mind. Can you believe that was over 2 years ago now?!
The reason I’m bringing Source 2 up again is because it’s been an important year for
the engine. As in, it’s kind of been finished! In Half-Life Alyx: The Final Hours, they revealed
how Source 2 in its unfinished state held back development of all sorts of games in
these past 10 years. But with Half-Life Alyx, we finally got to see what the engine was
capable of. And it’s stunning! If you’ve played Half-Life Alyx you’ll
know what I’m talking about. I’ll admit, it doesn’t look quite so good on a flat
screen. But when you hop into it in VR it’s one of the most beautiful gaming experiences
you can have. Everything looks so… convincing. This is something that Valve has always been
good at. Half-Life 2 was the same. It’s not like it’s ridiculously detailed, but
everything’s got that realistic, gritty look to it. There’s detail where it matters.
And better than that: it runs so, so well. It has to for VR. Imagine what it could do
for the framerates in CS:GO! In this day and age, it isn’t hard to power
Global Offensive at hundreds of frames per second. But it’s no secret that it doesn’t
run quite as fast as people would like it to, and this is one area where Source 2 could
help. With the DOTA 2 Reborn update they talked about how Source 2 had helped to reduce latency,
to make mapping for it easier, to improve performance, and to utilise multiple processor
cores more efficiently. There’s even this really cool feature that lets them drape cloth
over everything. Just imagine how much cloth you could coat Dust2 in! It would be amazing.
So there are many reasons why Source 2’s more feasible this year than it was in previous
years. And with Half-Life Alyx finally shipped, that’s an awful lot of people at Valve who
are suddenly free to embark on other projects again. Let’s hope some of that love comes
CS:GO’s way.
Something oddly specific that I’d like, but don’t expect to get, would be some love
to Danger Zone. The mode has been ignored on reddit, but it ticks away in-game, receiving
occasional new maps and bug fixes. And it does have a thriving casual community. Whenever
I do see gameplay from it I’m amazed by how much depth there is to it, with people
flying about using mines, and abusing drones in cruel, cruel ways. It really could be an
enjoyable gamemode to watch. If I was Valve I’d host some kind of online tournament
for it with a cash prize and some way of streaming it for everybody to watch. They could bundle
it with one of those new snowy community-made maps, which would nicely suit the Christmas
period that’s quickly approaching.
That’s some of the stuff I’d like to see from the game. And if Valve are feeling unimaginative,
they could just sell us a new skin collection or whatever. Just something, because it’s
been more dull than normal to cover the game recently. So what would you like to see? Post
a comment down below and don’t forget to smash