14 DAY TRIAL // The first actual trailers for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive have been released onto the web, alongside a batch of major details about the upcoming first-person shooter that will revive Valve's extremely successful franchise, including its maps, gameplay modes or how it will have cross-platform connectivity between the PC/Mac and PlayStation 3 versions.
One of the largest online shooter games ever released was Counter-Strike, which started as a mod for Valve's Half Life game, and immediately gained cult appeal through its simple graphics, polished gameplay and balanced maps, most of the times made by players themselves.
Now, after a pretty well-received Counter-Strike: Source, which was released quite a few years ago, Valve is getting ready to debut a new version of the iconic online shooter, in the form of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.
The title was announced a few weeks ago, but only now did the company unveil not one but two official trailers, while the first actual details about its gameplay have surfaced, via Kotaku.
It seems that Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is tweaked not just for longtime fans of the series, keeping its tight and balanced gameplay, but it is also targeted at players new to online shooters, thanks to a special Casual mode, where weapons won't cost anything and the playing field will be more balanced for all competitors.
The Competitive mode, however, is pretty much the classic Counter-Strike experience, with Valve, together with partner studio Hidden Path, bringing back all the tropes from the first iterations of the online shooter.
Famous maps are back, including Dust, Dust2, Aztec, Nuke or Inferno, many being tweaked for better balance. Many classic weapons are back, while new ones, like the decoy grenade, Molotov or Taser, have been added, in order to spice things up.
Gameplay modes include the traditional defuse, where terrorists need to plant bombs and counter terrorists need to stop them or defuse the devices, as well as hostage rescue. More modes are going to be revealed later this year, as Valve is still putting the finishing touches on some of them.
Players will be able to run their own Counter-Strike: Global Offensive servers in any way and with any modifications they want, but Valve will also maintain its official servers, where the game is played in a standard fashion.
What's more, Steam users that get Counter-Strike: Global Offensive for the PC or Mac platforms will be able to play together with PlayStation 3 owners. The latter can opt to use the traditional DualShock 3 controller, the PlayStation Move motion controls or even a mouse and keyboard, as all of them will be supported by the game. The Xbox 360 version will support just the standard controller.
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is currently scheduled to appear at the beginning of 2012, for the aforementioned platforms. Until then, you can check out the two videos below, one fully cinematic, while the other contains gameplay from the first Counter-Strike games and from the new one.