Counter-Strike is one of My Games. One of those games that made me. One of those games that caused me to run up a huge phone bill when 56k modems were a thing. One of those games where I can still close my eyes and get a little jolt from imagining the rattling fire of an unsilenced M4A1.

In the weirdest way considering that it’s the 4th, 6th and 9th most popular games on Steam, it’s only recently begun to feel like one of Valve’s> games. They’re now honouring the M4A1 fetishism of the game’s tens of thousands of players by adding player-created Weapon Finishes. (more…)

Thanks to the Steam Workshop, I have more random things installed on my PC than ever before. Wanderin through the workshops has become a routine in my downtime. They are the curio shops of games, a tiny sliver of insight into someone’s passions put on display. I’ll find something, subscribe, forget I have it, then turn on Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and discover it has underwater maps, battlegrounds inspired by Alice In Wonderland, and motherboards to run around on. Here’s a few of my favourites. (more…)

I have a jar of ball bearings on my desk. For each kill in CS: GO, I drop a ball into a hole in desk. The bearing rolls into a rat’s cage. The rat squeaks in terror, and a noise-activated switch turns on a fan. The fan blows a toy boat across a bucket of water, and the boat’s mast tips a small bucket of sand into another bucket. That bucket is on a string that’s tied to a switch, and it gently tugs at it, releasing another ball bearing from a small cage on a shelf above me. That other ball bearing drops into another jar. If I want to know how many kills I have, I count the balls in the jar. How do you track your kills in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive? You just use one of the StatTrak modules from the now live Arms Deal update? Show off. (more…)

I have a recurring nightmare: I’m sat at my desk and everything is soft-focus and great. I feel happy, and turn to say as much to my girlfriend. But she’s not there. It’s Gabe Newell, who is definitely not my girlfriend, and he’s using one of those old school accounting machines. On the floor is a pile of paper that he gathers up and hands to me, saying: “In Half-Life 2, destroyed 1200 crates. This is your bill.” And I say I don’t have that kind of money, then I wake up crying. I don’t think Valve would retroactively charge me for opening crates, but then I didn’t imagine that their strangely popular unlock system that drives both Team Fortress 2 and Dota 2 would end up in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. But that looks like it’s going to happen. (more…)

Did you wake up this morning feeling more judged than usual? Don’t panic. Just look around the room and see if you can spot the RPS Staring Eye of Judgement? Well done, you have chosen, or been chosen, to take part in our little experiment: the RPS Staring Eye of Judgement will, eventually, monitor your every move to ensure that when you sit down and make a comment on the site that you’ve made the correct> decisions in life up to that point. I say “eventually”, because right now it’s just a helium balloon with an eye drawn on it. Could you just drag it around and pretend, maybe making whirring and clicking noises? Thanks! We got the idea from Valve, who’ve decided to hand the matter of CS: GO’s policing over to the community. The sinister sounding Overwatch will be community members who have the power to review cheating cases reported by players and ban those responsible. (more…)

If you’re in the middle of a game of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and suddenly get the urge to play Super Mario Bros., there are a few options open to you. You could stop playing CS: GO. You could grab a nearby 3DS, perhaps yanking it from the hands of a passing four year-old, and balance it under your monitor, using a series of elaborate poking devices to manipulate the game. Or you could join Reflex Gamers’ CS: GO server, where they’ve created an emulated SNES within cs_office, complete with controllers and cartridges. You have to see this. (more…)

I’ll be honest with you: I have two middle names. I’ll be honest with you again: I will almost certainly never play Tactical Intervention, the new multiplayer shooter from Counter-Strike co-creator Minh “Gooseman” Le. Why? Because of a gypsy curse, of course. But you are under no such restrictions, which means you can play the game right now. Its open beta has launched, you see.

Update: doesn’t appear to be live in all territories as yet. Grr. Of course, there are ways and means to pretend to be American, but hopefully they’ll make it open to all comers soon. (more…)

A thing modders often do: recreate real-world locations in the form of custom videogame levels. Virtual tourism! Everyone wins!

Turns out that can land you with a five-figure fine and a cease and desist order from a government department. (more…)

CS:GO‘s map workshop opened up this week, replete with the environmental tinkerings of its busy community. There are already eight pages> of maps to flick through. Valve are keen to get more up there, too, as they explain: “Don’t hesitate to get your rough draft up on the Workshop. You can update your map as often as you’d like, and players and servers will stay current. The best way to test a map is to get players in there, so publish early and publish often!” As headlined, it’s now 50% off until the 11th, so you can get a taste of the militaristic bounty for cheap, if you want.

Anyone playing this regularly?

Given that you’ve paddled your browser over to this isle of the vast Internet ocean, I feel fairly safe in assuming that you’re a PC gamer. Therefore, you have – presumably, in some form or another – played Counter-Strike at some point in your life. But maybe that was back in ye olde futureyear of 2000, or perhaps you gave Source a go around the time Half-Life 2 came out. So along comes this newfangled “Global Offensive” thingamawhatsit, and naturally, you’re suspicious. I mean, what if they replaced all the guns with bottles of Mountain Dew? Or maybe Valve turned the series into a piece of postmodernist art, with us taking the role of a deeply contemplative bomb forced to witness the futile conflicts of man. These are very legitimate concerns, but this weekend, you can find out whether or not they hold any water. For free!

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