It is the fifth official game in the main Counter-Strike series and the eight game in all, being the successor to Global Offensive. The game was initially released as a " Limited Test " for Microsoft Windows after being announced to the public on March 22, , and eventually received its official release on September 27th, CS2 features only four of the game modes for online and offline play from Global Offensive , notably missing are Demolition and Danger Zone.
Competitive and Premier modes puts players in a competitive game in which they can rank up or down. The player is labeled as "Unranked" until achieving their first 10 wins in the gamemode. Prior to reaching this, players without Prime status will experience every two games won will give the player a temporary cooldown for 21 hours. It is in a first to 13 out of 24 rounds format. In Premier players are put in a pick-ban system, Team 1 bans 2 maps, then Team 2 bans 3 maps, Team 1 then bans one map, with the left over map being played, Team 2 chooses the Counter-Terrorists Side or Terrorists Side.
The game then puts the players in a competitive game in which their win, lose, or tie to modify their rating. Players are ranked by a "CS Rating" which ranges from zero 0 to presumably an unlimited maximum, however, the highest rating group starts at 30, In Competitive players chose which maps they wish to queue and are randomly assigned the Counter-Terrorists Side or Terrorists Side when a match is generated. Rankings are per-map unlike in Premier and also do not use a rating system, but rather are set of tiers ranging from Silver I to Global Elite.
The maps for these modes can either be Defusal or Hostage Rescuse, however, currently the Premier map pool does not feature any hostage rescuse maps. The two types are:. Casual modes provide 10 versus 10 competition in a best-of rounds match in either Defuse or Hostage missions.
In the beginning of each round, players can purchase weapons and gear with money earned from various actions from killing an opponent to completing an objective. Deathmatch is a versus mode featuring instant respawning with the ability to purchase any primary and secondary weapons with no regards to the money economy.
