CS:GO’s really been getting some love this December. First, a new gamemode, and now a
sprinkling of snow and the return of Militia, after having been out of the game for over
a year! Here is the new 10 year coin, which you’ll
get if you’ve owned a Counter-Strike game on your Steam account for that amount of time
or more, and have played it at least once. Which will make it the second exclusive item
that existing fans of the game have received this month.
Here are the 6 new service medals for 2019, which you can get if you reach level 40 by
playing the game enough. Redeeming one of these medals will reset you back to level
1, whereupon reaching 40 again will let you receive the next one. You’d have to play
the game a lot to get all 6 for a year, though. And to make us all feel Christmassy, there’s
now falling snow on the menu screens and the chickens are wearing their garish Christmas-jumpers.
And if you die, the morbid scene will be framed in pretty-looking snow!
There’s a new weapon, too: as long as you’re not playing any of the competitive gamemodes,
you’ll find an endless heap of snowballs near your spawn point. You can equip up to
3 of these and they behave just like grenades do, only they’ll shatter on first impact
and deal 5 damage. Much like the Zeus-equipping ghosts in the recent Halloween update, this
serves as an embarrassing way to kill enemies. They also blind players for a couple of seconds
in a way that’s not too dissimilar to a budget flashbang.
They also emit some nice particles whenever they hit a surface, though at the moment if
you throw them too close to yourself it’ll sound like you’ve been hit by them, even
though you’ll receive no damage. The bomb is now gift-wrapped to look like
a present! We’re all hoping that next year after the festivities have ended, this will
be unwrapped to reveal a new high-definition version of the C4. This was used in the game’s
original trailer and has existed in the game’s files for a while. CS:CO creator Zool even
made a mod that let you use it in-game, which I covered in a video a while ago. But alas,
when he investigated this new skin he discovered that it was the same old lower-quality C4
hidden underneath. We can but hope. While Cbble a few months ago received a spooky
night-time Halloween theme, Militia has been given the Christmas treatment with a coating
of snow. We’ll get the obvious out of the way:
It’s now set at night. Or at the very least, late evening. And I know that because of this
handy little Weather Vane, complete with interactive spinny bit!
The sky now looks eerily like the Counter-Strike Source version of Havana’s… which I was
never a fan of what with all its dark corners and awkward angles- which this map also appears
to have. And there’s a sound of howling wind if you’re outside.
I like the frozen river texture, which looks suitably shiny.
And there’s now smoke coming out of the chimney… even though the fire itself isn’t
lit. Spooky. And while we’re at it, although this hut
is missing half its roof, there is no snow on the floor inside. Valve please fix.
Layout-wise, nothing has changed- unless you didn’t play on it last year! Which might
be quite a lot of you. To bring you all up to date, between March and November of 2017,
the map was quite a bit different from how it was before 2017.
CT-spawn was extensively cut back and moved forwards to just over the bridge.
You used to be able to run through this area just outside the farm to access the water,
which would then lead to the underground tunnels or the barn.
But this has been replaced with a much more accessible path down from near the new hostage
rescue zone. In other words: all the old routes through the level are still available, it
just takes less time to rotate between them. If CTs take this hut route, they no longer
have to duck under this stupid wooden plank that was in the way before. And upon reaching
the other end, they now have a nice new door exit, which is a lot less fiddly than the
old window-route and the extra opening will make it harder for terrorists to camp around
here. Interestingly enough, the door was already there in the older version, but had been boarded
up and was inaccessible. There used to be a path up on the left-side
of the house. You can still get up this way, but it requires 2 jumps. The first from this
bench onto the corrugated iron roof, and then from there over to here.
The holes in the roof have been sealed up, making the inside areas considerably safer
to navigate. Aside from this, the rest of the house remains the same.
UNTIL YOU REACH THE GARAGE! Taking the tunnel path as CT’s used to lead out to the barn
outside, but it now leads straight into the garage. The route always went under this area,
and although there didn’t used to be steps here, the floor was still thin enough to be
shot through. It’s just now, this is where the underground tunnel ends.
This in my opinion makes the back of the map needlessly large and complicated and I think
the old barn could be done away with completely to tidy things up. That is, if this map remains
the way it is right now. Oh and the steps leading to the upstairs garage
have been fixed. One thing that has been missing for a year
and a half are the map’s placenames, which are normally embedded in the bot navigation
file for the map. This means, no matter how much I butcher the names of all these huts
and barns, I’m technically not incorrect. Valve, please fix.
One more thing: the snow provides new gameplay possibilities! Need a smoke screen but have
no grenades left? Simply use a negev to shoot up a snow cloud! Unfortunately, there is a
bug with this- if the first shot is far enough away then the rest of the shots won’t shoot
up a cloud either. Valve please fix this as well.
I wonder if this push for us to play hostage mode is to entice the new f2p audience to
give the game’s other modes a chance. Battle Royale may have been the gateway gamemode
that got them into the game, but they may eventually move to the more hardcore elements,
like competitive matchmaking. Apologies for this video being a bit late,
I was on a Winter vacation of my own. But now I’m back. And will work tirelessly through
the rest of this month to give you more content. Merry Christmas.