Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Beta

It's been a long time - 8 years to be more specific -  since I've gotten my hands dirty with Counter-Strike. For me, CS might have actually been the last FPS I'd played since Team Fortress 2 became free-to-play. And soon in 2012, we will see the latest iteration of this cult franchise, Global Offensive. For me, I cannot believe how fast time (as well as so many games) have passed me by since those good old days of alcohol-fueled LAN parties in university halls. For others however, CS: Global Offensive might simply be ignored by some sections of the CS's community, like CS: Source was; with a specific version of the original game with certain updates applied only satisfying these diehard fans. Why the trip down memory lane and an exposition of the bleeding obvious, I hear you ask? It is for the simple fact that I personally wasn't great at CS back in the day, but given my general aversion to FPS's, it has become horribly clear whilst playing CS:GO that what 'skill' I had, deserted me long ago. So this is a warning for all FPS enthusiasts reading that my experience with the Beta might be the most undeserving opportunity anyone in gaming has been offered. 

Starting up CS:GO, the menus and their animations are a far cry from the original. They remain simple, yet slick and their style out of the shadow of Half-Life 2. When starting a game, there are only two options available; jumping into a random online match or creating my own locally. Game type is also restricted in the Beta to only Bomb Defusal and there are just two selectable maps; the cult classics Dust and Dust II.

Choosing to jump into a random online match was a big mistake on my part. No sooner had the match on Dust started I was left behind by the rest of my team mates as I leisurely browsed the weapons available to buy. With a trusty, no-nonsense Colt M4A1 I headed towards the sound of the gunfire. No more than 20 seconds from leaving the starting spawn point, I'm taken out by a sniper on the all the way down the street hidden in darkness of a ramp leading down to the underpass. I haven't even fired a bullet yet and I've taken a headshot from a camper! Round after round, I continued to receive headshots and it took until round 8 before I managed to acquire my first kill. By that point, it was pretty obvious that no amount of online multiplayer practice was going to improve my skills. I needed to go back to basics and figure how the accurate the different weapons were from various ranges and body positions, so I fired up a local game and populated it with bots on casual difficulty. It became very apparent how bad I was when I took headshot (albeit not a quickly in the multiplayer game) from a bot in first round. I was official. I sucked, and to compound it all, I couldn't even respawn until the remainder of the bots had duked it out & finished the round.

New to CS:GO are decoy grenades and molotov cocktails. Whilst decoy grenade are effective into luring lone wolf players (or those who are just lost in my case), molotovs are work well in restricting the distance the enemy can close you down; due to the large spread of the flames. This is particularly useful when first encountering multiple enemies in enclosed close-quarters; usually right at the beginning of the round. One minor criticism, and whilst nostalgic, the catalogue of voice dialogue is still the same. After 8 years of not playing CS, I would have at least thought that they could have updated these.

All in all, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive retains all of the gameplay charm and finesse of it's predecessors whilst dragging the graphics and UI into the HD era. It will no doubt compete head-to-head with the latest FPS's like Modern Warfare 3 and Battlefied 3 across multiple platforms, which begs the question; with the games market already saturated with these kind of games, can a lone multiplayer game really make it mark in this generation of consoles? For Valve's and nostalgia's sake, I really hope so.