Eurogamer’s grand high poobah Tom ‘Tom Bramwell’ Bramwell makes a welcome return to RPS to tell us all about the latest makeover of Valve’s undying multiplayer shooter Counter-Strike, which was was released to the world just yesterday. > (more…)
I promised you a video of the new Arms Race mode in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, so here it is.
The objective pretty much mirrors the game's other modes: kill the enemy team. But navigating the much more open area maps quickly makes you lose sight of anything team-based.
As you secure kills, you'll move up in levels and the game will instantly trade your gun for another. The first player who kills their enemy with every gun including the final weapon—a knife granted to you when you reach the last of the 26 levels—wins the round. Our video editor, Chris Person, rampaged through the Baggage map as seen in the video above, slowly moving through each new level's weapon all the way down to the knife. Take a look at Arms Race from the Terrorist's perspective above.
Arms Race is incredibly fast-paced. The idea was born from Counter-Strike's original Gun Game mod, and you've probably seen similar modes since then in the likes of Call of Duty titles. Instant respawn adds to the fast nature of the game, but you'll have to be careful for spawn campers. Or enemies who have idly wandered into your spawn point.
It's damn good fun, and particularly fulfilling if you can manage to be the first to pull off that last knife kill to win the round.
I promised you a video of the new Arms Race mode in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, so here it is.
The objective pretty much mirrors the game's other modes: kill the enemy team. But navigating the much more open area maps quickly makes you lose sight of anything team-based.
As you secure kills, you'll move up in levels and the game will instantly trade your gun for another. The first player who kills their enemy with every gun including the final weapon—a knife granted to you when you reach the last of the 26 levels—wins the round. Our video editor, Chris Person, rampaged through the Baggage map as seen in the video above, slowly moving through each new level's weapon all the way down to the knife. Take a look at Arms Race from the Terrorist's perspective above.
Arms Race is incredibly fast-paced. The idea was born from Counter-Strike's original Gun Game mod, and you've probably seen similar modes since then in the likes of Call of Duty titles. Instant respawn adds to the fast nature of the game, but you'll have to be careful for spawn campers. Or enemies who have idly wandered into your spawn point.
It's damn good fun, and particularly fulfilling if you can manage to be the first to pull off that last knife kill to win the round.
Let's all admit that Dust was a fantastic map in Counter-Strike: Source. It was small enough to where the pace was always active, with the proper amount of choke points and alternate routes for optimal strategizing. But part of the charm of Source was discovering the community maps and mods.
Valve understands that charm all too well. Which is why they've helped support Plague Fest modders to develop their Zombie Mod for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Valve has apparently even developed the zombie model themselves.
The Zombie Mod is kind of hit or miss currently. It's a little buggy, textures are wonky, and some of the maps are confusing. The one server dedicated to this particular mod is also currently capped at 25 players. Fortunately there are plans to extend that to 64 which, once you get into the server, you'll realize how much more appropriate that is for a mod that emphasizes a horde of zombie players as your enemy.
But this Mirror's Edge map in particular caught the eye of our video editor, Chris Person.
It's not the typical experience of playing rounds of Global Offensive. It's a not the quick rounds of small maps that you're used to. There's even less emphasis on shooting your guns. The Mirror's Edge map is more about parkouring through the large, spacious area. Occasionally you'll be forced into choke points to fend off a large group of zombies.
There's something weirdly peaceful about a round of Global Offensive in this mod/map combination, especially thanks to the Mirror's Edge music. It feels like an entirely different experience. Check it out in our video above, courtesy of Chris.
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is officially available as of today. But if you haven't touched the beta or purchased the game retail, feel free to get familiar with some of the old school maps and new(ish) school modes right here.
This video gives you a glimpse at what the first-person shooting action in CS: GO is like, game skills courtesy of our own Chris Person. It's not unlike Valve's immensely popular Source, full of tightly wound maps and Counter-Terrorist versus Terrorist objectives (plant the bomb, defuse the bomb, save the hostages, kill your opponents as much as you can).
The video features a glance at the Bank and Dust maps. We'll have more on the new Arms Race mode, modeled after the Gun Game mod for Counter-Strike: Source that rewards kills with a new weapon later.
Oh, and, for Chris's sake: keep in mind this was his first time playing GO. And it's been years since either of us played Source.
