The limited test for Counter-Strike 2 has officially gone live as of the afternoon of March 22, giving players a small glimpse of the future of the iconic FPS series. The pending launch of CS2 this summer, complete with the Source 2 engine, is the biggest update to Counter-Strike as a whole since the launch of CS:GO nearly a decade ago.
As players are receiving access to the limited test in waves, some of the game’s biggest current and past stars like shroud, tarik, and smooya are entertaining tens of thousands of viewers. Smooya, a British pro player who recently played for the likes of BIG, Movistar Riders, and Fnatic, was one of the first to go live in CS2. And he has already discovered a neat new feature borrowed from the game’s biggest competitor.
Early into his stream, smooya discovered a circle around his icon on the minimap, speculating that the circle represents the audio range on his footsteps. This appears to be the case, as when he moves or jumps silently, the circle disappears. As other streamers like shroud and tarik have jumped into custom 10-mans, it’s clear that clearly visible footstep audio range is a feature of CS2.
CS2 has VALORANT to thank for that feature; a circle appearing around the player on the minimap showing the audio range of that feature has been around in Riot’s shooter since its inception. While nothing major has been picked up from VALORANT, CS2 does feature an upgraded user interface that has more visually appealing kill and ace notifications.
Considering that many of VALORANT‘s features such as 128-tick servers were prominently marketed in order to differentiate itself from CS:GO, it only makes sense that Valve returns the favor by grabbing some quality-of-life improvements that few dedicated CS players would have issue with.
