Counter-Strike 2 finally launched yesterday after months of teasing and much anticipation from the player base. Like most game launches, however, even Valve wasn’t able to iron out all the issues that are now popping up in various matches.
Experienced CS pro Jonathan “EliGE” Jablonowski, for example, has shared his first impressions of the game after running scrims with other competitive teams and gave a verdict on some of the problems that are plaguing the title in its opening moments.
These issues include rubber banding when running next to teammates, short but significant FPS drops during matches, and FPS drops while running through smokes. He isn’t the only player who has complained about the game’s performance on launch, either, with superstar CS pro Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyljev saying the game feels like it is running on 16 tick servers with how laggy the gameplay is.
EliGE also pointed out a plethora of sound issues that he experienced during his CS2 games, including muffled noises that are making it increasingly difficult to listen to any sound cues, like footsteps, while other noises are activating around him.
In a tactical first-person shooter like CS2, sound cues are incredibly important information providers and must be as accurate as possible for competitive integrity. If players aren’t able to rely on some basic mechanics due to bugs or glitches, Valve must fix these problems as soon as possible before fans become too disgruntled.
The 26-year-old veteran did mention that the animations feel good and the spray patterns for the various weapons are fine. Even still, his complaints have joined a chorus of fans who are not happy about the state of CS2 on launch.
A large contingency of players have voiced their displeasure around the lack of content available in the game since it is missing game modes like Danger Zone, War Games, unranked matchmaking, and short matches. Additionally, fans are angry with how Valve released CS2 with fewer features, while also taking down the older, more complete version of CS:GO.
Ultimately, the game has felt unpolished for many players around the community, but overall, CS connoisseurs are still eager to see how CS2 grows as the year moves forward and Valve updates it for the future.
