It’s official – Valve is updating the incredibly popular Counter-Strike franchise (which debuted 12 years ago as a mod for the original Half Life) by way of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. The new game will feature new and updated maps of the iconic game, new weapons and new play modes. According to a report in Kotaku (who manged to grab an hour of playtime at the Valve offices, the lucky gits) the game will launch with five new maps for the iconic game mode, Bomb/Defuse and two for Hostage Rescue.
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive will, for the first time in the franchise, feature cross platform play between the PS3 (via the PlayStation Move controller), Mac and PC, and will have extensive matchmaking capabilities. To be honest, we’re not sure how the whole controller versus keyboard and mouse thing will work out, as any FPS veteran will tell you, playing with the mouse and keyboard is way better than playing with a controller when it comes to FPS games. Nevertheless, the feature sounds cool, if only to pad our K:D ratio once the game is released in 2012.
It’ll also be interesting to see what route Valve will take when it releases the game – rumor has it it’ll use a Free-to-play model which will be supported by micro transactions but at this point, it’s all speculation. You can see the press release and the intro trailer from the Steam website.