Counter Strike: Global Offensive to get 2 new maps, matchmaking update

Valve, the developer of one of the most popular FPS games of all time – Counter Strike, recently announced that it will release on Monday two new maps for Counter Strike: Global Offensive, in addition to a revised matchmaking system for Classic Competitive mode, and a lot of bug fixes based on community feedback. Expect the update to be rolled out via Steam for PC and Mac.

The company stated in a post on the official Counter Strike blog that the two new maps would be the classic Vertigo map from the original Counter Strike, and a new Monastery map. The Vertigo map is the one which has you high up on a skyscraper under construction. It is an official bomb defusal map in Counter-Strike and is also playable in Counter-Strike: Condition Zero. The terrorists try to bomb the skyscraper before it reaches completion. You can fall off the skyscraper, and if the bomb is dropped from the building, terrorist bot players will all commit suicide, similar to the map Prodigy.

The map name for the Monastery map, ar_monastery, suggests that it would be an arsenal map. Valve describes the map as being ‘fast paced’, and the blog post even has a screenshot of the map, shown below.

The Monastery map that's coming on Monday

The company has lately been teasing the game’s fans with screenshots of the coming updates. One screenshot posted via Twitter earlier this week shows the changes to the matchmaking screen, while another screenshot, also posted via Twitter, is of what looks like the classic Vertigo map.

Counter Strike: Global Offensive was released late last month amid high anticipation by long-time fans of the franchise. The newest iteration of the hit FPS has seen some great changes from its predecessors in terms of gameplay, although not too many changes so as to prevent the game from being imbalanced.

One of the biggest aims of the newest iteration of Counter-Strike was to add more variety to the choice of weapons in the game. Veteran players will tell you that the only weapons worth buying in the original Counter-Strike, as well as Counter-Strike: Source were the M4A1 Assault Rifle, the AK-47, the Desert Eagle pistol, or the AWP Sniper Rifle. Developer Hidden Path has set out to change that with major rebalancing of the weapons as well as additions of new, more viable weapons. The game features new maps, characters, and weapons, and delivers updated versions of the classic CS content (de_dust, etc.). In addition, CS: GO will introduce new gameplay modes, matchmaking, leader boards, and more.

Prior to the game’s launch, Valve had released a trailer for the game made in the Source Film Maker. The trailer more or less works as an introduction to how the team-based tactical shooter works, without actually showing any gameplay. It shows two teams, terrorists and counter-terrorists. The terrorists attempt to plant a bomb to blow up a place and the counter-terrorists have been handed the task of stopping them.