Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Review
Note: If you would rather watch my video review go here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUxkZWrLCuU&feature=youtube_gdata
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Review
When I first fired up Counter-Strike: Global Offensive for the PC, I was admittedly a little disappointed. It all felt like groundwork for what could be a good game. Thankfully, that was back about 2 weeks ago when the game first launched. Since then the game has absolutely exploded with user-created content. I finally understand why Valve didn't fill up the game with new maps and modes. There is absolutely no need to.
All Valve had to do was create a nicer looking engine, balance the weapons, tinker with the UI and then call it a day. They had to create the backbone of the game. After that the users would take over and turn it into a masterpiece. In many ways they already did. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is the ultimate first person shooter experience when it comes to user-created content.
The last few days I've played Tron-inspired servers where one team dons blue suits while the other wears orange and firing your weapons leaves a trail of the color that matches your suit. All on custom maps. It's a riot. Not only because of neon colors erupting from all directions, but because of the gameplay implications it has. Suddenly you need to address not only actual enemy movement but plan your strategies around where these shots are being fired from. Now take a step back and realize; this is one server, a mere morsel of what Counter-Strike: Global Offensive has to offer.
Since then I've played on maps inspired by Crash-Bandicoot, new takes on old custom favorites like ‘Churches’, and even fought on a pirate ship using knives only. The experience is sublime. Constantly being fed new content from a solid backbone is all that I've ever wanted from an online first-person shooter. Counter Strike: Global Offensive delivers over and over again.
I'd be misguiding you if I didn't bring up that the game has some problems. It becomes apparent when first starting up a custom match and you need to download new content for a server. The game doesn't even provide a simple loading screen to let you know what's happening. It just leaves you with a blank screen. This is pretty troublesome since if you are anything like me, you will come to the conclusion that the game just isn’t responding. I needed a friend tell me what was going on. Furthermore there are a bunch of small glitches peppered throughout the experience. Thankfully, none of them make it unbearable to play. It's more or less about realizing how to deal with them. I expect they’ll be remedied in a short time.
The game comes packed to the teeth with completely redesigned weapons. A few of them are a little disappointing with a ‘cheap’ look or feel. But it's really a mixed bag. For the most part the weapons feel solid and more importantly: balanced. And the variety is definitely there, establishing favorites will probably only take you a couple of matches.
The visuals in CS: GO are enough. That's really the best way to put it. As someone who is satisfied pretty easily with graphics I was fairly impressed with how nice the lighting and subtle design choices on some of the guns looked. It even shows through on the custom maps, where you'd expect less effort to be done in this area. A good way of putting it would be, “It looks like a current-gen game but doesn't exactly break down any boundaries”. Even this point ends up not really mattering considering how you will get pretty much endless variety in visuals through custom content.
As a vanilla product, CS: GO is a major disappointment. I would not recommend purchasing this game on anything but the PC. Thankfully on the PC it is anything but disappointing. I'd even go as far as to say that I haven't been more excited about the future of a game in years. The incredible backbone of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive combined with the limitless creativity of the modding community is likely going to have me sinking hundreds of hours into the title. At 15 dollars that kind of longevity is a hell of a buy. I wouldn't recommend missing out on it unless you simply don't like first-person shooters.
