Following the spread of Coronavirus, many countries underwent a total lockdown to limit the movement of people so as to limit the spread of the virus. As some countries start to ease these extreme measures, several restrictions like no public gathering, no public transport, no hotels, no restaurants, etc still remain. Due to this several events that were postponed before are now being canceled or being moved to next year.
Dear CS:GO Fans: We have an important update to share that concerns all attendees of #ESLOne Cologne and #IEM Melbourne this year. Due to the current global health situation, both live events have been rescheduled to 2021. All tickets remain valid. https://t.co/YYhMrSp5eHpic.twitter.com/fwFTjpR7u5
Today in a statement on their official website, ESL announced that the upcoming 2020 CS:GO tournaments will be played out without the audience and most of them will be postponed to next year.
Following Germany’s official ruling, ESL One Cologne will take place without a live audience this year. At the same time, ESL unveiled that they will be coming back to the LANXESS arena in 2021 with ESL One Cologne 2021 from July 16 -18 with all purchased 2020 tickets remaining valid for next year’s event.
As for the IEM Melbourne, it will no longer take place in 2020 and instead has been rescheduled to next year over the weekend of August 21-22, 2021 at Rod Laver Arena. All the tickets purchased for 2020 will remain valid for the event in 2021.
Lastly, ESL also announced that anyone can request a ticket refund until the end of 2020 if they already know they won’t be able to attend on new dates next year.
Ever since the release of CSGO, this question has sparked debates and controversies across social media platforms and forums relevant to the game. While there doesn’t seem to be a conclusive answer to this, the question was enough to send me down through to a guided field trip down the overthinking alley. After going through videos of years’ worth of professional games, the light that dazzled me the most was NiKo, the current IGL of FaZe clan.
No, it wasn’t a sudden epiphany. The name NiKo has since long been carved in stone in the history of CSGO alongside the likes of s1mple, ZywOo or coldzera. As long as CSGO lives, these names will forever be luminescent in the skies of professional Counter-Strike. But there are some reasons why NiKo can be given an edge over his counterparts in Na’Vi or Vitality.
Nikola “NiKo” Kovač is a 23-year-old professional Counter-Strike player and the current IGL for FaZe clan. Being born in the country of Bosnia, NiKo was first introduced to the world of Counter-Strike through a local net café. Ever since he lay hands on Counter-Strike, he aspired to be the best in the world. Soon he reached towards the top levels of professional CS 1.6 and was picked up by iNation and later switched to team Refuse.
His major breakthrough occurred in Counter-Strike: Global offensive after he joined mousesports in 2015. From there onwards he started proving to the world why he was considered as a prodigy of CS and showed exceptional proficiency with not only rifles, but also the Deagle.
While he couldn’t attain much success in mousesports, his career was pretty much a steady climb when he was picked up by FaZe in 2017. His coordination with FaZe was perfect and his marksmanship also saw a significant improvement in his new clan.
The current roster for the FaZe clan includes rain, olofmeister, coldzera, and broky with NiKo as the IGL of the team. Their most recent achievements include landing first-place finishes in both the BLAST Pro Series at Copenhagen and Miami in 2019 and in EPICENTER 2018.
Photo: BLAST
So what constitutes the definition of “the greatest in the world”? What makes me put NiKo at the metaphorical throne of CSGO?
Aim
Calling NiKo an aim god would be an understatement. Flawless? Precise? Impeccable? My vocabulary falls short of words which can be used to accurately describe the aiming of this player. His mouse movements give the impression that his wrist was built for Counter-Strike. The muscle memory of NiKo is exceptional even for the professional scene and he is rarely seen missing his mark.
“But s1mple also has great aim”
While it’s true that some other players like s1mple are renowned for their brilliant aim, what puts NiKo a step further is the fact that he can make plays out of nothing. A NiKo with just a deagle can be far more lethal than many others equipped with rifles.
This clip showcases one of the most iconic deagle aces in CSGO history, and it’s by none other than NiKo.
Gamesense
Aim alone isn’t enough to be a complete CS player; Movement and gamesense are equally important aspects. NiKo has been playing Counter-Strike professionally for more time than most players have even started getting into the game. As a result, he has developed a gamesense that’s better than many other pros in the scene. His ability to read opponents’ plays made him the IGL of FaZe. As an IGL, he is the one who calls out shots for his team and leads his team to success. His profound knowledge surrounding the game has helped him get away from intense scenarios without losing a nerve. While some pros like N0thing are also known for reading their opponents like a book, it is NiKo’s acute marksmanship in combination with his gamesense that makes him a deadly force to reckon with.
This clip shows a classic mind game coming from NiKo to get the best out of NEO in a 1v1 situation.
The Statistics
Numbers will speak a lot more than words when it comes to proving who’s the best player in the world. The HLTV profile for NiKo puts him at 25,642 kills with an insane 0.80 kills per round. His headshot percentage stands at a whopping 50.3% and that too, as an IGL which in itself is a major achievement. His impact rating is 1.30 and he holds a KDR of 1.20, both of which are impressive numbers in the top levels of competitive play.
Achievements
The team achievements of NiKo are remarkable, but still lack to an extent when compared to that of some other pros. But he has managed to shine as a player regardless, as his personal achievements are still impressive to say the least. NiKo was crowned as the 2nd best player of 2017 just behind coldzera by HLTV and the 3rd best in 2018 behind s1mple and dev1ce.
It’s true that CSGO is a dynamic game and the title of the best player in the world can’t be conclusively decided due to varying perspectives. But it’s undeniable that judging by raw skill, few, if any player can come even remotely close to NiKo’s levels. Combine the aspect of being an IGL of his team at that, and it clearly shows why he is often regarded as the greatest of all time.
How often do we find the predator becoming the prey? Well, on the few rare occasions that we do, the outcomes tend to be the most unexpected ones. The most recent incident in the CS:GO community is very similar to the above circumstances since the famous creator of HestiaNet anti-cheat became prey to the Game ban. Talk about the reverse situation over here.
The creator of the CS:GO Anti-Cheat system 'HestiaNet' just got game banned – one of the very few persons that tried to fight against the plague of cheaters…
The creator of HestiaNet AI, 2eggs is a very well known programmer in the CS:GO community. He is an expert in analyzing bugs and security risks which has earned him cash rewards ranging up to $12,000 from Valve. 2eggs has also actively created FACEIT ban logs and Minerva ban logs.
HestiaNet is an AI-based anti-cheat that takes a Steam ID as datasets from the potential cheating players on the overwatch list. The AI watches and analyses footage of overwatch and forms a verdict. On top of that, it stores the Steam ID of the potential hackers and tallies it later with Steam to check whether they are banned or not. The AI increases its accuracy with every potential cheater being banned. The idea of HestiaNet AI itself is revolutionary and it showed great promise when it was initially implemented as it caught more than 14,500 CS:GO cheaters.
Sadly enough, the creator of the anti-cheat might have been misjudged as a hacker as he has recently received a game ban from CSGO. Unlike VAC bans, a game ban can’t conclusively prove that someone has indeed cheated in the game. Chances are, the game ban was a mistake from the game’s part and if that’s the case then it’s very likely he’ll be unbanned soon.
After some things were pointed out to us, we realised that calling this a ‘scandal’ was a terrible mistake from our part. We take our previous words backs and sincerely apologize for any confusions or misunderstandings which our article may have caused.
It’s been almost 10 years Ubisoft released the last Prince of Persia game – The Forgotten Sands that was released on 18 May 2010. On 4 May 2020, Ubisoft registered a Prince of Persia 6 web domain. Is it just a coincidence?
Just after few hours of revealing Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, Ubisoft registered the web domain so as to avoid any leaks or spoilers. So does this mean that a new sequel of the game is in the works and will be released in the future? Chances are that the new game might get revealed on the next Inside Xbox Presentation scheduled for Thursday, 7 May 2020.
Well, this is just a speculation for the moment; maybe they just wanted to secure the domain for now. The next Prince of Persia game would be the 6th in the POP series since Ubisoft acquired the franchise. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, Prince of Persia: Warrior Within, Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Prince of Persia 2008 and Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands were the previous games in the series.
However, there were rumors that a new game of Prince of Persia was in the works, but no concrete evidence is there to prove any such thing. Next-gen platforms like PlayStation 5 & Xbox Series X can possibly be a great place for restarting the beloved gaming franchise.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s love for video games is well known, he previously asked the users whether they would be interested in playing CD Project Red’s The Witcher games while on self-driving mode in their Teslas. A few days back he took to twitter to ask whether it is possible to get good “multiplayer games” working in a Tesla.
Anyone think they can get a good multiplayer Minecraft working on Teslas? Or maybe create a game that interacts virtually with reality like Pokémon Go while driving safely? Like a complex version of Pac-man or Mario Kart?
Certain selection of Teslas already includes games that the owner can boot up through the car. Musk has been playing Mojang’s sandbox building title Minecraft as he tweeted the following:
These games would not necessarily make distracted driving a safe practise even with a self-driving vehicle. In February, a Tesla driver got killed in a 2018 crash may have been able to prevent his autopilot’s malfunction if he hadn’t been distracted playing on his phone.
As of late, Musk has had a somewhat spotty track record on social media. Not only he single-handedly dropped his own company’s stock prices by joking about it on Twitter but he also recevived backlash for using a Deus Ex comparison when calling for the end of coronavirus safety measures.
Despite these controversies, Musk and his companies – SpaceX, Tesla and others are doing a pretty good job in the field of technology. Sometimes popularity comes in the form of a meme, for example when fans petitioned to get the Tesla Cybertruck into Rocket League. This petition certainly gave a huge boost to the popularity of Tesla Cybertruck.
When Doublelift returned back to TSM after a bad split with Team Liquid in the LCS, allegations were made that Doublelift was returning back to TSM because of his girlfriend “Leena Xu” who runs the popular organization. On May 3, Leena opened up about the criticism on OfflineTV podcast and during the segment Twitch star Pokimane defended the couple, arguing that the complaints don’t add up.
Pokimane defends TSM Leena
Leena sat down with OfflineTV crew members Fedmyster, DisguisedToast & Pokimane to discuss several topics regarding the recent controversy surrounding her boyfriend Doublelift. Pokimane questioned the critics, stating, “The thing that bothers me the most is, as you said, people seem to have a massive problem with it now, but they didn’t care at all for the last half of year.”
She even argued that there would be less conflict of interest with the couple being on the same team. She further continued by saying, “Which I think is kind of odd, because if anything there would have been way more conflict of interest if he wa on another team, as opposed to you being on the same team.”
Cloud9 content creator Christopher ‘MonteCristo’ Mykles tweeted the following on May 4:
Corporate executives recuse themselves from conflicts of interest, they don’t go on streamer house podcasts with their friends and throw a straw man pity party.
Despite the accusations, Doublelift denied them allin a vlog he uploaded on April 26 on his YouTube channel. He said, “If Leena wasn’t on TSM, would I join TSM? Absolutely, yes.”
Doublelift was a part of TSM from 2015-2017. In the vlog he clearly mentioned that he is return back to TSM to play with his friends Soren ‘Bjergsen’ Bjerg and Vincent ‘Biofrost’ Wang.
YouTube star, fitness model, and actress Amanda Cerny is a popular face in the online entertainment world with over 26 million followers on Instagram & over 2 million subscribers on YouTube. However, she doesn’t seem to be having much of a following on Twitch.
Amanda came under fire after she pressured her viewers to subscribe to her Twitch channel in exchange for a regular streaming schedule. In the clip embedded below, Amanda appears to bargain with viewers, citing a subscriber goal of 500 subs in exchange of regular streaming schedule on the platform. She looked at the camera and said, “We gotta get to 500 subs. It’s the only way I’m committing to the stream schedule. We’re at 187. Like… I don’t know what to tell ya.”
The clip went viral across all social media platforms with one use accusing Amanda of “begging” for subs. One critic tagged her in a Tweet that read, “Amanda Cerny, Kinda hate you now” to which she replied by saying, “Watch my stream clips and you’ll see it’s an ongoing question from fans for me to be on a Twitch schedule that I can’t justify right now, so I set a goal of 500 sub for me to commit to a stream schedule.”
Another critic pointed out that broadcasting with a regular streaming schedule is a good way to gain subscriptions organically. Amanda replied by saying:
However Amanda has continued to come under fire with critics echoing similar sentiments in the cases of streamers like Invadervie & BadBunny thrashing viewers for not subbing to their channels.
Valve has extensively been shipping updates for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive since quite some time. It is not usual though. The developers have shipped yet another update that features subtle delightful additions to the game. The update is approximately sized 75MB.
The update dated 05 March, 2020 includes the addition of kill feed icons – for blind kills, kills through smoke, no-scope kills, kills through wall & domination. These feed icons were used in some of the community servers prior to the update. The update also fixes a bug related to crouch-walking and slutter. This bug has been lingering since ages.
Yet another interesting addition is the enabling of animation blending for chickens. “Animation blending automatically smooths transitions between animations, chickens and prop_dynamics had their animation blending broken, so they would jerk to the next frame instead of smoothly transitioning from the end of the last frame to the new frame,” said a user on Reddit.
The update brings along several minor tweaks to Chlorine alongside 1v1 warmup arena for Inferno in Wingman mode. The developers have fixed various bugs related to crosshair settings and added various stability fixes.
Today we're adding kill feed icons for blind kills, kills through smoke, and no scope sniper kills; all kill feed icons feature the bullet on the same line. We're also adding a 1v1 arena for Inferno and more. Here's today's Release Notes: https://t.co/jPXto5zOSopic.twitter.com/zpROBziKZ2
The release notes for 05/04/2020 are available here:
GAMEPLAY
Added kill feed icons for blind shooter, kills through smoke, and no scope sniper kills; all kill feed icons feature the bullet on the same line.
When spawn immunity time is set to a negative value then spawning players will not have immunity even during the warmup period.
Fully disabled player immunity in 1v1 Wingman warmup period arenas, and added logic to clear blood decals for each encounter.
sv_pure servers will now kick clients that have loaded asset files into game memory from files not present on the game server filesystem.
UI
Fixed showing observed player crosshair in the editor menu.
Fixed strings on crosshair import dialog being truncated in some languages.
Fixed crosshair codes storing incorrect values for values out of range.
MISC
Updated third-person pose for G3SG1, and taught Terrorists a better way to hold AUG in the buy menu.
To welcome the sunny weather outside, switched main menu movie scenery to Nuke.
Added ability to purchase coupon items from Steam Store, e.g. https://store.steampowered.com/buyitem/730/20170 for “StatTrak™ Masterminds Music Kit Box”.
The in-game blog will now render in Greek if the game interface is set to the Greek language.
Fixed prediction errors occurring sometimes when crouch-walking or in noclip mode as listen, server host.
Enabled animation blending for chickens.
Updated several agent voice lines for Perfect World version of the game.
Optimized textures for separatists player models.
Several stability fixes.
MAPS
Chlorine
Tweaked ambient color light to make it bluer– Made bombsite A plant zone bigger
Fixed bombstuck spots on A bombsite pillars
Removed bamboo fence near CT upper on A bombsite
Added bamboo fence near T main on A upper, moving the gap closer to the tank
Added bamboo fence near big rock on A upper to cut direct line of sight from CT upper to T main entrance
Added light source on lazy river tunnel near CT spawn
Added bamboo fence on the back of CT main entrance to A bombsite for better visibility
Tweaked textures in lazy river tunnel and connector to make them more vibrant
Added light source on B upper
Tweaked lazy river texture to make it brighter
Added cover for T’s on middle
Removed a head peek angle from CT mid to A bombsite
Fixed pixel boost on B bombsite
Made main lights on B bombsite brighter
Fixed see through stairs near CT spawn
Fixed wooden door on B being bangable
Added bamboo fence near tank on B bombsite
Removed water from lazy river at CT spawn
– Tweaked sky box to be less purple
– Added bambo fences in high traffic areas for better player model contrast
Since it’s inception the VR technology has come a long way although abit slower than anticipated, the current stack of VR tech is far greater than what we had at the start. Since then, VR has slowly found its way into mainstream gaming as a platform that has the potential to bring games to life.
Image courtesy SIE
This year, VR saw its first “AAA” quality game Half-Life: Alyx, a game which is the sequel to HL1 and prequel to HL2. Since its release, Alyx quickly found its way among the Top 10 best-rated games ever on Steam and became the best selling title in the first quarter of 2020 on Steam.
As more players jump towards VR, manufacturers are also gearing towards improving their VR technology and offer next-gen hardware. Recently, it was revealed that Microsoft teamed up with Valve to work on the next-gen VR headset. Similarly, Apple is also working with Valve on a secret VR/AR project, and now Sony has also shared some insight on their next-gen PSVR.
Image courtesy SIE
Last year Sony had filed a patent for a hand-worn Controller Device with a number of sensors to track finger movement, something very similar to Valve’s Index controllers finger tracking technology. Yesterday, Sony shared a video showcasing their new prototype finger-tracking controller, possibly Move 2, that will be coming with PSVR 2. In the video, Sony showcases how finger-tracking works in practice with their new prototype controllers.
According to them, the controllers are able to track the movement of fingers very precisely, which enables various creative uses of it in VR. The sensors surrounding the controller are able to track position and movement of every single finger, which allows the in-game character hand to replicate real hand movement with various finger positions in real-time. This enables the in-game character to perform some really delicate things inside the VR like touching, grabbing, moving, etc. Further, Sony showcases how the controller works even if a user is wearing something that can possibly interfere with the technology, like metal rings, watches, etc.
Although one thing is sure that PSVR 2 won’t be launching with PS5, we can only expect to hear more about PSVR 2 in 2021 and market availability by 2022.
Counter-Strike is one of the massively popular first-person shooter games of all time and now that we are amidst unplanned lockdown having more and more time to ourselves, we at TalkEsport thought why not help our readers to reminisce old times right on their phone itself.
Huge thanks to developer “Alibek Omarov” who ported Counter strike 1.6 to Android. It’s not a recreated or a strained down version but a full-fledged as it is a rehashed version for the mobile platform. Although, it will have its virtual overlay on buttons to help you play on a touchscreen.
How to install:
Then, install Xash3D FWGS and CS16client on your android device.
Install Counter Strike 1.6 on PC via Steam.
Create a new folder named “xash” on the internal memory of your device.
Copy folders named “cstrike” & “valve” from the directory where you just installed on the computer to the newly created folder on your phone i.e “xash” in our scenario. ( “cstrike”, “valve” —->> “xash” )
Now run the CS16Client on your phone, on the first run it will ask about “xash” folder, select it.
