Valve has announced Counter-Strike 2. The American publisher has put an end to rumors about the new installment of its action title by publishing the first videos of the game and setting a date: it will arrive this summer as a free update for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.
The oldest of today’s competitive games – let’s remember that its first version dates back to 1999 – will receive in a few months what, in Valve’s words, is “the most important technical advance in the history of Counter-Strike”.
Valve, which is the leading company in the distribution of computer games, has released the first details of this update, among which the role that volumetric smoke will play stands out. And it is that thanks to the technical leap to the Source 2 graphics engine, now the smoke will be represented in a much more natural and dynamic way, something that will also affect the games.
Another novelty of this new version will have to do with the tickrates, which is the speed at which the server registers the changes that occur in the game. In other words, the higher the tick rate, the higher the precision, something essential in a competitive title. Now it will be much more stable and will not vary according to the actions carried out by the player, a request long demanded by its user community.
Valve has announced these changes through a page where it offers abundant examples in the form of videos and comparative images. There is also talk of updated maps, redesigned visual and audio effects, as well as the possibility of transferring all items purchased in Counter-Strike: GO to the new version.
Counter-Strike 2 will not arrive until summer, but the company chaired by Gabe Newell has announced that starting today some selected users will receive an invitation to start testing the game. “During the test, we will evaluate a subset of CS2 features in order to resolve potential issues before its global release,” they say.
In Counter-Strike, two teams of players (counter-terrorists and terrorists) compete to take down the rival team, rescue hostages, or prevent opponents from planting or neutralizing an explosive.
The game has been the absolute king of competitive action games for over two decades. As the years have passed, competitors as powerful as Call of Duty, Apex Legends or Valorant have appeared, but Valve’s veteran FPS (first-person shooter) continues to be the great reference within this genre, both for its fame and by their numbers of players and spectators.