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GUIDES
Simple Radar
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NA CS has a new face
What do you do if your Ukrainian team isn’t up to scratch? Sign an under performing NA team of course!
Speaking of under performing, Vitality have crashed out of another event, so it’s time to officially call them washed.
This week, something miraculous happened.
Something people had been waiting on for what felt like forever.
Something that seemed almost impossible.
No, Astralis are still sh*t.
We’re talking about the latest Counter-Strike update. For once, Valve finally managed to drop an update that the majority of the community agrees is good. That’s no small feat.
Maps, cosmetics, gameplay tweaks, performance boosts, quality-of-life fixes - everyone walked away with a little something.
One of the highlights of the update is the addition of nighttime versions for Ancient and Shoots, now playable in Casual, Deathmatch, and Arms Race.
Ancient, in particular, looks noticeably different, as Valve updated the maps’ shaders to the latest CS2 version, giving it a darker feel.
They also slipped in a few layout tweaks. The most impactful one is that you can no longer hold A Main from inside Temple, which used to be a very strong angle for CTs.
Luckily, the concept of smoke lineups still hasn’t made its way to FACEIT Level 5, so we don’t need to panic just yet. But you might want to revisit a few, as some of the old ones don’t quite land as intended anymore.
Animations were another major focus of this update. Several weapons received improved deploy animations, and Valve also addressed a handful of lingering animation bugs from the big update a couple of weeks ago. Although some animations still feel a bit rough - especially a few knife ones - this is a solid step in the right direction.
The [MISC] section of the notes mentioned “rendering performance improvements across most maps”, though we didn’t notice much of a difference. Of course, your mileage may vary. Maybe our trusty gaming toaster really is on its last breath…
Valve also gave the Armory a refresh, adding the M4A1-S | Solitude as the new limited-time item, along with a new music kit. Wouldn’t be a CS update without new cosmetics, would it?
Oh, and for the fellow gamers rocking the superior resolution, you’ll be happy to know that you can now alt-tab from 4:3 to 16:9 on desktop without delay. About damn time.
Look, we know we usually clown on Valve - and most of the time, with good reason - but credit where it’s due: this is a genuinely good update.
If you actually play the game, that is.
If you left a pretty bad team for a slightly worse team, what would be the first thing you do?
If your answer is ‘replace four of the players with four of the players you just left’, then thanks for reading, T.c.!
For some reason, Passion UA have decided to betray the ‘UA’ part of their name in lieu of the ‘USA’ (which is a slight misnomer; the team will only have two Americans, but it’s a good joke to call them Passion USA regardless) and try to sign four - yes, four - Complexity players.
But… why?
No seriously, why? What’s the goal here? Complexity have an NA team for sponsorship reasons; they’re an American org owned by Americans who still kinda live off being known from their time under the Dallas Cowboys name, and can make money off of being one of the premier teams in North America (stop laughing!). But Passion UA are not.
They’re owned by a Ukrainian footballer, have the two letter abbreviation for Ukraine in their name and were formed at a time of heightened national pride in the country. It seems like a monumentally flawed business decision.
It’s not even a good Counter-Strike decision. Complexity have been pretty rubbish for a while, and swapping out cxzi for Kvem is not going to flip that on its head. It will help, but this team needs divine intervention, not an above average rifler.
It seems like there’s absolutely no winners here, except for T.c., who gets to see his old buddies again. Complexity lose their team and have to find some different Americans, Passion UA lose their identity and get some okay players for a significant sum, and poor Kvem has to play with Americans.
Maybe we’re missing something, and this move is lowkey genius.
But the Complexity players have also been missing something - shots. Lots of them. This can’t be a good decision.
BLAST Bounty is a tournament of repeats.
MOUZ falling to Spirit, The MongolZ becoming better and better, Vitality showing the cracks in their system - we’ve seen it all before.
Honestly, even the quarter-finals were predictable. If you took one glance at them and had to say off the top of your head who would win, you would name all the winners.
MOUZ looked convincing against Astralis, The MongolZ didn’t see too much of a challenge in Aurora, Vitality and Liquid showed some heat but Vitality won out, and what Spirit did to VP isn’t actually allowed on most parts of the internet.
Which left us with the aforementioned MOUZ versus Spirit as one semi, and Vitality facing The MongolZ in the other.
In the first, donk did what donk does best and just donked people. 42 kills and a 1.40 rating is an unstoppable force if we’ve ever seen one. Now, MOUZ did keep it tight at times, and managed overtime on Ancient, but somehow still hasn’t really got that thing down where you win your own map pick.
xertioN described it best: they all justcollapsed.
Mirage? 13-5.
Unstoppable force meets moveable object.
On the other side of the semis, Vitality really is starting to make us believe in the Aphiren curse. Star of the show ZywOo was just absent at times, and ropz’ lack of impact really made thing hard for apEX’ following. Over two maps they managed just 18 rounds.
Not to the detriment of The MongolZ of course, who were on point.
Senzu, 910, and mzinho lead the attack and with some cunning crouchingfrom bLitz, they saw themselves facing off against Spirit in the final.
However, as much as we love The MongolZ - some things are just unavoidable. Spirit took it as a challenge to finish this BO5 in BO3 times, and with donk doing what donk does best - again, donking people - the only time things got sweaty was on Mirage, where The MongolZ pushed for OT.
Honestly, we’re kinda glad it ended this way. We’ll reiterate: not to the detriment of The MongolZ - we love them and wish them all the tournament wins in the world.
Just not this one, because what better send off can you think off for zont1x than lifting a trophy?
