Counter-Strike 2 Has Been Officially Released

Jakob Aylesbury September 28, 2023Last Updated: September 28, 2023

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The free upgrade to CS:GO in the form of CS2 has officially been released bringing in a large plethora of improvements and changes to one the most popular FPS games of all time.

Counter-Strike 2

Now I’ll be honest, I only play Counter Strike on our bi-weekly Patreon game nights on the eTeknix Discord so my excitement for this update isn’t exactly around, however for CS:GO fans, this is a big update. First and foremost, the most notable change is the graphics and visual effects with the introduction of Source 2. Aside from being more taxing on your hardware, this will also change the gameplay considerably with dynamic smoke grenades. The smoke that a smoke grenade emits is now interactable and can be affected by various things such as bullets, and other grenades and it fills spaces more naturally with more realistic lighting and colours. All of these smoke enhancements truly open the door to entirely new ways of killing each other. Several of the maps have been rebuilt from the ground up with prettier graphics which will alter gameplay based upon some areas that were previously quite dark being a lot brighter now. As an example, the Restroom on Overpass is much brighter and cleaner.

Other Improvements

Alongside the graphics improvements are improvements to the audio which is a key part of being a good counter-strike player and competitive FPS player. There have also been more improvements to various things which I won’t pretend to understand their importance. CS2 features new CS ratings with updated Premier mode, global and regional leaderboards that are pretty self-explanatory, and Tick-rate-independent gameplay. The Tick rate is changed with CS2 and is best described as “What you see is what you get”, servers now know the exact instant that motion starts such as when a shot is fired or a grenade is thrown. This overall should provide more responsiveness.