Waging Tactical Warfare
While Counter-Strike enjoyed many years of success on the PC, the title has been notably absent from consoles since it was released on the original Xbox. It's nice to see now that PS3 and 360 users are able to get back into the tactical action game, especially those who may be looking for different shooters to play besides CoD and Battlefield. Building upon the successful Counter-Strike source game, Valve has translated the game onto consoles and offers up different ways to play and learn the game, making it more accessible to new users or returning veterans who haven't played in a while.
Players on PS3 can utilize a keyboard and mouse to play, while those on 360 will only have the controller, which Valve has mapped out greatly to make it fairly simple to use. The default setup is a mixture of typical FPS controls, but actions can also be remapped to your liking if you don't want the default setup.
The modes that come with CS: Go are a nice mix of tactical and traditional, including Arms Race, a free-for all mode that plays similar to Black Ops' gun game, only you'll still be with a team but will be competing over kills, Demolition that has teams switching between planting bombs and defending areas, and classic iterations of the original game modes. If you want to brush up on your skills and take on bots that option is available, which different settings available to raise or lower bot difficulty. Custom games are available as well, but you'll need to play in Game Chat since the Xbox Live party option is not available for this game when playing with others.
The console versions of the game won't be modifiable of course, but DLC is planned for the game on top of the maps and modes currently available. You may recognize places such as dust and temple, as well as new maps inspired from the Left 4 Dead games. The current set of maps do a great job no matter what mode you play, but after checking out all of the cool things you can do with PC version, you may want to check out that version if you get a chance.
The game still runs on Valve's trusted Source engine, but still looks pretty nice compared to new downloadable titles on XBLA. The sounds of Counter-Strike are as good as ever with clear distinctions made between weapons and the chatter of the terrorists and counter-terrorists.
For $15, you'll get fun and rewarding game with plenty of reasons to keep playing. The matchmaking system does a great job of finding players with similar skills, but you can simply choose to play with friends and bots if you want. This is another solid shooter by Valve, no matter which platform you choose to play it on.
