I was considering rewriting my Steam review, but knowing how Steam works with "updated" reviews - they won't be shown to people on the home page, so no one will know what I think of this game. So I'll use Backloggd to write a review instead.
I should preface this by saying that I've been playing Counter-Strike since I was a kid. I remember the days of me and my brother looking through pirate forums to download those "NOSTEAM" cracks of 1.6 to play together or on stuff like zombie servers and such.
I've always had an interest in Counter-Strike. In 2014, I decided to finally get CS:GO. That game...for better or worse, changed my life and who I am as a person. I don't wanna get too deep into it here, you can read my Steam review linked above to get an understanding of what I'm talking about.
Counter-Strike 2 itself...well...I like the game for what it's worth. It's still the same old CS:GO for the most part that I remember playing. And that was fully intentional - Valve was rather open with the fact that CS2 was meant to be the "same game", its whole purpose - update the engine and open up the framework to allow for bigger things for the game in the future. That was the whole point.
But Counter-Strike 2 launched far too early. I'm sure everyone's heard this saying, but it bares repeating and this is not something we should let Valve sweep under the rug. Counter-Strike 2 launched unfinished. Missing game modes, no new content, poorly thought out reworks to Competitive, the list goes on and on.
As of January 5th, 2024, we are still missing:
- All of the War Games (Arms Race / Demolition / Flying Scoutsman / Retakes)
- Danger Zone
- A whole bunch of maps
Say whatever you want about those modes "not being popular" or whatever else you want. I agree that stuff like Demolition was never played (you were barely ever able to find a match on CS:GO even when it was live) because of how poorly aged some of the modes were. That does not, however, excuse the removal of those modes without a formal explanation from Valve on their thought process behind them. I understand they revealed this in an interview later on, but why was a statement not provided ON LAUNCH?
Counter-Strike 2 launched with so little content that it's laughable. The "finished product" is practically identical to the Limited Test from March 2023. With egregious issues such as misaligned hitboxes and "elevator boosts" being a thing ON RELEASE. On what is supposed to be a "finished product". Yes, I understand they fixed these issues and are continuing to fix them with weekly updates, but that is not the point. They are fixing things that were not even broken to begin with in CS:GO.
There's more stuff to mention, like how MR12 hasn't had its economy modified to compensate. The current way the economy in CS2 is balanced is still towards MR15 (a.k.a. first to 16 wins). This genuinely makes matches in Counter-Strike 2 completely unbalanced towards the winning side.
Speaking of Competitive mode - Premier was straight up broken on release. To the point Valve had to recalibrate all of the Premier ranks for EVERYONE. My Premier rating went from 8000 to 15000 in one match when they finished it, which is like....what? So what's my actual rating?
And regular Competitive has just become the new Unranked. Several times I've queued into a match that was completely one-sided. Sometimes to my benefit and I do 28 kills in a single game and solo-carry my team, or my team has one good player and the enemy is a 5-stack who used to be Global Elite in CS:GO and played FACEIT at like 2k ELO. It's just not fun.
There is so much more I can go over that CS2 fundamentally broke, but there are dozens and dozens of Counter-Strike content creators saying this already all over the place, I'm sure you don't need me repeating it here.
As of January 2024, I still do not recommend Counter-Strike 2. This is such a bad release from Valve that I'm shocked they okay'ed this to begin with. I would still recommend people hold off on Counter-Strike 2 for at least another year and wait until Valve properly addresses the game's issues, at least until the game is feature-complete. Right now - it's not.
The worst part is that you cannot play CS:GO on the official servers anymore. Yes, Valve did give us the option to download the legacy CS:GO build through the Betas tab, but all that is good for is offline/workshop content or community servers. And good luck finding any actually good community servers, believe me - I tried.
It's so saddening to see the state Counter-Strike 2 is, especially as a long-time player of the game. I wanted to like Counter-Strike 2.
I should preface this by saying that I've been playing Counter-Strike since I was a kid. I remember the days of me and my brother looking through pirate forums to download those "NOSTEAM" cracks of 1.6 to play together or on stuff like zombie servers and such.
I've always had an interest in Counter-Strike. In 2014, I decided to finally get CS:GO. That game...for better or worse, changed my life and who I am as a person. I don't wanna get too deep into it here, you can read my Steam review linked above to get an understanding of what I'm talking about.
Counter-Strike 2 itself...well...I like the game for what it's worth. It's still the same old CS:GO for the most part that I remember playing. And that was fully intentional - Valve was rather open with the fact that CS2 was meant to be the "same game", its whole purpose - update the engine and open up the framework to allow for bigger things for the game in the future. That was the whole point.
But Counter-Strike 2 launched far too early. I'm sure everyone's heard this saying, but it bares repeating and this is not something we should let Valve sweep under the rug. Counter-Strike 2 launched unfinished. Missing game modes, no new content, poorly thought out reworks to Competitive, the list goes on and on.
As of January 5th, 2024, we are still missing:
- All of the War Games (Arms Race / Demolition / Flying Scoutsman / Retakes)
- Danger Zone
- A whole bunch of maps
Say whatever you want about those modes "not being popular" or whatever else you want. I agree that stuff like Demolition was never played (you were barely ever able to find a match on CS:GO even when it was live) because of how poorly aged some of the modes were. That does not, however, excuse the removal of those modes without a formal explanation from Valve on their thought process behind them. I understand they revealed this in an interview later on, but why was a statement not provided ON LAUNCH?
Counter-Strike 2 launched with so little content that it's laughable. The "finished product" is practically identical to the Limited Test from March 2023. With egregious issues such as misaligned hitboxes and "elevator boosts" being a thing ON RELEASE. On what is supposed to be a "finished product". Yes, I understand they fixed these issues and are continuing to fix them with weekly updates, but that is not the point. They are fixing things that were not even broken to begin with in CS:GO.
There's more stuff to mention, like how MR12 hasn't had its economy modified to compensate. The current way the economy in CS2 is balanced is still towards MR15 (a.k.a. first to 16 wins). This genuinely makes matches in Counter-Strike 2 completely unbalanced towards the winning side.
Speaking of Competitive mode - Premier was straight up broken on release. To the point Valve had to recalibrate all of the Premier ranks for EVERYONE. My Premier rating went from 8000 to 15000 in one match when they finished it, which is like....what? So what's my actual rating?
And regular Competitive has just become the new Unranked. Several times I've queued into a match that was completely one-sided. Sometimes to my benefit and I do 28 kills in a single game and solo-carry my team, or my team has one good player and the enemy is a 5-stack who used to be Global Elite in CS:GO and played FACEIT at like 2k ELO. It's just not fun.
There is so much more I can go over that CS2 fundamentally broke, but there are dozens and dozens of Counter-Strike content creators saying this already all over the place, I'm sure you don't need me repeating it here.
As of January 2024, I still do not recommend Counter-Strike 2. This is such a bad release from Valve that I'm shocked they okay'ed this to begin with. I would still recommend people hold off on Counter-Strike 2 for at least another year and wait until Valve properly addresses the game's issues, at least until the game is feature-complete. Right now - it's not.
The worst part is that you cannot play CS:GO on the official servers anymore. Yes, Valve did give us the option to download the legacy CS:GO build through the Betas tab, but all that is good for is offline/workshop content or community servers. And good luck finding any actually good community servers, believe me - I tried.
It's so saddening to see the state Counter-Strike 2 is, especially as a long-time player of the game. I wanted to like Counter-Strike 2.