Valve is ramping up participation in the Counter-Stike: Global Offensive beta, promising a whole round of keys will be handed out to people who complete a survey on the game.
All you've got to do is head here and answer some questions, and "over the coming months [Valve] will make selections from the survey participants".
In good news for the curious, unlike the company's DOTA 2 beta, new players will be welcomed as part of the intake.
Survey [Valve]
This Spring sees the release of Tactical Intervention on the PC, a game noteworthy because its development has been led by one of the co-creators of Counter-Strike. So the fact the two games look similar is no coincidence.
Former Valve staffer Minh Le, who has been working on the game in Korea for a few years now, will be publishing the game in North America through OGPlanet, with a beta to kick off next month.
While Valve's own Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is an iterative update to the venerable old franchise, Tactical Intervention looks far more ambitious, including some unexpected stuff like driving sequences.
Tactical Intervention launching in spring 2012 [Neowin]
Ooh, that’s Dwight’s desk! Remember when Jim filled his phone with coins, so it got incrementally heavier? When he took them out, Dwight hit himself in the face? And Pam’s old desk. I have a small confession: I like Erin a bit more… What? Hmm, sorry, I got a bit lost in fanboying over a video of a Counter-Strike: Source map that recreates the American version of The Office. Oh, that’s where Oscar, Angela and Kevin sit… (more…)
YouTube user Blitzkrieg1981 has, after spending around 55 hours pausing and examining episodes of the hit TV show The Office, gone and replicated the entire thing as a map in first-person shooter Counter-Strike.
Fans of the original British series, sorry. This is the American version.
Counterstrike Source The Office (TV) map [YouTube, via Reddit]
Classic PC game Counter-Strike (1.6) has been recreated for Android devices using the nifty Unity 3D engine.
There are two versions of Counter-Strike Portable available from the XDA forum now for free. One version - 5o - is for older phones; the other - 6p - for Android 2.3+ devices.
Online multiplayer is supported, and new maps are being added.
A video of Counter-Strike Portable running on Xperia Play can be found below.
The gang at XDA-Developers are hard at work on a full port of Counter-Strike to Android devices, but they've already released two playable versions Android owners can run go get free right now.
The video above shows Counter-Strike being played on a smartphone (using the game's Matrix mod) and a tablet and it appears to have variable touch controls, although I could be seeing that wrong. My personal preference is that looks a little sludgy to control—notice how many rounds he fires (touching the rifle, to do so, apparently) before bringing someone down with a headshot. However, if you have Sony's Xperia Play, well then you also have a gamepad, and now the experience becomes a little more intuitive.
Still, it's Counter-Strike. The port is being built with the Unity3D platform, will support multiplayer and can be downloaded with either Facebook or Kongregate versions available. There are two versions out there, one for devices running Android 2.0+, another for those running Android 2.3 and up. (See the XDA-Developers thread for links.) That means it won't work on anything with an earlier version of Android.
Counter Strike Now Available On Android Via Unofficial Port [RedmondPie, thanks Tanishq D.]