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A Brief Guide to Counter-Strike 2
Counter-Strike 2 was released in 2023 and represents the latest installment in the Counter-Strike series, which has a history of more than 20 years. As a new and highly sophisticated game, CS2 suffered from a lot of bugs at launch, but Valve is quickly improving it.
This guide will teach you the fundamentals of CS2 and how to become good at it.
The Key Elements of CS2
CS2 is composed of a handful of key elements. If you understand them, you understand the game and you can start to master it.
The Rules
The rules of the game are easy to grasp. This is the part that you’ll experience and learn almost immediately.
There are two teams: Terrorists (T) and Counter-Terrorists (CT). Each map consists of a battle that takes place over a maximum of 24 rounds. The team that gets to 13 rounds first, wins. Each round lasts around 2 minutes. Sometimes, if the bomb gets planted, it lasts longer.
The objective of the T-side is to either kill the entire enemy team or plant to bomb and make sure it explodes. This bomb can be planted in one of two locations, marked on the map as A and B. From the moment the bomb got planted, the CT side has less than 40 seconds to defuse it. If it succeeds, the round is won. If it doesn’t, the round is lost.
By default, the CT side wins, so the T side needs to move quickly and accomplish objectives. Some of them are subtle, such as establishing mid control. Others are more obvious, such as assaulting and taking control of a bomb site.
At the end of each round, the teams get money based on the result. The winning team receives a lot more money than the losing team. If it isn’t spent, this money gets transferred from one round to the next but gets reset at the start of the 13th round. A player can have a maximum of $16.000. The best rifles cost around $3000.
However, on top of that, the players need to purchase grenades, kevlar, and other equipment. The total cost can easily reach $5000 per person. If a player survives the round, he gets to keep all of his equipment.
The two teams play both as Terrorists and Counter-Terrorists. The switch occurs halfway through the map.
Guns
Obviously, being a first-person shooter, CS2 revolves around guns like the AK-47, AWP, and M4A4. Knowing how to use them accurately will make a huge difference in your win rate.
CS2 guns are quite varied, but you will mostly use pistols, SMGs, and rifles. These three categories should be your main focus if you want to become a better player.
Pistols are important because every match has at least two rounds that are played just with pistols. Players don’t have enough money to purchase proper guns in these rounds, so they need to know how pistols work and how to use them effectively.
The winner of the pistol round usually wins the next few rounds as well, so it’s crucial to become an expert at landing headshots with a USP-S (the default pistol for the Counter-Terrorists) and the Glock-18 (the default pistol for the Terrorists).
Another category of weapons that is used a lot is the SMGs. These guns are bought against pistols or whenever the situation is desperate and a force-buy is mandatory.
Usually, teams like to save their money until they have enough to purchase proper rifles such as the AK-47 or the M4A4. But if the enemy team is close to winning and each round is critical, you are sometimes forced to buy whatever you can using the little money you have. That’s when SMGs get bought.
They can be quite strong from close range against unarmored opponents. But if you’re very good at the game, they can work to some extent even against armored enemies from afar. You’ll be at a disadvantage against a proper rifle, but you can still win duels.
Finally, you’ll need to learn about the main rifles in the game: AWP, AK-47, M4A4, M4A1-S, Galil, and FAMAS.
Maps
The second major element of CS2 is the maps you can compete on. At all times, there are seven official maps that are used in professional tournaments. These are called the Active Duty maps. You don’t need to know all of them. In fact, the game allows you to play on a single map over and over if that’s what you prefer. But it’s good to be versatile.
The most famous maps are these:
- Dust 2
- Inferno
- Mirage
- Overpass
- Nuke
- Anubis
- Ancient
Every one of them has unique characteristics that you’ll need to familiarize yourself with to be successful. From the angles you need to hold to the ways in which you can move from A to B, every little detail is important.
When playing as part of a good team, the other players will expect you to know the names of all the specific locations. There are dozens of them for each map. These are known as callouts.
CS2 callouts can be learned by checking online maps. You can also do it through practice. Once you’ve played a map a few hundred times, you’ll know exactly where each box is, what the timings are, and so on.
Whether you’re on the T side or the CT side, it’s good to choose a role and stick to it. Gaining a deep understanding of a small portion of a map and the possibilities it provides increases your chance of success enormously.
CS2 is like chess. Master a few openings and then learn everything you can about their possible continuations. That way, you’ll know how to win from each position. The best players in the world, such as Aleksandr "s1mple" Kostyliev and Mathieu "ZywOo" Herbaut are so good at this stuff that they can always guess what their opponents want to do next.
How to Become a Better CS2 Player
Becoming a better CS2 player requires you to focus on a handful of areas:
Shooting
This may sound intuitive, but shooting accurately is actually quite challenging and can take years to perfect. Each gun in CS2 has a unique recoil and characteristics. To shoot accurately, you need to know how to control its spray pattern and bend it to your will.
Some pistols can kill with a single bullet if you land a headshot. Others need two. The same is true of rifles. Each has advantages and disadvantages. When you learn how to shoot with each weapon, you need to take distance into account.
Sometimes, you will fight at close range. Other times, you’ll fight at long range. Unless you’re using an AWP, long-range fights will be more challenging because it’s quite difficult to land headshots when the enemy’s head is very small on your screen while your gun is inaccurate after you should the first few bullets.
Map Knowledge
Map knowledge is essential because without it, all the aiming skills in the world won’t help you win. It doesn’t help to know how to shoot if the enemy sees you first. In CS2, it takes a second or even less to get a kill. By the time you get to shoot, you might be already dead if your positioning is poor.
You should always start with one map and master it. Then move to the next one. Another option is to try all of them, play 5-10 matches on each one, and then choose the one you enjoy the most. Stick with it until you understand it well.
After you’ve mastered a map, that knowledge will allow your mind to focus on other aspects of the game. Instead of thinking about angles and distances, you’ll think about the bigger picture. This will allow you to become a better player.
Don’t stop until you’ve added at least 3-4 maps to your arsenal. But take them one by one. Otherwise, your progress will be much slower.
Tactics
Tactics constitute your approach to the game in each round. They involve grenade usage, coordination with your teammates, weapon choice, how you make progress at each turn, and so on. This is the truly difficult part of CS2. It takes years to master and represents the difference between a beginner and a pro player.
One of the most important components of each tactic is how you use your smoke, flash, grenades, and incendiaries. There are dozens of options for each of them and having an excellent nade vocabulary will help you a lot.
Communication
CS2 is a team game. If you don’t communicate or don’t listen to other players’ input, you might fail quite often. Each round starts as a 5v5 but quickly becomes a 4v5 or a 5v4. With every passing second, something changes. You may lose map control, find information about the enemy side, lose a teammate, kill an enemy etc.
Throughout this entire time, communication lets you know what you need to do to maximize your team’s chances of winning.
Attitude
In the long run, if you don’t have the right attitude, you’ll either quit the game completely or get stuck at a particular rank, usually a mediocre one. Improving your skills takes time and the ability to get over defeats without becoming toxic. That’s easier said than done but it’s absolutely necessary.
Featured Image Credit: Valve
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