Posted by Hakuna Matata
Thursday, January 26, 2012
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Firing Shots in the Counter-Strike GO Beta
A beta test for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive,
the latest version of Valve's ultra-popular online competitive shooter,
went live recently, showing off a slice of what will eventually be
included in the final 2012 release. Not all the weapons, maps and modes
are in it yet, but the gameplay still feels great, mostly because it
plays just like Counter-Strike.
That means it's really easy to get killed. There's no regenerating
health in Counter-Strike, so you can't hide behind a barrel and wait a
few seconds to erase the lingering effects of a mistake. Every step you
take and every shot you fire is important. Considering many still play
Counter-Strike to this day, they know the layouts of maps possibly
better than the floor plans of their own homes. That's certainly
something to consider if you were thinking of jumping into
Counter-Strike GO as your first Counter-Strike experience, though you
can play against bots to practice in case you don't feel ready for
matches with live players.
In the beta right now you can play Dust and Dust 2, both of which should
be very familiar to franchise veterans. Dust 2 is essentially untouched
aside from the visual upgrade, though Dust has a few new features,
opening up a few more access points around the underpass area to make a
Terrorist assault through that corridor a little more viable.
The game still pits Counter-Terrorists against Terrorists, separated
into teams of five. On Dust and Dust 2 the objective is for the
Counter-Terrorists to stop the Terrorist from planting and detonating a
bomb at one of two designated zones on a map. You can also just kill
every player on the other team to win, though if the bomb is planted,
the Counter-Terrorists still need to defuse it before detonation to
secure a victory. The play is round-based, and if you're killed you'll
spend the remainder of the round spectating the survivors until the next
round begins.
Two modes of play are implemented right now: Casual and Competitive. On
Casual mode friendly fire is turned off, you're given body armor at the
start of a round and you get a decent amount of starting cash, meaning
you can get better gear right away. In Competitive mode the starting
amount of cash isn't as large and, more importantly, friendly fire is
turned on, so you really need to be careful. If you're new, definitely
steer clear of Competitive or you're going to have some very irritated
teammates if you get your targets mixed up.
Like before, making kills and winning rounds builds up your cash
reserves, letting you purchase better gear. There is only a limited
selection of weapons in the current beta, but you can still buy assault
rifles, submachine guns, pistols and sniper rifles depending on how you
want to play. To score kills you'll need to be precise – spraying
bullets all over an enemy sometimes won't hit them at all, so you need
to be accurate and fire in short bursts to be effective from more than
point blank range.
Global Offensive is coming to Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 as well, but
for now the beta test is PC only.
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