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.