Price: $14.99

Rating: M

Genre: First-person shooter

Modes: Competitive, Casual, Demolition, Arms Race

Platforms: PC, Xbox 360, PS3

Released by: Steam

Release date: August 21, 2012

Initial Rating: 6/10

Final Rating: 9/10

+ Clear graphics

+ Custom maps

+ Low-cost

+/- Weapon customization

– Community

– No player customization

Counter Strike: Global Offensive is the fourth, and most recent game in the Counter Strike series. CS:GO is a major upgrade from the previous CS games, implementing new game modes, weapons, and graphics that have been greatly improved. From the minute I was introduced to Counter Strike: Global Offensive less than a year ago, I was hooked.

CS:GO is a FPS game based off of teamwork and thinking strategically. It differs from games like Call Of Duty, where there’s killstreaks, diving, claymores, and aim-assist. CS:GO is more straight-forward, with just knives, guns, and grenades. It’s easy to go back and forth on how one game is better than the other, but it’s hard to compare the two. CS:GO focuses on taking it slow and planning your moves, whereas COD is a faster paced game where you can jump in and easily get kills, especially with all of the broken hitboxes.

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive started off with a bad rep, but over the years has seen major improvements and has become one of the most-played PC games. With CS:GO’s release in 2012, it was missing many components from the previous Counter-Strike game, Counter-Strike Source. Many of the popular maps from CSS were absent in CS:GO, and now you have to pay for skins to customize weapons, as opposed to just downloading them online like you could in CSS. Counter-Strike veterans, don’t let this stop you from playing the new addition to the series. Missing maps were added to the game, graphics are much better now than they were in Source, and players have a chance to get skins and other items from drops at the end of games.

It was easy for me to get hooked into the game from the moment I started playing. There’s so many different game modes, and players can even create their own maps and mini games. Popular game modes made by players include surfing, prop hunt, and hide and seek. There are 5 Official game modes: Competitive, Deathmatch, Arms Race, Demolition, and Casual. If you’re looking for a face paced game mode, Deathmatch would be the way to go. In Deathmatch it’s a free-for-all, every man for himself ordeal. There’s instant respawn and an unlimited amount of money, so you can buy whichever weapons you’d like. When I first started playing, I often played Arms Race and Demolition so I could get practice with all of the different guns in the game, instead of using only SMGs or rifles. In these two game modes, you can play on the Counter-Terrorist or Terrorist side, trying to eliminate the enemy team. You don’t get to choose your weapons, so this is a good game mode for new players who want to get a feel for each of the different guns in the game.

Competitive matchmaking could definitely use some improvement. Almost every time I go into a comp, there’s at least one person who’s either hacking or “smurfing”. Smurfing is when players with a high competitive rank purchase the game on another steam account, playing against people of a lower rank due to the way Valve has it’s matchmaking set up. This can become very aggravating to players who just want to play the game and increase their own ranks. Other than those two issues, Competitive games are a blast. They’re a great way to get together with friends and really slow down the game. Rounds are short, and require you to think strategically under pressure.

If you’ve played the first Counter-Strike games and are looking for an excuse to get back into it, CS:GO is the way to go. GO keeps the feeling of the original CS games, but it’s cleaner, polished, and a blast to play with all the new game modes. For those willing to put in the hours needed to learn the maps and weapons, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive can easily become the game of the generation.