Counter Strike 2 Development Accelerates; Valve Adds Grenade Inspection
Valve is likely to have significantly increased the pace of Counter-Strike 2's development. The beta game recently received two updates, one of which adds grenade inspection, among other things.
Counter-Strike 2 is expected to come out of closed beta this summer, but Valve has so far not specified when exactly that will happen. However, one can suspect that the official release is coming in fast, as Steam's owner has greatly picked up the pace with release of patches and improvements to the game.
Before you throw a grenade, check it out
In recent days, the developers of CS 2 showed on their Twitter profile, among other things, what grenade inspection will look like. In the upcoming installment of the famous FPS, players will be able to take a closer look at their explosive device before throwing it towards enemies. Many fans reacted enthusiastically to this change, but it's not the only thing the community liked.
In addition, most players received positively the news that the Mirage map will disappear from the beta, and two other arenas will be introduced in its place - Nuke (bomb planting) and Office (hostage situation) in deathmatch and tournament modes. Also introduced is the so-called simplified mode, which should satisfy beginners and less committed players (it supports both of the aforementioned maps).
CS 2 beta with two new updates
Over the course of two days (June 29 and 30), players who participate in the closed beta tests got quite a few fixes and changes - a few of which are presented below. The first of the updates included the aforementioned new maps, simplified mode and things like the grenade inspection. In addition, it introduced changes to the gameplay:
- Sound - among other things, the distance effect for all sound sources; devs also fixed incorrect intensity of sounds, which caused wrong estimation of their source distance from the player;
- Animations - health restoration animation has been improved; inspection of various weapons has been improved;
- Movement - slow crouching bug has been eliminated; bunny hops will be similar to those of CS:GO with a tickrate of 128;
- Other - a team-neutral equipment item icon has been added, and the phrase "Best out of X rounds" has disappeared from the loading screen.
Far fewer changes were brought by the second update. It was released a day later and only added a few improvements to sound, movement and maps.
- Sound - The crackling and noise that sometimes appeared was removed.
- Movement - The speed of bunny hops has been reduced, and a rare bug causing the camera height to change after a respawn has been fixed.
- Maps - Blinking shadows of automatons have been eliminated.
Counter-Strike is one of Valve's biggest brands. The upcoming sequel will be the first refresh of the series in more than 10 years. Recall that the current iteration, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, debuted on Steam in August 2012. Even earlier installments of the shooter are the original Counter-Strike 1.6 or Counter-Strike: Source.