Counter-Strike 2 might revolutionize first-person shooters forever

We might look back on CS2 20 years in the future, calling it revolutionary

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Valve’s Counter-Strike 2 is said to be released in Summer 2023, and we can’t wait a second longer. CS2 is said to be much more than a fancy graphics update and a fresh coat of paint, it’s going to fundamentally change Counter-Strike for the better. Not only that, Counter-Strike 2 might revolutionize first-person shooters forever.

CS2 hasn’t been released yet, but we do know CS2’s release window. Hopefully, it’s not on Valve time, we can’t wait another minute longer than we have to.

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Valve has a history of revolutionizing Game Genres

Basically, every Valve game ever made is responsible for setting a precedent on “how a game should be done”. Let’s dive in and take a brief look at how each game changed its industry.

A lot of the material in this article was inspired by a fantastic video by tazzan over on YouTube.

Half-Life

Let’s take it right back to the 19th of November 1998, Half-Life’s release date. Half-Life showed us what’s possible in terms of 3D-rendered games. Whilst the graphics are almost laughable now, at the time they were good. But where Half-Life really shone was its amazing storytelling abilities.

Half-Life was praised for its fantastic storytelling, this only got better with the second installment in the series, Half-Life 2, which is often regarded as one of the best games ever made in the FPS genre.

Not to mention the mark Half-Life made in the science fiction genre thanks to its out-of-the-box thinking, a truly hard contender to beat, that very few games have managed.

Portal

That’s the FPS space covered, now let’s move on to puzzles with the Portal series. Portal was birthed in 2007 and it took the puzzle game Genre by storm. Not only do you have to solve puzzles, you have to do it with a portal mechanic that creates gateways through space and time.

The graphics were also fantastic for the time, so much so, we now have a remastered Portal with RTX to play with. Not only that but the character building in this game is top-notch, playing a voice-less protagonist has to move mountains in terms of character storytelling, and Portal does just that.

It’s pretty sound to say Valve’s Portal is the grandfather of any game that contains a similar portal mechanic, Splitgate comes to mind when I think of another cool portal-based game. Not to take anything away from Splitage, that’s a fantastic game within itself.

TF2

Team Fortress 2 is THE game I spent the most time playing as a kid, mainly because it was free on Steam. TF2 is a hero shooter, that serves as a prime example of how stylized art and something outside of the norm can go far in the gaming industry.

The art style chosen for TF2 almost makes the game seem light-hearted, but then coupled with the gore that can be encountered when you blow a medic to smithereens is a stark contrast. A stark contrast that serves to somehow make the act seem more horrific.

It’s probably safe to say that Stylized cartoony hero shooters might not be what they are today without the popularity of TF2. TF2 actually still has around 114,000 players daily, not bad for a game that was released in 2007.

These examples weren’t supposed to be game reviews, but hopefully, it serves as a good example of why these games are so highly regarded within the gaming community.

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Counter-Strike 2 may change FPS games forever

Just like the genres mentioned above, Counter-Strike has also revolutionalized the “1 life military shooter” category of games. But does that mean CS2 will be regarded as revolutionary when it’s spoke of years from now?

CS2 Smokes

One of the ways that CS2 is changing the game, so to speak, is through its volumetric smoke grenades. These new smoke grenades react to the environment and the players on the map. If you shoot at it, your bullets displace the smoke, if you blow it up, the smoke dissipates for a few seconds.

No game has achieved this kind of realism with smoke simulation, but saying that we’re not sure if smoke in any other game is as important as it is in Counter-Strike.

Another way that CS2 may revolutionize tactical shooters is the new sub-tick rate implemented for CS2.

What is a sub-tick rate?

I’ll try not to go too in-depth here as it can be a little confusing. Almost every game ever operates with a tick rate, be that single or multiplayer. Say a game ran at 60 ticks per second, then a game will look for and register inputs 60 times in a second. Good right?

Well, sometimes even that’s not enough, and an amount might be made too late and pushed to the next tick, resulting in death, or some other bullshit that clearly shouldn’t have happened. Or you know, the other guy is cheating.

Sub-ticks change all that, as when you press the input, that’s when it happens in the game, instantly, with no waiting for ticks. This can be fantastic for a tactical game such as CS2, where the slightest input can mean the difference between a win and a loss.

Additional features

There have been more than a few creature comforts added that allows the user to experience the world of counter-Strike like never before. One of these new features is the ability to inspect the bomb as a CT agent. Until now, we’ve never been able to inspect the bomb, but now we can, there are even some neat little rare animations that can play when you inspect it.

It’s little things like this that round off the CS experience and really flesh out the game in a way that doesn’t directly attribute itself to gameplay, but it does help the game feel complete as a whole. We’re pretty sure almost everything is inspectable in CS2, maybe the bomb being added to that list is just the developers wanting to make everything feel truly a part of the game. Only time will tell.

Map overhauls

Valve is currently hard at work overhauling some of our favorites CS: GO maps, bringing the likes of Overpass and Mirage back into modern times.

A lot of the maps have undergone some kind of physical and lighting change that will really help bring the maps up to date. Personally, I don’t mind the look of CS:GO currently, but I wouldn’t mind if things got a new lick of paint. Veteran fans of the mainstream maps need not fret, as “touchstone” maps will be left largely alone, with just some texture and lighting changes. I know how … particular and protective the CS community can be.

Of course, I haven’t played CS2, despite my numerous emails demanding limited test access for … work reasons, I have received no response. So there’s no true way to know just how much CS2 will revolutionize the industry until we all get our hands on it.

But I’m telling you now, I’ll be very surprised if we aren’t looking back on CS2 in 20 years’ time, and talking about it in the manner in which we speak about Half-Life now. Claim your “I was here” badges at the door. Counter-Strike 2 might revolutionize first-person shooters forever.