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Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Revealed – Trailer, Previews, Videos

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Global Offensive has been revealed, both through GTTV’s exclusive world premiere trailer, and some fresh new gameplay from IGN! All of it, after the jump.

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Revealed – Trailer, Previews, Videos

Episode 418 of GameTrailers TV doesn’t appear to be out yet, but Global Offensive’s first official trailer has been released on GameTrailers! Check it out:

I like it! The game looks great! The poses and animations look a bit strange, though, and the music is nice, but not as good as what we’re used to hearing in Counter-Strike. Why couldn’t they find Zak Belica? He’s to Counter-Strike what Kelly Bailey is to Half-Life. Maybe Chris Jensen as well? The maps look gorgeous, though! And there’s two new maps we spotted – the first one is shown on-screen when “New Maps” appears, at 00:28 through to 00:29. This looks like a smalltown-themed map.

The other is shown on-screen when “New Game Modes” appears, at 00:30 through to 00:31. It seems to appear again two more times, at 00:40 through to 00:41, then again at 00:47 through to 00:48 (though this last one also resembles the ramp leading to the underground and bomb site B in DE_Nuke). This seems to be a factory-themed map, with lots of conveyor belts and some imposing catwalks. Another interesting thing is the fact that they’ve switched from “early 2012” to just “2012”.

But that’s not all the gameplay we have! IGN has uploaded some fresh new gameplay of their own!

The first thing you notice is the new HUD. The money status has been moved to the top left. Apart from that, the HUD has been streamlined pretty extensively. The next thing you’ll notice is the revised layout for the underpass (or tunnel, if you prefer) layout in DE_Dust. It’s been widened significantly, giving the Terrorists a lot more room to breath.

In addition, a path has been opened up in the underpass – there is now a stairwell connecting the underpass to the balcony above it. This allows the Terrorists to be more versatile in their attack, and it also gives the CT’s a new window of opportunity for their counter-attack. Sharp-eyed fans will also spot that that very same balcony has now been linked to the balcony on the CT spawn side, giving the Terrorists a quicker path into bomb site A.

IGN’s got more footage from Dust here. This one’s a bit longer, and is filmed from the CT’s perspective. They’ve also made a “kill montage”, which features the finest kills, taken from all the gameplay they’ve released thus far.

The game did seem a lot easier to play (Two kills in a row with the TMP? That’s… pretty impressive.), but it may have been on Casual mode, which is one of the two main playing modes in GO, alongside Competitive mode. But that’s not all IGN has for us. They’ve created an in-depth preview with a lot of new footage. Check it out!

PC beta in October, you say? We’ve heard that PC beta codes will be given out to anyone who tries out CS:GO at PAX and the Eurogamer Expo, which implies that the beta won’t be open to everyone. We’re thinking of a more invitational beta, with a completely public one taking place some time after that. The beta will be PC-only, but PAX and E2 will only have the console versions available for play.

And IGN have also written a text preview to go with this video preview. You should definitely check it out, but we will be looking through the more essential information anyway.

Turns out the CTs’ defusal kits are no longer buyable – at the start of a round, 2 randomly selected players will get defusal kits. So it’s sort of like the Terrorists’ bomb. In addition, the two main modes – Casual and Competitive, will feature a number of differences in the money system. In Casual, you get plenty of money each round, but in Competitive, much like the CS of today, you start off poor, and if you’re not up to the challenge posed by the opposing team, you’ll stay poor.

The game’s skill-based matchmaking defaults to 5v5, which is good, but you can always use the server browser to navigate dedicated servers. Consoles won’t have this functionality.

Confirmed maps so far are Dust, Dust 2, Aztec, Office, Nuke, Italy and Inferno. Some good choices here – these maps are CS’s first and foremost time-tested maps, but I was hoping for a bit more variety. 5 DE maps, but only 2 HR maps. Where’s Assault? Militia? Havana? Compound? Hell, what about the Hostage Rescue classics like 747, Siege, Estate and Backalley? Having these classics would go a long way towards attracting veteran players.

There’s also some other Detonation maps that should make an appearance: Piranesi, Cobblestone, Airstrip, Sienna, and other classics like Chateau, Train, Vegas and Vertigo. Of course, I’m not asking that all of these be added, but I’m sure Valve could place these under reconsideration, for a future DLC, at the very least.

There’s also a new special item, apart from the Molotov – the Zeus stun gun:

Another addition, the Zeus stun gun, is meant to be a tool of humiliation rather than something reliable. Valve considers it to be a joke weapon at this point. It’s more expensive to buy than even the Molotov, carries only one charge, and needs to be fired at ultra-close range to hit. Though it seemed somewhat impractical given most are using deadly long-range weapons, I’m very interested to see if pro players may be able to come up with a more effective application for it.

Also, if you are worried about the smaller HUD and consolized buy menu, don’t worry:

Valve plans on implementing a proper heads-up display and buy menu eventually. Counter-Strike GO is still very much in development, and much of the appropriate polish has yet to be added.

Understandable! The game is still practically in pre-beta form.

Unfortunately it doesn’t sound like sprays are going to make it in

WHAT?! Sprays? Gone? No. NO. It cannot be.

but Valve still has a few surprises in store in terms of new maps and game modes.

I’m sure they do, but the only surprises we need are sprays. I don’t care if they bring Assassination back – we gotta have sprays.

And in case you were wondering, Valve has no plans for microtransactions in GO. That means no hats, aside from those already on the character models.

Oh, thank god. If losing sprays is the price we have to pay for no hats, then I guess I’ll gladly pay up. In any case, we’re not done yet! Kotaku also made a text preview – let’s take a look at that as well.

Players like me can cheer for the game’s new Casual mode. In it, money is no object and players can buy weapons for each round without worrying about cost. They will be playing with voice-chat open to all players, on both sides and the ability to spectate any player’s actions, again, from either faction, should they die and be watching the rest of the round as it plays out. Casual is, Magal and Valve writer Chet Faliszek explained to me, part of their and partner studio Hidden Path’s effort to “lower the skill floor” for new players.

Interesting. I suppose it ain’t bad, but I do hope we won’t see a number of players either sticking to Casual mode, or coming back to it repeatedly for a few cheap kills.

What else is new? PC vs PS3 cross-platform play could be a possibility, as Valve is working to achieve that. PS3 players will also be able to use their PlayStation Move or a mouse and keyboard in CS:GO.

In the future we’ll find out about new modes and maps associated with them, innovations to the formula about which the Valve guys dropped no hints, other than to mention that for some reason, on some undisclosed map, some players will be in the role of professional bank robbers.

Could this be the smalltown-themed map we saw? Sounds promising!

Kotaku have also made a list of the eight brand new weapons we’ll be seeing: the Decoy Grenade, the Molotov cocktail, the IMI Negev (an Israeli light machine gun), the Zeus stun gun, the TEC-9, the MAG-7, which is a pump-action shotgun with a sub-machine gun-like design, the Sawed-Off (could be the pump-action shotgun we saw in IGN’s footage), and the PP-Bizon, which is a sub-machine gun with a design similar to the AK-47 assault rifle. And speaking of weapons, all the bullets will now be tracer rounds, leaving lines behind them that can be traced back to their source, allowing new and old players alike to quickly adapt to any situation in which they are being fired upon.

The game is set to go into beta this October. Attendees of PAX and the Eurogamer Expo will get Beta codes they can redeem later, and Valve will provide fans other means, not yet announced, to get into the game. Through the beta, which is PC only, and through dialogue with more players of all levels, they want to tweak and perfect this game. As Faliszek and Magal showed me CS:GO, they frequently referred to stats in the game that might change.

That’s the point of the beta and the continued dialogue, to determine, for example, if bombs should detonate in 45 seconds, as they did in the build I played, or if that time will be shortened to 35 in Competitive mode. Defusal is currently 10 seconds. Decoys last about five.

Other means? Interesting, but I hope we won’t be dealing with a “first come, first serve” system.

For example, Valve was going to eliminate the ability to get armor, but was talked out of it by Source players. So they added them in, made them cost money for Competitive mode, made them free for Casual and they think they’ve solved the problem. For now, Valve is confident that they’ve made the right decision to eliminate random spawn points on all maps, a trait of the old games they think the community agrees led to unfair advantages.

Well, Valve is certainly altering the gameplay! Not in the bad way, of course. I’m very glad to see we’re finally getting a new Counter-Strike that actually feels and plays differently.

Counter-Srike: Go is scheduled for a first quarter 2012 release on the PC, Mac, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. It will be download-only. Faliszek couldn’t tell me what it’ll cost.

First quarter? Well, that’s got my spirits up. I was worried Valve was starting to replace “early 2012” with just 2012, which means just about anything! Still, download-only? I’m not exactly psyched about that.

Those are all the major previews and videos currently out there. A number of competitive players have also weighed in on the game itself. You can find these previews, and more in-depth coverage at CSGONews.com and CounterStrikeGO.com.

1 Comment

  1. YAY!
    Thanks for teh article Vic!

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