Game Review: Counter-Strike: Global Offensive

2015’s fastest growing online multiplayer first person shooter; CSGO is the 4^th instalment of the Counter-Strike franchise.  Developed by Valve, CSGO brings back all the original maps found in the first series while revamping their graphics and balancing gameplay for more competitive opportunities. CSGO follows the same concept of its predecessors, where players work together to eliminate enemy teams or complete set objectives.

Released in late 2012, CSGO had a slow start to its launch but further development and new features such as cosmetic skins skyrocketed CSGO’s popularity. Micro transactions were also introduced with the cosmetic skins, allowing players to trade their skins or in return for money. But following the release of cosmetic skins, Valve received a lot of criticism in their lack of development, where a majority of game updates were to introduce new skins and not to develop gameplay. Large player based forums such as /r/GlobalOffensive found on Reddit acts as a major method of communication and after browsing for quite a long period of time, I found various issues that hadn’t been dealt with by Valve for a long period of time and consequently left Valve with a notorious reputation for temporarily dealing with game issues through the introduction of new skins.

Although unsolved issues still exist, those that have a major impact on gameplay tend to be fixed almost instantaneously. Since its introduction, CSGO has developed a huge competitive scene, building upon its existing infrastructure from the Counter-Strike: Source competitive scene. The game’s competitiveness and intensity results in a large viewer base evident from the large prize pools during major events where the tournament winner earn up to $250,000 dollars, keeping in mind these events happen almost every month.  Since its release, it has been estimated almost $3.8 million has been awarded in prize money at CSGO tournaments.

To uphold this competitive scene, development and balancing is necessary to ensure a fair and entertaining match between professional teams. Due to the objective nature of the game, certain sides (terrorist or counter-terrorist) were often found disadvantaged and to avoid this, fixes were introduced. Aside from maps, guns have also undergone constant adjustments to ensure a balanced game in both the competitive and professional scene.

Overall, CSGO is a quality product delivered by Valve, meeting the expectations of consumers and players who have a long history with the franchise. Counter-Strike has had a history of up’s and down’s, where it first reached its peak during the first installment of “Counter-strike” but fell downhill over the next few releases. CSGO delivers quality graphics while still being able to be run by any computer on the market today, but its biggest reason of popularity has been due to the amazing gameplay.