Counter-Strike 2 Tarnishes CSGO's Reputation; Steam Ratings Plummet
The debut of Counter-Strike 2 continues to generate considerable excitement, though not necessarily positive in the face of the game's shortcomings and pains.
Dreams are a beautiful thing, but they are often brutally verified by reality. Probably such thoughts plague many fans of Counter-Strike, because premiere of CS 2 did not meet the expectations of some players, who let their dissatisfaction be known in negative reviews on Steam.
CS 2 has divided players
To be clear, Counter-Strike still has mostly positive reviews from users of the platform. We write: "still," because the follow up has completely replaced CSGO, also taking over its ratings (although, unfortunately, not its achievements).
Nevertheless, a glance at the data from Steam from the last few days emphatically shows that quite a number of gamers quickly lost enthusiasm after the debut of CS on Source 2 engine. Since the release of Counter-Strike 2 has received almost as many negative as positive reviews.
Counter-Strike 2 has as many supporters as opponents.Source: Steam.
As a result, the latter account for 74% of all reviews (more than 156,000) over the past 30 days. This doesn't look like a disaster until one realizes that as recently as September 27 the game was praised in 90% of reviews from similar period (via Wayback Machine). It's hard to find better evidence of fan frustration.
No old, not enough new
Part of the reason why CS 2 has divided players is somewhat obvious. The "sequel" introduces a lot of modifications compared to CSGO, and nothing irritates veterans as much as changes to a well-known game. Especially when the novelties completely replace the "good old" gameplay, just like Counter-Strike 2 contributed to the removal of Global Offensive from Steam (if you don't count the beta version, which only enables you play on fan servers).
Unfortunately, the allegations are not limited to blind nostalgia and frustration at the removal of a well-known and well-liked predecessor. Players also point to various weaknesses of CS 2, which according to some people is still more a beta version than a full-fledged Counter-Strike.
Some of these allegations we mentioned last week, only that it was difficult to assess their validity only half a day after the release. Now it's not only common players who are talking about the problems, but also some influencers (e.g. Anomaly).
- One of the biggest problems is lack of content from CSGO. The sequel lacks maps and game modes, or even features. Gun Game, War Games, Danger Zone, character models - these and other elements, for now, do not appear in CS 2. Which wouldn't be a problem if the players had access to them in CSGO or if two introduced completely new content.
- In technical terms, the new Counter-Strike is far from perfect. A number of glitches have been collected by Steam user TimmiWanted1243 in a separate thread. Some of them are minor, but players have also noticed problems with matchmaking in ranked mode, sound imperfections (sounds are muffled, as if the player is underwater) and performance, as well as various other bugs.
CS 2 fixed
Some of the problems can be considered debatable (such as the allegation of "weak" sounds and weapon animations), and some have been fixed in the first updates. The latest patch has been released yesterday and fixed, among other things, a penalty to the speed of movement on the mud (although not everyone considers this a good move).
It also falls to mention that Valve has already taken on cheaters in CS 2, blocking accounts en masse (via Reddit). Considering that many people didn't expect developers to take any major action against these pseudo-players, the wave of bans came as a pleasant surprise to the community. Especially since Valve reversed some of the wrongful blocks for Windows 7 users (via Reddit).
Nevertheless, the highly anticipated release of Counter-Strike has not gone smoothly. It remains to be hoped that Valve will develop and improve the game quickly, and not in their sense of time.
