Recent reviews by virgumius

Now before I start I'd just like to mention that while I have played both CS 1.6 and CSS I've only played so little of them so CSGO is my first real CS game.

Where should I start, let's see:

Performance- it runs very well with really good visuals for a game of this type so you can even play it on low end laptops as long as the maps aren't huge.

Gameplay- It is entirely a skill based game, and one that you don't get good at after 30 hours or so. It feels very rewarding when you can see yourself improving over a long period of time but if you're coming from arcade shooters like battlefield/cod etc. you will have a hard time getting used to CSGO. The gameplay is very simplistic yet hard to master, you have your health, your armor (which doesn't shield you completely since every weapon has armor penetration) and a relatively big selection of guns each with different stats and handling. The "recoil" which is basically a spray pattern is brutal and unforgiving in this game, it will probably take you years to master it. The matches themselves are really simple as well, you have two teams T- terrorists and CT- counter-terrorists. Ussually the CTs have to protect two bomb sites while the Ts have to deliver the bomb to one of the two bomb sites, plant it and defent it for 40 seconds. There are also hostage rescue scenarios where Ts have to guard hostages while CTs are trying to rescue them. The teams are 5 players in size (competetive) and 10 (casual) so if you end up killing the enemy team before doing your objective you end up winning the round anyways. Worth mentioning is that this game actually has hitboxes that are the actual size of your body and not the traditional square boxes which are much bigger then your body which only adds even more to the difficulty of the game.

Competetive side of the game- Now I rarely play casual and other custom game types the game has to offer but from all the competetive games I've played (MOBAs and other shooters) CSGO is definetely the best. The matchmaking used to be really bad but now you have prime matchmaking, basically attaching your phone number to your account. In all the time I have played competetive games I've came to the conclussion that CSGO's prime matchmaking is the best matchmaking out of any PvP game I've played, the matches really feel 50/50 provided you don't get griefers etc.

Community content- There is a lot of community made stuff for this game, like A LOT. If you don't feel like playing competetive you have a huge selection of community servers which range from zombie servers to roleplay servers.

Community- The community is the only real problem of the game in my opinion. Players here are very toxic, unfriendly, racist and what not. You'll always get bashed for your nationality, regardless of where you're from. There are a lot of kids (literal kids age 8-14) who are screaming, grefing, blasting music over the voice chat. During competetive play, players refuse to communicate which is essential for winning or if they are premates they will communicate in their native language and ignore the rest of the team. If you'll fail at doing something e.g. protecting the bomb when you're the last alive in your team, be prepared to have a lot of angry guys in their 40s who are sitting in what seems to be e-cafes to start shouting at you. Also I have been kicked multiple times by 4 premates as a "joke" when the match is ending and what not. Ofcourse that doesn't apply to everyone, but it will probably happen every match (if not from your team, it's going to be from the enemy team). I really reccomend playing competetive with atleast 1 friend.

Servers- The servers are good but not perfect. I am no tech geek but apperantly the servers are running at a little too slow rate for this game which is heavily noticable when playing with AWP (or any weapon really). There have been multiple instances when you hit someone in the arm and there's blood all over the place but when you get killed you find out you haven't even landed a single hit. Now I'm not sure about other regions, but Europeans servers are a bit weird. I am currently residing in the UK and it is very weird when I get matched with Russians, Turks or even people from the Middle East. Naturally they refuse to communicate or if they don't they only do it in their native language, their pings are ussually high as well (~100)

Skins- Now I've seen a lot of people hate on this game solely because of skins. "This is retarded, who would pay £xxx for this and £xx for that when the game only costs £x". Really the skins are purely cosmetical and offer no game changing stuff like better stats or anything whether it's a 3 cent skin or a 4 digit skin. Now I can see the appeal behind the skins and I will probably end up buying a few myself but to those who are salty about the whole skins thing; I really don't know why you people care about where other people are spending their money on.

Tl;dr highly addictive and fun competetive game. Entirely skill and teamwork based. Great matchmaking. High learning curve (takes years to "master"). Really well optimised (can be ran on low end PCs and laptops). Really toxic and racist community.