CS:GO has got its first update for the year, and it’s only a few map updates. I say ‘only’,
but the makers of Ember deserve a shout-out for almost single-handedly providing seasonal cheer to
the game these days. They rolled out that awesome Halloween-themed version of the map last year,
and now the Christmas-themed version of the map has come out, Valve-time style.
It’s rolled out so late that we can’t even use its ‘Dec Ember’ naming pun any more. So
this update with the winter storm causing delays looks to have its release delayed
by the perfect storm- starting with a late Christmas update from the mappers themselves,
with this Christmassy version first coming out on the 19th of December, then a patched
version of it coming out on the 28th, throw in a decent dollop of Valve-time, and that’s why this
Christmas version of the map has been released in late January. Still, it’s got a few fun features,
like cannons that fire snowballs and custom screens to get you in the mood. I know that
Dangerzone maps have never received compatibility versions, but Anubis has also been updated today
and its compatibility version rolled out 2 weeks ago- considering these tend to come out
a day or so before the new version is added to the game, this is slow, even for Valve. So who
knows what they have or haven’t been working on for these updates to take so long to roll out.
And it’s a shame it came out so late, cos look at all these unopened Christmas presents everywhere.
That represents all of the updates to the game that we could have received. And also,
when the round ends, and after the AWESOME round-end music finishes, we’re wished a ‘MERRY
CHRISTMAS. HO HO H’. Yeah, bit late for that. Even the snowmen seem to be having a hard time.
Ember’s changes in this update are obvious but superficial, whilst Anubus’s are invisible but
gameplay changing. Anubis’s changes mostly focus on the T route to B,
and that one that leads off from there and goes towards middle instead. The architecture in
these areas has been SIMPLIFIED. Blocks which used to look like they could have tripped you
up have been smoothed off or buried deeper into the sand to ensure safe passage over the ruins.
The trims which used to ramp your character up onto higher ground have been tucked in,
and their clippings, removed. This image shows it best: the red outlines are all the clipping things
which can affect your movement and you can see the routes have been slightly widened and flattened,
and there are now fewer things to jolt your view and to block your movement.
This does mean that some weird stuff has happened, like this tree stump has gone,
yet its roots remain. This doorway has been blocked up more and the wall-plants next to
it removed, presumably to improve visibility. Likewise, the grilles near A have been made
lower and more subtle- again perhaps to improve player visibility if players crouch in front
of these. And the boat’s model and clipping has been shrunk. Normally to update a model,
a NEW model is used, so if you load an older version of the map then it looks like the older
version of the model as well. But this update retroactively changes the look of the boat,
even in older versions of the map- which is a sign that Valve, rather than community members,
is now in control of this map and its assets. This thing in middle now has tighter clipping
around it. So yeah, all these changes are perhaps helpful but rather boring.
Even the grenade clip brushes seem… subtle. A few extra faces are added on the ground
around where CT’s approach both of the sites from, presumably to make grenades bouncing
off these surfaces bounce more predictably. And that’s about as exciting as I can make it sound
unfortunately. You may be noticing subtle lighting changes between these two different map versions
and that’s because the map has been rendered with slightly different lighting versions, resulting in
subtle lighting changes between the two! In some places, I think the old version looks
better. In others, the new one does. God, it’s splitting hairs at this point isn’t it.
So yeah, all in all this update is rather minor. Although it does look like the chickens
have changed positions! Although they are chickens, so they tend to do that, don’t they.
I think we’ve exhausted Anubis. So returning to Ember, it’s not like they did a lot with this
map. The lighting has been changed, a few of the props have been swapped out for snowy versions,
and a few snowmen and presents have been stacked about the place. And a banana. Some of the
textures that should have been changed haven’t been, and a few that shouldn’t haven’t have,
have. This snowy update to the map took them about 30 hours to do. In the grand scale of things,
that isn’t much time to add something special to CS:GO this Winter. It wouldn’t have taken Valve
long to do something for this either. Just give us some limited-time snowman skins for
use in casual modes. Or snowman masks, kind of like the sort we saw in the game back in 2014.
So what would I have liked to see from Counter-Strike? Source 2.
But failing that,
Source 3. Or RTX Remix.
But within the realms of possibility, perhaps an operation of some sort? Though even with those,
the latest few have felt lazy. I miss the ones with custom campaigns and unique STUFF
to them. But since this year we’ve received nothing, how about… something? Anything?
Age of Empires 2 gets challenges from time to time. You’re limited to doing one of these a day,
and there’s normally 6 or 7 of those for you to do over the course of about a month,
so it’s not like you’re forced to tune in every day or anything like that. But it
is just nice to have an extra reason to boot the game up. Most of these achievements are
unlocked simply by playing a normal match, even if you’re not trying to do them,
so they already reward players who are already playing the game. But for more casual players-
such as myself- I’ve had fun with these achievements, finding ways to do them as
quickly and as efficiently as possible each day, normally by loading up a match against
bots and with carefully chosen settings to make it super-fast to achieve these things.
From beating these challenges I’m rewarded custom skins and stuff like that. I don’t
even care. Don’t even like most of them. But it’s just nice to know I’ve got things to do
and things to unlock. And that might be all that a lot of people need to boot the game up and to
play it again. It’s kind of like why youtubers such as myself aim to release daily content on
our channels- because otherwise people quickly get out of the habit of tuning in to watch.
So a CS:GO-equivalent of that sort of Age of Empires 2 thing be something like this.
It doesn’t matter! All that matters is that you boot the game up and do SOMETHING. Yes,
this sort of thing is gimmicky and low-effort, both for the players AND
for Valve to implement. But it’s a lot better than nothing at all.
Well that was rubbish. Check out this video about Operation Wildfire to see
what updates to CS:GO in 2016 were like. And here’s a video about Source 2 to get your
hopes up for the thousandth time. Don’t forget to smash that subscribe button,
to ensure you never miss out on an exciting CS:GO update ever again.