Art Cates

If, as rumors suggest, Valve goes ahead with franchising, changes need to be made to current models in order to ensure the game's success. Rather than have buy-ins, Valve should institute a format that is like most majors for the inaugural season and allow teams to compete against one another to earn a spot in the league. They could use the same tournaments and assign points to each, which would then help to determine who would move into the lea

No gun can shut down entire sections of a map or take over a game quite like the AWP can. The only gun that is able to one shot to the body, the AWP is expensive, but it is worth every dollar spent. Every team will have an AWPer whenever possible on both sides. The amount of map control the AWP provides is uncontestable. Enemy players need to know where the opposing AWPer is at all times and strategies need to be made to combat them. Peeking into an AWP without help is a near-death sente

The first two points quite literally seem to indicate that more money spent in game on cosmetics translating to being more trustworthy. Perhaps there is some truth to this, as spending real money in a game may dissuade a user from cheating and risking the lose of an account, but it still seems odd without confirmation of that i

Overpass was first introduced in the Winter Offensive update back on December 18, 2013, as the first Counter-Strike 2 skins map created specifically for competitive play. Despite this fact, the map saw many growing pains upon its release and for once it wasn't due to being CT-sided. On release, the map appeared to be very T-sided with pros noting how easy it was to gain map control and execute on to the A bomb s

Proper matchmaking in online games is difficult to do well, put simply, but recent patent filings by Valve give users a peek behind the curtain at the various data miners at work in establishing the Trust Factor in CS:GO . There is quite a bit of information in these patents that range from 2018 to 2020 , and of course, not all of the point below can be said to contribute to an individual’s Trust Factor, though in reality most probably are to some deg

The title is pretty self-explanatory, as you play an average-joe-turned-freedom-fighter as the Soviet Union vies to 'liberate' America. You lead a rag-tag group of citizens through a quest to halt the invasion no matter what the odds - the storyline was great, the level design well-done, and the soundtrack phenomenal and very memora

Of course, since I compared it to Max Payne, you should know that it has bullet time and more bullet time-esque features. It has everything a mindless, fun game would need: bad-ass main character (voiced/modeled after Chow Yun Fat)? Check! Gratifying violence? Check! Over the top action sequences? Check! Solid controls? Ch

The game originally came out in 1999 as a Half-Life mod and in 2000 as separate retail. That's over a decade! The potential of what a new release would look like seems amazing in terms of graphics, mechanics and the all-around evolution of video games since then. I know I'm not alone, there's even a Facebook group devoted to the ca

_Updated on June 7, 2021 by Ritwik Mitra: Counter-Strike: Global Offensive stands strong to this day as one of the greatest multiplayer shooter titles anyone can pick up and play right now. The gameplay is engaging, the squad play is extremely satisfying... and the weapons are a blast to use — literally! For players who want their arsenal in the game to be as reliable as possible, we've refreshed this list to include more of the best guns that players can use in CS:G

For my third choice, Beyond Good and Evil (the sequel has been in 'pre-production' for two years). The main character, Jade, reminded me of a female Luke Skywalker (pre-Force) in her quest to investigate an alien

Vagrant Story is my second choice. For starters, it is a Square game, and all of them get sequels. The hero, Ashley Riot, finds himself in a mystery of murder all while having his memories altered. The internal struggle of Ashley trying to figure out his real goal was quite emotio

Valve’s newest effort at matchmaking assigns players with a value known as the Trust Factor. This is a hidden value that considers several points to help place a player into a match. Valve has made it perfectly clear in this blog post that they will not revealing the specifics that modify this value because they do not want players to alter their behavior in an effort to manipulate the system. This is perfectly fair on their part, as players will go to great lengths to break video games, either just for fun, or to gain a competitive advant

The CTs' weapon of choice, the M4A4 can do it all. It can hold its own in long-range firefights, wipe a rushing team in a single mag, and spam through smokes for what seems like an eternity, all while being fairly easy to use. If it had slightly higher damage, allowing it to one-shot armored opponents to the head, it would be the best weapon in the game. The M4A4 is one of the best weapons at dropping multiple enemies in a single spray thanks to its good mag size, damage, and recoil managem