"Return CS:GO."
For the past half a year, gamers and fans of the renowned Counter-Strike series from all over the globe eagerly awaited the release of Counter-Strike 2, a new and improved version of Valve's legendary first-person shooter powered by the Source 2 engine. First announced in March 2023, CS2 promised to bring overhauled and visually-enhanced maps, volumetric smoke grenades, sub-tick update architecture, new high-resolution VFX, and more, with the developer even going as far as calling the release "the largest technical leap forward in Counter-Strike's history".
Six months of active development later, Counter-Strike 2 finally made its long-awaited debut earlier this week, released as a mandatory replacement for the beloved Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. While many in the community were happy with the release, a significant part of the playerbase has seemingly disliked the update, as evident from Counter-Strike 2's Steam reviews.
Within a day since its release, the new game amassed more than six thousand negative reviews on Steam, which, while a drop in a bucket, considering that Counter-Strike 2 uses CS:GO's ratings and already has more than seven million reviews, is still quite telling.
The majority of the negative feedback revolves around the game's performance, with players criticizing CS2 for low FPS, freezes, and other technical issues, even on high-end PCs. Others denounce Valve for "pulling a Blizzard" and removing CS:GO entirely without providing an option to play the previous iteration. Some condemn the new game for removing content that was present in the original game, such as maps and game modes. And finally, some players note that the game is currently full of cheaters and hackers, who, as they usually do, ruin the experience for everyone. Steam user, known as "domalake", summarized the main complaints perfectly, with their review reading as follows:
"Here are some of my biggest drawbacks.
List of Pros
And here are some more reviews shared by the community:
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