These are only initial impressions as I did not participate in the beta, but this seems like a somewhat technically and aesthetically better version of CS:GO. That is, it's still a competent competitive game which has mostly shed the silly community-driven soul that was present in 1.6 and Source. Community servers will come up with time, but with the button to access them more hidden then ever, I don't have high hopes for them coming back as a driving force in the identity of this series.

I'll have a more developed opinion of the mechanical changes once someone decides to implement gungame as that's my preferred game mode, but mostly I need to accept that while I can still enjoy Counter-Strike here and there, it's for a different crowd now to which the dry purity of defuse maps is all that really matters. I truly love competitive games and there was a time where I loved competitive Counter-Strike, but I got my fill of that years and years ago and the series has little interest in giving me anything else or letting that competitive game be anything other than the most barebones possible interpretation of the ruleset.

I don't mean to be too negative and I'm sure this is a great entry for someone who still played CSGO till the end and just wanted something a bit fresh with a slightly less depressing color palette. But for me, I'd rather play a game that doesn't patch out any possible method of having fun with the movement.