I've dabbled with Counter-Strike in the past with CS: Source and CS:GO, but I never really got invested until CS2 released. It's been a lot of fun to play Competitive with friends and start to slowly learn the maps and their callouts (along with making up our own silly ones).
I'm really glad that a game like Counter-Strike can succeed and thrive in the modern multiplayer game climate, where the developers do not feel compelled to add unnecessary fluff to keep people coming back. There's an elegance to the game's design, it does so much with so little, and each seemingly trivial aspect of the game has so much nuance that players can slowly tease apart without things feeling too overwhelming. I don't need to learn lineups if I don't want to; I will be rewarded for doing so, but I can also just intuitively throw a smoke or flash grenade more directly to achieve a similar effect.
There's so much history to this franchise that squeezing out the last drops of efficiency in your play is part of the appeal, and while I doubt I will get to that kind of level any time soon, it's been really enjoyable to play such a mindful shooter.
I'm really glad that a game like Counter-Strike can succeed and thrive in the modern multiplayer game climate, where the developers do not feel compelled to add unnecessary fluff to keep people coming back. There's an elegance to the game's design, it does so much with so little, and each seemingly trivial aspect of the game has so much nuance that players can slowly tease apart without things feeling too overwhelming. I don't need to learn lineups if I don't want to; I will be rewarded for doing so, but I can also just intuitively throw a smoke or flash grenade more directly to achieve a similar effect.
There's so much history to this franchise that squeezing out the last drops of efficiency in your play is part of the appeal, and while I doubt I will get to that kind of level any time soon, it's been really enjoyable to play such a mindful shooter.