Here's a strange addition to Counter-Strike: Global Offensive: you can now customise the game's music. Rather than a simple option to stream your own music from, say, Steam Music, the functionality is a virtual reskin of the music. That means new, specifically composed music for the Main Menu, win and fail screens, death camera and so on.
Dubbed music kits, the functionality is designed to help "establish your identity" in the game. "You can share your music kit with anyone you are playing with," the blogpost reads, "and they include a special broadcasted MVP anthem that players whenever you are MVP."
Nine music kits are available at launch from artists including Austin Wintory, Sean Murray, Skog and Sasha.
Some people complain there are too many zombies in video games. Well, you know what? There are. That's why you need to kill them. The newest undead invasion is hitting the Counter-Strike universe, with Counter-Strike Nexon: Zombies releasing on Steam today. It's free-to-play too, so getting involved in the extermination won't cost you a cent.
For anyone who took part in the open beta, Nexon has released a list of new bug fixes and improvements to coincide with the official release. These include important design changes including the ability to craft and disassemble certain items without using Points, through to cosmetic changes like the length of chat messages, prettier colour coding and more.
The game currently boasts 50 maps, over 20 game modes including both PvP and PvE, and more guns than Nexon's previous effort Counter-Strike Online. Most interesting is the crafting system, which allows players to change the appearance and statistics of weapons. Nexon is also promising to continue adding new content for the game, so if you hate zombies, or love them, you should be set for a while.
The Dreamhack Winter 2014 Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Championship tournament being held in November will be the latest to put a $250,000 prize pool up for grabs. And for the first time ever, all the teams taking part are being invited to train at an advance "boot camp" in Stockholm, Sweden, with accommodations provided by Valve and Dreamhack.
Following the 2013 DreamHack SteelSeries Championship, the EMS One Championship at Katowice, Poland, and the ESL One Cologne even in August, the Dreamhack Winter 2014 tournament will be the fourth beneficiary of Valve's community-funded prize pool, with prize money raised through last year's CS: GO Arms Deal update. The tourney will feature the top eight teams from ESL One Cologne—NiP-Gaming, Fnatic, Titan, Team Dignitas, Virtus.Pro, Cloud 9, Epsilon and Na'Vi—and eight others that will earn spots in online qualifiers held through October.
Announced in August 2013, the CS:GO Arms Deal update was intended to help boost the prize purses at CS:GO competitive events, and thus their visibility amongst gamers and the e-sports audience. It appears to have worked: The number of Global Offensive players has grown by more than 250 percent over the past year, while three million unique viewers tuned in to the ESL One Cologne event.
The Dreamhack Winter 2014 Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Championship will run from November 27-29 in J nk ping, Sweden. Dates and locations for the Stockholm boot camp have not yet been announced.
Evan writes about FPSes every Monday in Shooterology.
There was a round of CS:GO during last Friday s Dreamhack Invitational matches that I found really inspiring. I ve recorded some commentary over it at 25% playback speed in the video above.
The round, from a match between two of the best teams in the world, showcases Swedish sniper jw s absurd spider sense. It s a terrific individual effort, and while it delivers as a Sick MLG Pro 420 Noscope Frag Video™, it also showcases two of CS:GO s best aspects: the importance of physical awareness and the way the game s decade-old, refined map layouts prompt tough decisions.
CS:GO isn t without flaws—aside from the presence of hackers in competitive matches, the CS:GO competitive scene itself continues to suffer from DDOS attacks on players and servers during matches. The Dreamhack Invitational, despite being a LAN event, wasn't even safe from this. And those ancient maps, terrific as they generally are, aren't perfect. Nuke continues to heavily favor the CT side in CS:GO, arguably giving advantage to the team who starts on that side.
You really should watch the rest of the tournament, though, especially the final between French rivals Titan and Team LDLC.
Evan writes about FPSes every Monday in Shooterology.
There was a round of CS:GO during last Friday s Dreamhack Invitational matches that I found really inspiring. I ve recorded some commentary over it at 25% playback speed in the video above.
The round, from a match between two of the best teams in the world, showcases Swedish sniper jw s absurd spider sense. It s a terrific individual effort, and while it delivers as a Sick MLG Pro 420 Noscope Frag Video™, it also showcases two of CS:GO s best aspects: the importance of physical awareness and the way the game s decade-old, refined map layouts prompt tough decisions.
CS:GO isn t without flaws—aside from the presence of hackers in competitive matches, the CS:GO competitive scene itself continues to suffer from DDOS attacks on players and servers during matches. The Dreamhack Invitational, despite being a LAN event, wasn't even safe from this. And those ancient maps, terrific as they generally are, aren't perfect. Nuke continues to heavily favor the CT side in CS:GO, arguably giving advantage to the team who starts on that side.
You really should watch the rest of the tournament, though, especially the final between French rivals Titan and Team LDLC.