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Valve finally put out a big update to Counter-Strike 2, bringing with it a much needed boost with a new game mode, new types of skins and more.

Arms Race has officially returned! The quick-fire mode where you get two kills to progress onto a new weapon, or steal opponents progress with a knife kill (and now the Zeus too) and eventually get to the final knife to get that winning kill. Good fun so it's nice to see it back.


Pictured - CS2 Arms Race on Linux

On top of that there's a new weapon sticker system, allowing you to place stickers by dragging and dropping them around the weapon to get your perfect placement. Plus you can add up to five stickers to a weapon now too.

There's more. The first CS2 case has arrived, The Kilowatt Case, adding 17 community-designed weapon finishes and the all-new Kukri knife. No dobut that knife will excite a lot of CS2 fans! Heck, even the Zeus now has its first weapon finish, something players have been begging for. Additionally the Zeus now recharges in 30 seconds in all game modes.

What else? Oh there's a new Ambush Sticker Capsule (featuring 21 community-created stickers), the NIGHTMODE Music Kit Box (featuring six new Music Kits), an XP Overload icon next to player names if they have earned all their normal weekly XP and Agents with unique end-of-match animations now do their thing during victory and defeat.

According to developer Timothee "TTimo" Besset on Mastodon "the update also ships with continued performance improvements to the vulkan render path", so that's great too!

See all on the special update page.

What do you think to this update? Let me know in the comments! Personally, I'm looking forward to the next-generation Danger Zone, I really hope they bring it back. With all the updates to the base game of CS2, they could do a lot more with Danger Zone now.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. Find me on Mastodon.
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7 comments

Liam Dawe Feb 7
Update: added a note from TTimo into the article.
Bogomips Feb 7
QuotePersonally, I'm looking forward to the next-generation Danger Zone, I really hope they bring it back. With all the updates to the base game of CS2, they could do a lot more with Danger Zone now.

Yep, me too with up to 4 people co-op if possible, like it was on the first iterations of Danger Zone. As I have lost faith in CS after CS:S and it is not getting better.
I'm happy, not really because I play Counterstrike (I like story based games) but it shows that the Valve is spinning. Hopefully with the new excitement on development in Valve we might get new games!
I'm having pretty serious performance issues after the update. Also have a mesa update that just installed, so I'm not certain of the culprit. Getting about 15 fps during heavy fighting. Anyone else seeing issues on Radeon?

EDIT: Looks like performance drop is only on the map, Shoots.


Last edited by brokeassben on 8 February 2024 at 12:07 am UTC
Peak Feb 8
Quoting: brokeassbenI'm having pretty serious performance issues after the update. Also have a mesa update that just installed, so I'm not certain of the culprit. Getting about 15 fps during heavy fighting. Anyone else seeing issues on Radeon?

EDIT: Looks like performance drop is only on the map, Shoots.

Nowhere near that bad but yes the game's performance is seriously broken on vulkan and even more so on linux (Did a quick & dirty comparison on the previous version (win-dx11: 300, win-vk: 260, lin-vk: 230). That map shoots is the worst I have played (below 100 fps with my 7900xtx). You will notice that both CPU and GPU utilization, frequency, and power consumption are all very low, there's a big bottleneck somewhere in the game code. On a good note when playing offline with no bots the FPS does seem to start out higher than it did last update but quickly falls back down over time.
Nod Feb 8
Yea I agree, would love to see Danger Zone return.
dvd Feb 8
Quoting: brokeassbenI'm having pretty serious performance issues after the update. Also have a mesa update that just installed, so I'm not certain of the culprit. Getting about 15 fps during heavy fighting. Anyone else seeing issues on Radeon?

EDIT: Looks like performance drop is only on the map, Shoots.

The performance of the whole game is abysmal, maybe gets better next year.
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