One of CS:GO’s best players of all time isn’t exactly impressed with the state of the new title, Counter-Strike 2.
Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev, one of the game’s flashiest AWPers and top performers, said “don’t play this shit game rn” in a post on Twitter today. S1mple’s status as one of the top competitors in CS with a staggering amount of hours played in the game entitles him to some strongly worded, yet informed takes.
S1mple has been dishing harsh criticism of CS2 for a while, and he isn’t exactly wrong. The game didn’t launch in a stellar state, with multiple quality-of-life features from CS:GO missing. The new sub-tick system has been roundly criticized, with many players reporting hit registration issues and longing for the old 128 tick servers from third-party matchmaking platforms like FACEIT.
A series of other issues, from matchmaking ranks being wonky to a lack of community maps, have plagued the new title for the past two weeks, and the feedback has been loud. Valve has addressed some of it and is actively working on other elements.
Still, CS2 is in a much better state than CS:GO was on launch. Global Offensive was almost unplayable early on and had issues with decades-long fundamentals of competition like flashbang grenade consistency.
The new volumetric smoke grenade mechanic had some hiccups but looks to be flourishing after a few minor tweaks to interactions players had with them. Sub-tick is still a major issue, but with Valve effectively forcing the change on the entirety of the community, it’ll likely be fixed sooner rather than later.
So, while these problems are real and should be addressed, anyone who remembers the early Global Offensive days knows that it could be much, much worse. As s1mple said, “wait for updates.”
