After months of private testing, Valve has officially launched Counter-Strike 2 on Steam. Like the previous game in the series, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, the new game is a free-to-play multiplayer team shooter where players take the roles of either terrorists or counter-terrorists in online matches.
Here's the official info about the game from Valve:
A free upgrade to CS:GO, Counter-Strike 2 marks the largest technical leap in Counter-Strike’s history. Built on the Source 2 engine, Counter-Strike 2 is modernized with realistic physically-based rendering, state of the art networking, and upgraded Community Workshop tools.
In addition to the classic objective-focused gameplay that Counter-Strike pioneered in 1999, Counter-Strike 2 features:
- All-new CS Ratings with the updated Premier mode
- Global and Regional leaderboards
- Upgraded and overhauled maps
- Game-changing dynamic smoke grenades
- Tick-rate-independent gameplay
- Redesigned visual effects and audio
- All items from CS:GO moving forward to CS2
Here are the hardware requirements for the game
- OS: Windows 10
- Processor: 4 hardware CPU threads - Intel Core i5 750 or higher
- Memory: 8 GB RAM
- Graphics: Video card must be 1 GB or more and should be a DirectX 11-compatible with support for Shader Model 5.0
- DirectX: Version 11
- Storage: 85 GB available space
Of course, Valve has made sure you can play Counter-Strike 2 on your portable Steam Deck as well.
If you are wondering if Valve was going to keep Counter-Strike: Global Offensive going, well the answer seems to be "No", as Counter-Strike 2 has completely replaced it on Valve.
That may be an issue for long-time CS:CO players, especially the ones who play in paid online tournaments. PC Gamer has posted a survey of several eSports players, and many of them feel that the older game was superior compared to Counter-Strike 2. One of them, Rasmus "HooXi" Nielsen, stated:
It’s not better than CS:GO yet, not even close. It is way better than when CS:GO came out [in 2012] though. There are a lot of things we will have to get used to and then there are some things I think are just straight up good and bad
It will be interesting to see how the player counts for Counter-Strike 2 will compare to CS:GO in the days and weeks to come.
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