Mu5hy

Cool article, but launching with only 5 maps? Seems odd.

@Rolyatkcinmai said:

I'm building a $2,000 PC for it.

But no, I don't care, now that a new Counterstrike has been announced, everything else is kind of moot.

I'm in the same boat, I was super excited for BF3 back in March when those Fault Line trailers started coming out, all the way through E3 - everything looked great - then in the span of a week or two...

Installed Origin

Played the Alpha

CS:GO announced

I have about 700hours of multi-player clocked in BC2, and I really enjoy that game, but these three things made me have very little interest in BF3. I'll end up playing it though, if only just the Beta next month - I would have pre-ordered it a month ago, but Origin is such a terrible piece of customer relation software that I find it difficult to keep it installed on my PC.

It might be a little rough just starting out - keep trucking to level up and unlock more weapons - maybe focus on one class (assault or medic) and use that classes' drop (ammo or health) a lot to get more points - spot for teammates, and try to stick near your squad. @MrKlorox: is right about being a medic in hardcore mode - you can stay a bit behind your teammates and observe them while dropping med boxes for them when they are hit, medics are appreciated in hardcore mode and you'll have teammates looking for you and protecting you. The shooting in normal mode is tedious because people are bulletsponges, and if you're just starting out you probably don't have the "magnum ammo" spec which makes bullets do more damage - so when you're spraying them with your smg it's going to take the entire clip to kill them.

I recommend Hardcore mode in general to anybody *(edit: anyone with experience/skill in first person shooters) - learn the general layout/structure of the maps in normal mode though.

Freelancer?

@Matt: Well lucky you, I hope you have fun on that plane ride, and that you get many many beta keys in order to spread happiness on the internet (to me, specifically).

CS:GO will be available to play at PAX for the xbox360, and at the EurogamerExpo on the ps3. Valve will be handing out PC Beta Keys to everyone who plays at these two shows - the beta is going to start sometime after Eurogamer (some say right after, in late september). Gabe Newell has said that cross-platform play is the goal, meaning Console vs PC players if Microsoft and Sony allow it.

If anyone here on GB is attending either PAX or the Eurogamer Expo, if you try out CS:GO and get a beta key you don't plan to use, I would love you forever if you passed it on to me.

eh, burned that bridge - no going back.

they could go through a bunch of the Mods for CSS - Gun Game and the like. Or they could stream me playing it and talk over it. Hah.

Hidden Path's work on updating CS:S started with CS:S's release on MAC, and incorporating Achievements - and they kind of broke the game for about a month while doing it. They did start doing some good work updating maps (de_Inferno had the buggy Yellow Generator removed), but that work mysteriously stopped a couple of months ago and they stopped responding on the steam forums.

They are consulting with ESEA during development - so that's a pretty good sign that they're reaching out to the competitive community.

I'm a bit curious to see how mod support is handled - hopefully Valve realizes that the reason Counter-Strike games still have over a 100,000 active players per day (more than TF2, despite it being free.) is because of things like Gun-Game, Zombie Mods, Deathrun, Jump maps, Hide and Seek and a hundred other mods that servers are running.

Been playing counter-strike for a decade - still addicted to it unfortunately - I'm interested to see just what they will do with it after all this time.

The work Hidden Path Entertainment did transferring CS:S to the Mac-compatable Orange Box version of the Source Engine wasn't well received. Can't wait to see/hear reports from PAX.