Tech: Counter-Strike 2 review

I'm an old man in "gamer years," a geezer who can remember when Wolfenstein and Doom were state of the art. That's why it was a bit surprising that I got positively bodied in my first few rounds of Counter-Strike 2, the latest version of Valve's tactical multiplayer action game:

Like prior versions of CS, CS2 pits terrorists against counter-terrorists in a variety of scenarios: bomb defusal, hostage rescue, etc. Damage is fairly realistic; a single headshot from any of the assault rifles is usually enough to kill you, and once you die, you don't respawn until the next round. CS2 adds in a variety of fancy graphical effects and some subtle gameplay tweaks (the cloud from a smoke grenade can be displaced with gunfire and frag grenades), but it's still basically the same game I was playing on a dial-up modem in high school 20-odd years ago.

Unfortunately, this latest iteration appears to be chock full of cheaters. Wallhacks, aimbots, and the like are everywhere on the Valve servers, and the game just isn't fun when you're guaranteed to lose the vast majority of the firefights. If you can find a trusted group to play with, go for it, but otherwise, I think I might hang up my digital MP5 for good...

Rating: 80/100