Introduction:

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is a first-person-shooter (FPS) released in the year 2012 with many vastly different game modes, either implemented by Valve or the prospering community. These range from a game mode in which you have to work your way through a variety of weapons to get the golden knife and end the game with a knife kill, which is called Arms Race, to a game mode which is based on the possibilities of Counter-Strikes engine where you slide around on ramps in order to finish the course as fast as possible, known as Surf. The most prominent and important game mode, however, is competitive, in which you either have to destroy one of two or secure both bombsites, with a role switch after 15 rounds.

This guide will aim to help you to understand this easy to understand, but hard to master game with one of the most successful and ever expanding eSports scenes.

Counter-Strikes History:

Counter-Strike has now spanned over four games, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive now being the fourth game in the series. Especially CS 1.6, the first CS game, already had a big community and E-sports scene. CS: Source was not quite as big, and Counter-Strike: Condition Zero was mainly known for his single-player elements.

When Counter-Strike: Global Offensive first came out, it was clear that a lot of tweaking had to be done, with which Valve quickly started. Valve soon realized that the competitive scene would need a small guiding hand and they gave the scene exactly that when they implemented the Major Tournament system in 2013, Fnatic being the first team to win a Valve sponsored event with, at that time, 250 thousand dollars in the prize pool. The prize pool of the ELEAGUE Major has reached one million dollars, and it may increase in the future.

The Game:

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is based on the source engine and was developed by Hidden Path Entertainment and Valve Corporation. It is playable on PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, with PC being the most prominent platform to play it on and even though Cross-Platform play was planned originally this plan was scrapped later on.

Features:

In this paragraph I will show you what kind of features Counter-Strike: Global Offensive offers you.

GOTV

If you connect to one of these, either through the watch Tab in your starting screen or through a specific GOTV IP, you can view random games from other players or pro matches inside of your game. You can switch between players, follow grenades and change the point of view from first person to third person.

Cases

Cases are in-game items that you can get dropped after every kind of game you play or by buying them from the Community Market. The contents are weapon skins, completely cosmetic items, with different float and rarity values, which you can also sell and buy. Float defines how old and used a skin looks, rarity defines how high the chance was of you getting said skin. You need to open cases with keys you buy from the Steam Community Market. There are variations of this concept starting with Souvenir Cases, which you can get dropped while watching a match of the Valve sponsored Majors, who need no key, sticker capsules, who contain stickers but need a key, and signature sticker packages who need no key.

Matchmaking 

Whenever you play competitive in Matchmaking, you get assigned an Elo-style number which tries to determine your skill level. If you win, it rises. If you lose, it goes down. Matchmaking tried to match you with people of similar skill in order to have fair games. Third party services like ESEA and FaceIt also have their version of Matchmaking in place.

Demos

You can download every Matchmaking game you've played and share them through a share-link. Be aware that you can only review the last ten games you have played. Third party services also let you download your played games under normal circumstances.

(Here you can choose which maps you'd like to play in Matchmaking)

Customization:

One of the key aspects of Counter-Strike is how you get better. It is not the character you play, which changes from round to round anyway, that gets better weapons and better skills, but it is your aim, movement and other aspects of CS that you have become better at. Part of investing a lot of time in a game with basically no automatic reward for the number of hours you spent to get better is customization so you can feel comfortable playing this game, and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive does a good job of letting you customize your game.

The following sections will show you how you customize your game. This is not crucial for you to play for the very first time, but can help you to feel comfortable and will show you how you can adjust your sensitivity of your crosshair. If you want to know more about the mechanics and gameplay, you can skip to the paragraph "Fundamentals".

Options:

The option menu can be found on the main menu or when you press ESC inside of a game you are playing at the moment. There are multiple tabs you can click on.

Controller:

This tab will open a menu for your controller, if you want to play with one. You can customize the sensitivities of your thumbsticks, the way you look around and the key bindings to help you navigate through Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. I don't think it is advisable to play with a controller, as Counter-Strike: Global Offensive puts a lot of emphasize on aim and movement, which is better done with mouse and keyboard.

Keyboard/Mouse:

In here you can basically do the same you could do with your controller, but with your keyboard and mouse. You can set your sensitivity (how fast you look around in the game), zoom sensitivity(the same, but for scoped weapons), and look through and customize your key binds to your keyboard/mouse. I would advise you to not to use mouse acceleration, as it is highly inconsistent and not reliable enough for you to ultimately get used to the acceleration. You can further customize your mouse and keyboard settings in this tab.

(The Keyboard/Mouse settings)

Game Settings:

In this tab, you have the option to change your maximal acceptable ping, bandwidth, first customizations to your viewmodel (the way you see your hands and weapons you are holding in-game) and crosshair, you can tweak your GOTV viewer experience and so on. You can try all of them out over time to find what suits you.

Video Settings:

Here you can tweak the video settings of your game and decide how it is supposed to look. You can adjust the brightness, color mode, aspect ratio and so on. You can change the visual quality if you want it to be lower or higher than it was originally, perhaps to get more frames per second or something similar. Here you can also change your HUD size, which will display your weapons, health and other useful information.

Audio Settings:

This tab gives the possibility to tweak your audio out- and input. You can change the volume of multiple things, like the overall volume, voice volume and so on. You can also choose your audio output configuration, and in general choose between HRTF, an advanced virtual surround system that helps you spot enemies and other sound sources near you, and the normal stereo output. HRTF may be a bit more demanding on your system, as has been reported by some users.

Credits:

This tab is simply there to give all of the developers a moment of admiration.

The Developer Console:

The Developer Console is good for quick changes to your settings while you are in-game. To enable it, you need to go to game settings again. You can simply enable it by clicking on one of the arrows if it was indeed not enabled yet.

(This is the Developer Console)

How do I use the Developer Console?

The Developer Console works just like the windows prompt, as you can send requests to Counter-Strike: Global Offensive via predetermined commands.

Here is a list of the most useful commands:

Volume 0-100

Adjusts the overall volume of your game

Voice_enable 0-1

0 disables, 1 enables the voice chat

net_graph 0-1

0 disables, 1 enables extra information on the bottom of your screen

cl_crosshair* try different values around 1

Gives you a lot of commands to further tweak your crosshair. The asterisk(*) presents a wildcard which you can interchange with different words

 cl_radar* try different values around 1

Gives you a lot of commands to tweak your radar. The asterisk(*) presents a wildcard

 cl_hud_radar_scale 

try different values around 1

Either diminishes or enlarges your radar rate 128000

Helps you to play on 128 tick servers*

 cl_cmdrate 128

Helps you to play on 128 tick servers*

 cl_updaterate 128

Helps you to play on 128 tick servers*

  *128 tick servers are normally community, FaceIt or ESEA servers, not exactly relevant just yet.

For a more in-depth view on tweaking your game go here.

In-Game Fundamentals:

Now onto the actual gameplay. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is a First-Person-Shooter, and the focus lies on aim and movement. There is more to it, but we will start with aim and the movement, to then go deeper into the mechanics and features of this game.

Aim:

Your aim will be part of your bread and butter in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, as this a First Person Shooter and you need to aim at your targets to kill/frag them.

To be sure that you have the best possibility of gaining a lot of aim really fast, you need to make sure that everything you have set up suits you. Your hardware should fit your hand, your sensitivity should feel right and all the other settings should be tweaked to have a smooth game and good visuals, which helps you to see enemies.

(Death Match is a good place to practice your aim)

Aiming in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is fundamentally different than in other shooter games. Firstly, the damage multiplier of the damage you are about to inflict on your target varies greatly from body part to body part. Shooting someone in the chest will do way less damage than shooting him in the head, as a headshot does four times the damage a shot to the chest or arms would do, as chest and arm shots only count as 1 times the damage your weapon outputs. Shots to the stomach do 1.25 as much as the base damage, and legs 0.75 the amount of damage your weapon has as a base output. This all gets complicated, as you can buy armor to alter the amount of damage a shot would do compared to when you're unarmored. Some weapons have higher armor penetration, some less. The weapons that will almost always have a guaranteed headshot kill (without any kind of obstacle between your shot and the target) are the AK-47, the SG 553, the Scout, the AWP (which also kills with one shot to the body), the R8 Revolver, the Desert Eagle, and the Autosnipers. Weapons that can kill with a one-hit headshot on close quarters are all of the shotguns, Five-SeveN, Tec-9, P250, Negev, and the AUG. And to shorten this paragraph considerably: In general, aim for the head!

And if you think this is complicated already, you are in for a rude awakening. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive prides itself with how skill based it is, and the embodiment of this are the spray patterns. Spray patterns are patterns the shots follow as you keep on firing your gun in full-auto mode. This, obviously, only applies to non-shotguns. To see them for yourself, you can simply start a deathmatch with bots and kick all bots with the kick_bots command in your console. You can then buy an automatic rifle and go full automatic on that dirty wall. You will see that the pattern will only vary slightly when you do not move your crosshair. This allows for people to memorize these patterns and adjust their aim accordingly, which is called spray control. This becomes crucial very early on.

Keep going, we're almost there! Now onto the inaccuracy of the weapons. In general, there is a rule of thumb that the more expensive weapon of the same category will be more accurate than the cheaper gun. This is true when it comes to the Famas, the M4A1 or A4, and the AUG. Especially in scoped mode is the AUG very accurate. The same with the T-side rifles: First the Galil, then the AK and then the SG 553. The same goes for the sniper rifles, first the SSG 08, which is also called Scout, and the AWP. The Autosnipers count as their own category, as they have positives and negatives compared to the accuracy of the AWP, as they are not as accurate scoped in, but noscopes are easier with them.

Movement:

Movement is almost as important in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive as aim. If you move with your gun in hand, your accuracy will go down with every weapon that fires a bullet (therefore not the taser or the knife). Some weapons are less affected by it, like all SMGs, but some, like the AK, suffer heavily from moving while shooting. The ladders and jumping also cause a worse inaccuracy than running, while sneaking and crouchwalking will affect accuracy less. You are most accurate while crouching and standing still. If you want to be mobile, but do not want to sacrifice accuracy, you will have to learn how to counter-strafe.

Strafing, in general, is done when you press a side-movement key on your keyboard. If you just tap it once, you will do a slight strafe to the fitting side. As you know by now, this game only lets you shoot accurately when you are not moving, ergo when you are standing still. You can, therefore, press the opposite key of the direction you were moving in to do an almost instant change of direction, in which you will stand still for a slight moment. If you start to tap fire at the right time, you will see that you will quickly get some accurate shots in. You could also use a counter-strafe to quickly cancel your current movement, as it is faster than simply letting go of your movement keys.

Furthermore, in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive you can navigate your model in mid air by aiming into the direction in which you pressed your movement keys.

Audio:

Audio is a big part of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, and can give you a big advantage in this game. As I already touched on, there are 2 audio modes in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. One of which is standard stereo for headphones, and one is for headphones with HRTF. Stereo obviously is limited to two-sided audio output, while HRTF tries to simulate more audio output devices with smart manipulation of the output. Both are fine, even though I would advise you to use the HRTF setting.

(There are more settings than just Stereo and HRTF, but I wouldn't recommend them)

There are multiple things you and others around you can hear. Those are reloading, dropping things on the ground (C4 included), throwing a grenade, shooting, scoping, running (also called stepping), falling from an elevated position, knifing (even if it is just the air) and removing the silencer on your M4A1-S (please don't do that, it lowers its accuracy). It is also important to note that you hear audio hints louder if you are aiming at them, regardless of walls in-between you and the source or not. Keep in mind that there is a fall-off distance for sounds, meaning that you can't hear certain sounds after you are a set amount of units away from the origin of the sound. Try to remember all of this when you're listening for a fast play, a rush, onto the B Bombsite on Dust 2, for example.

Weapons:

In this paragraph, I will show you what your weapons can and can't do and what the other things you can buy in competitive are for.

In competitive you only get a starting pistol and 100 health points (HP) per spawn, if you did not survive the last round and brought things over into the next round. The other things you need are buyable with in-game currency, more about that later. And no, you do not need to buy your in-game currency with real money.

Some weapons are automatic, meaning that you can hold down your attack button, which is mouse1 on standard settings, to keep firing until your magazine is empty. Keep the aim paragraph in mind. In general, the more expensive the better. M4A4/M4A1-S are more accurate and do more damage than the Famas, but buying an AWP when you are not as good with the AWP as you are with an automatic rifle, like the M4, is probably a bad idea. The two snipers of lower price, meaning the SSG-08 and AWP, are bolt-action, meaning that they can only fire one round at a time. The Autosnipers are also automatic, while every shotgun except for the XM1014 are pump-action, meaning that they can only fire one round at a time. The heavy machine guns M-249 and Negev are not competitively viable, as they have a high price, high recoil (hard spray pattern) and rather bad first-shot accuracy. The community is split on the AUG and SG 553, as they are stigmatized for being COD-guns. You should try them out to find out if you want to stick to the M4 and AK instead of the scoped automatic rifles. The pistols are basically all made for running and gunning, which means that they're often fairly accurate while you run and shoot, or even spray by fast tapping your attack key. The Desert Eagle (Deagle) is a clear exception to this, as you need good aim and movement to inflict real damage. Its best case is a one-shot headshot, something the Deagle is quite known for. The special thing about the R8 Revolver is that you need to cock your gun before you shoot accurately, which takes a bit of time before you can shoot. You, therefore, need really good aim in order to keep track of your target. You can also use your secondary fire key, normally mouse2, to fast fire, which is fairly inaccurate. If you hit your opponent in the body, he will be down to about 30 HP, which will make him an easy target for your teammates.

(The Buy Menu on the Rifles tab)

The grenades have a variety of uses, depending on which grenade you want to deploy. This passage will be a really superficial, as I wrote a more in-depth guide here.

Grenades in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive can either explode after a certain amount of time has passed after you have thrown them, or pop once they have landed and are not moving any longer. The Flashbang, the High Explosive (HE) grenade, and the Molotov/Incendiary grenade are all timed grenades, meanwhile, the Smoke and the Decoy grenade only pop once they have stopped moving. The names of these grenades basically gives their purpose away: The Flashbang is there to blind you or your enemy (flash someone), the HE aims to inflict damage and the Molotov/Incendiary grenade sets the ground it gets thrown on on fire, which causes damage to everyone who touches the flames. The Smoke grenade can smoke off certain passageways, which are then harder to see through, or to extinguish the flames of a Molotov/Incendiary. The Decoy grenade imitates you shooting your gun, which it does by playing the fire sound of your most expensive gun that you carried with you as you threw your Decoy.

These is a variety of gear you can purchase in-game. The CT-side has one more option when it comes to gear compared to the T-side, as they can purchase a defuse kit, which cuts the time it takes to defuse a planted bomb in half to 5 seconds. You have the option to buy Kevlar or Kevlar and Helmet. Kevlar gives you extra protection against every kind of damage you take, except for fall damage and the damage inflicted by the SG 553, as the SG 553 has 100% armor penetration. The Helmet can make one-hit headshots impossible with most weapons, like the Famas, M4, Galil and all SMGs. The special child in this family is the taser, the Zeus x27. The Zeus is technically a weapon, but I decided to include it in this passage, due to its unique nature. The Zeus only has one shot and can be deadly at very close ranges, which would be the main goal of someone wielding this weapon. If you are just inside of the limited hit-space of the Zeus, but your target is just far enough away to survive the attack, then you have hit a really slim area in which it is possible that people survive a hit with the Zeus at a certain distance.

Economy:

Part of playing the competitive game mode in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is money management. All people start the game with exactly $800 in their pockets and a starting pistol. For every round win, you will gain $3250, except for a round that got ended by the bomb, either being defused or exploding, as this will reward the winning team $3500. If you lose a round, you will get $1400. If you lose another round, you will get the last round loser bonus of an additional $500. This repeats until you have reached the maximum loser bonus after five rounds. From this point on, the loser bonus will stay at $3400 until you win a round. Furthermore, there are kill rewards with the base amount being $300. This means that you normally will gain $300 for killing an enemy. This is dependent on the weapon you use. The biggest kill reward is $1500 when you kill someone with your knife, followed by $900 for a shotgun kill and 600 for a kill with an SMG. There are exceptions to this, and these are the CZ-75-Auto, P90, AWP and the Zeus x27. The CZ, as well as the AWP, will give you $100, the P90 $300 and the Zeus $0. These exceptions are in place to balance the weapons to be useful proportional to their price and intended use in the game. Defusing or planting the bomb will give the responsible player $300, and planting the bomb but losing the round as a Terrorist will give your team a bonus of $800 per player.

(The reward in a casual match)

Now, there are almost endless possibilities to play the economy game in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, but I will simply explain some basic terms and variations. First, buy something in the pistol round. The potential gain from spending, let's say, $650 for Kevlar in order to not get overwhelmed by Glocks running over you. This purchase will give you an advantage by reducing the damage and aimpunch the enemy weapons will inflict on you, giving you a chance to win the round. That's worth way more than having an extra $650 a round or two later. Now, there are multiple kinds of rounds, which are basically divisible into two terms: The Eco Round and the Buy Round. The Eco Round is a round in which you will only invest a little bit of money, if at all, so your team can save some money to buy good weapons in a following round. A Buy Round is a round in which you will invest a lot of money, often everything, to have the weapons and equipment you need to win the following round(s). There are two kinds of Buy Rounds - the Forcebuy and the Full-Buy. The Forcebuy is done when the enemy's economy is weak and you think that they will have mediocre weaponry at best after winning the last round and you want to gain or maintain the economic advantage by breaking their economy. A Full-Buy is done after winning consecutive rounds and you have (almost) everything that you need to potentially win another round.

There are also penalties for people killing themselves (no loser bonus) or teammates (-300$).

How the Radar works:

Basically, your Radar is the eyes of the entire team combined. You can see enemies, as a Terrorist you can always see the bomb and the bomb carrier, and as a CT you can see the bomb on the radar as long as a teammate has contact with it. The way things show up on the radar can be weird, as detecting enemies in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive isn't as straightforward as you might think. For things to show up on your radar, you have to kind of aim at the target you want to show up on the radar. This video illustrates this pretty well.

Keep in mind that decoys are seen on the radar even though no eye contact has been made.

Gamemodes:

In Counter-Strike: Global Offensive you can choose between a wide variety of game modes, as was teased earlier in this article. Those game modes include official game modes on Valve servers and game modes made by different people all around the world with their own servers hosting them.

Valve:

Valve has its own servers, spanning from Matchmaking to Death Match. I will give you a quick rundown of those official game modes.

Competitive (MM)

5v5 ranked games, official map pool is played by pros. This is what is normally what people refer to as "playing Counter-Strike".

Casual

10v10 unranked games. The, well, casual version of Competitive, so that you can get to know the maps and so on.

Demolition

5v5 unranked games. Your weapon upgrades after a kill for the next round. Only one bombsite.

Arms Race

5v5 unranked games. Race to the last rank, the golden knife, by killing enemies. Your weapon changes each time you change rank.

Death Match

10v10 unranked games. Kill as many enemies as possible before the time limit expires.

(With "FIND A GAME" you can choose your game mode)

Mappool:

As Competitive is the most played game mode in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and is present in the eSports scene, I will concentrate on this game mode the most.

In Competitive, you can choose whatever map you want to play. These maps are divided into 2 map pools, the Active Duty Group and the Reserves Group. The Active Duty Group is marked with a small CS logo on the top left corner of the map. The Active Duty Group is the map pool that eSports events normally use, and the Reserves Group is reserved for future Active Duty maps that are getting tested by the community. The Reserves Group also contains old maps that are not fit for competitive play anymore. You may notice that some maps from the Reserves Group have a different symbol on the lower right corner, with a person instead of a bomb. This is because there is a slightly different version of the competitive mode available, called Rescue or Hostage mode. This doesn't really differ from the original competitive game mode, except that the CTs have to save hostages instead of preventing a bomb explosion. For Death Match and Casual, there are 3 map pools and Dust 2 selectable. The map pools are the Active Duty Group, the Reserves Group and the Hostage Group. The other game modes, Arms Race and Demolition, have their own, special mappool suited for the game mode.

Callouts:

The key to playing the maps as they should be played is communication with your teammates about the enemies and their movement. To do so, you need to be able to give precise callouts for the position your enemy is at. In order to help you with this, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive has implemented a small text that shows up above your radar that tells you how the part of the map you are in is called. This, however, often spans multiple in-game feet and are therefore may not be accurate enough, and the community has come up with their own callouts for the most part anyway. I cannot present you every single callout ever, simply because there are differences between regions and peer groups, but I can show you how you can easily deduce what things might be called.

You need to look for patterns in the callouts for certain areas. Often, people are just putting their visual experience in words. A few of those examples can be found in a lot of different maps, like Train, where a lot of callouts are simply the colors of the trains, like Red (train) and Yellow (train). A different example from the same map would be Gas Train, sometimes simply called Gas, because the train looks like it was made to transport gas. Other times, however, people call things and areas something that describes their meaning or what that area actually is, like A-Site, Bombtrain or Connector. The Connector is always something that connects two different areas with each other. Furthermore, there are calls that describe the way something is, like A-Short or A-Long on Dust 2, as A-Short is, once entered, the shorter way to the A-bombsite than A-Long. Catwalk is a metaphorical, but clear, way to call elevated positions that are clearly visible from at least one side of the Catwalk, like this position on Cache.

(This spot is known as Catwalk)

Sometimes elevated positions are called Heaven, and the places directly below the way to get up to heaven are called Hell. If this didn't help you, there are multiple callout guides on Reddit and on the steam community.

Community:

Even though the community of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive can be quite infuriating to deal with, there certainly are a lot of good community members which will help you to keep your head up while playing this awesome game. The Community always has been a big part of Counter-Strike and has built their own net of servers, maps and other things to help you out.

One of those things are the community guides on Reddit and on the steam community page, as mentioned before, but that is not all.

Overwatch:

Cheating is, sadly, a big part of online gaming. To fight this, Valve has implemented an anti-cheat which is not too successful, as they do not dare to go deeper into the files of the user, which limits the available methods to countermeasure cheating immensely. To rectify their shortcoming, they implemented a system which incorporates the community in finding cheaters and banning them. Basically, you can download a demo from a random and anonymous user, which you will have to watch to give a verdict. It is important to read their FAQ about it here, otherwise you might ruin someone's career just because he had a good game.

Overwatch is unlocked after you have claimed a certain rank and accumulated a certain amount of time played.

Source Game Browser:

Like most Source based games, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive gives you the opportunity to look for the servers you want to play on yourself. You can set parameters, which the showed server will have to fulfill, and you can join them if the server is not full or set to private. These servers are exclusively provided by community members, which causes a massive quality difference from server to server. As you make your way through those servers, you can decide which ones feel good and save them to your favorites.

(The Source Game Browser)

There are a lot of different community game modes. Below are some of the best known.

(FFA) DM

Free for all is the most common version of this game mode.

Retake

Simulation of competitive scenarios, where the CTs have to retake a bombsite taken by the Ts.

Surf

Uses the possibilities of the Source engine to let you surf tilted walls, sometimes to get guns, sometimes to set records.

B(unny)hop

Uses the possibilities of the Source engine to race to the finish line as fast as possible by only jumping as soon as you touch the ground

KZ/Climb/Klimb 

Helps you to master the movement mechanics by presenting you parkour maps, which can be really difficult.

Community Maps:

Valve also lets you decide if you want to download special maps from the workshop. These maps are often created to teach you mechanics or help you warm up.

You can rate the maps, follow the creators, add them to your offline map pool and so on. To add maps, you simply need to find the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Workshop and add the map you want to play to your favorites.

(Looking through the workshop and adding a map to my favorites)

Some people also organize 10-mans(friendly 5v5 competitive) on really good community maps which aim to be competitively viable, and they have a chance to be implemented in the game, at least during so-called Operations, which would add special Operation maps as a new map pool to give the players a bit of variety.

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