August 26, 2011 by Paul Curtin
Video previews of Valve’s newly announced Counter-Strike: Global Offensive have begun showing up on the net today and if one things for sure: CS:GO is definitely not Counter-Strike 2. It looks like Valve has once again decided to play things safe, similar to 2004’s Counter-Strike: Source, by updating the graphics to stay on par with today’s standards and adding minor changes to maps and the loadout system, but keeping the majority of the game the exact same. Hardcore fans of the Counter-Strike series will either embrace the better looking game or stick to playing older versions, but it’s hard to see how the series can bring in new fans with the clearly superior Call of Duty and Battlefield games hitting the market each year.
Personally, I used to love Counter-Strike, but going back and playing it a couple months ago was a weird experience when I realized that the aiming doesn’t allow you to aim down the sights, a feature that is now standard in almost every FPS game. I’m sure die-hard fans of CS would argue otherwise, but being able to aim down the sights was a feature I was hoping CS:GO would introduce to the series in order to keep it relevant. However, there is one interesting concept that CS:GO still has plans for, which is the ability to play the game cross-platform. The idea of cross-platform play has been teased by many developers over the years and never worked out well, so it will be interesting to see if Valve is able to effectively do it — if anybody can, I’d put my money on Valve.
