My Impressions in 71 Minutes of CS:GO

I recently downloaded Counter Strike: Global Offensive about a week ago and have played it as much as possible with AP tests and qualifying for state track, aka 71 minutes as of today. I realize this is nothing compared to what most people spend on this game in the first week, and I have by no means mastered it yet, I have figured out quite a bit of it and I feel I can accurately say why I like it quite a bit more than other FPS games.

The first reason is because it is much more realistic strategy-wise. When I obsessively played Call of Duty (38 hours in my 4 months of owning it, just on multi-player), I always felt like there were serious flaws in designing strategy. It was fun because it was very much a run-n-gun game that was fast paced and gave me a rush when fighting at close-quarters. With CS:GO, I feel like it is much more realistic in terms of strategy. Its not quite like in Arma where you really need to preserve your life, but you are always using more strategy and caution, partly because you die for good until the next round in most game types as IGN says, and the ballistics is different. I have found that it is much more realistic in that it takes into account that a bullet is about as powerful no matter where it comes out of, so at close range, you're almost on the same level with any gun save a high-powered rifle. I always felt that I was almost surely dead if I was equipped only with a pistol in CoD. I could maybe bring a couple guys down before someone's firepower was more than my aim could compensate for.

I am also a bigger fan of the weapons. In CS:Go, you can join and be on about the same level as anyone else because you don;t have to unlock guns. Everybody starts out with random one and you can buy more in the actual game, as TechReport argues. I had a big problem in CoD where you had to level up for new weapons, so the more time you spent, not only were you more experienced, you also had vastly superior guns. The two things I do wish CS:GO had better gun customization so that I could have a little more interesting guns. The other thing I would like to see come is sights. It still feels really weird for me to be hip firing with every gun. I would much better aim down some sights, which is an option only available with certain weapons, which I am definitely not a fan of, especially coming off CoD where that stuff is essential.

on the whole, I find CS:GO much more enjoyable. I think it places much less emphasis on how long you've been playing and places that stress on how good you actually are. I appreciate that there is a game out there like this, though I do have some problems. I'm looking into buying Battlefield 4 and testing that one out to add onto the comparison, so if anyone has played this game and happens to read this blog, please comment on what you think of it compared to the two games I compared here.