CS2 Nuke Update Adds Two New Maps

Updates for CS2 (which is still in closed beta) are becoming more frequent as the official release window for the game (summer 2023) is now upon us. The latest big update adds a number of interesting new additions to the game, with the most eye-catching changes being that Mirage is now out of CS2’s beta and Nuke has been added along with Office.

In this article, we go over the most important changes.

CS2 Nuke In, Mirage Out

With Mirage being tested to satisfaction, the map has now been removed from the CS2 testing environment and has been replaced with Nuke. With the addition of Nuke in CS2, we’re seeing the first map that isn’t a so-called ‘Touchstone map’ enter the game. Touchstone maps (like Dust 2 and Mirage) only received updates to the lighting and a slight visual overhaul, whereas maps in the other tiers will introduce new materials, lighting, reflections, and even complete visual overhauls. While the changes to Nuke aren’t as big as some of the teased changes on maps like Overpass (which will receive complete overhauls instead of ‘just’ upgrades like Nuke) it’s exciting to see Valve’s take on this iconic map in CS2.

Read more: Nuke in CS2

Office in CS2

Office, a popular map for hostage scenarios and an iconic Counter-Strike map in its own right, has also been added to the CS2 beta. CS2’s Office will only be playable in Deathmatch and Casual modes for now, but it’s interesting to see that Valve is dedicated to bringing the more niche maps (Office, for those who don’t know, is not part of the official map pool and has never been officially played at a Major) along for the ride as well. The inclusion of Office in CS2 also gives testers two maps to play around with.

Will there be grenade skins in CS2?

With this latest update, grenades can now be inspected and even have rare inspect animations. This might mean that Valve will add grenade skins in the future. This can come in the form of different pins or small stickers on the grenades as opposed to using full-blown retextures, seeing as the colors of grenades are sometimes used by players to know which ones they want to pick up off of the floor. Of course we can only speculate at this point in time, but skins enthusiasts are potentially in for a fantastic time with CS2.

Movement fixes

In an effort to improve the movement and make it feel closer to CS:GO’s movement (which is the intention of the developers) they’ve made some changes to the movement in CS2. A bug where players got stuck into the so-called slow crouch animation (which is meant to discourage crouch spamming) even when they used it sparingly has now been fixed, which means that crouch jumping on top of multiple levels of elevation should be a lot more consistent.

In addition, Valve has also made bunny hopping feel more consistent to CS:GO’s feeling at 128 tick. They’ve also added a number of console commands and readouts to allow players to fine tune their bunny hopping.

Audio fixes and improvements

Various audio fixes were deployed to CS2, and Valve has also made improvements to the way audio is displayed, with added distance sound effects and improved 3D sound processing.

Networking updates

Some updates have been made to Valve’s subtick system, reducing CPU usage and thus reducing the probability of dropped ticks. This should make the game feel more consistent.

CS2 Nuke Update full patch notes

A full list of the official patch notes:

[ GAMEPLAY ]

Added Casual game mode.

[ SHOOTING ]

Fixed rare cases where bullets would not follow spray pattern.

[ MAPS ]

Added Nuke to Deathmatch, Casual, and Competitive game modes.
Added Office to Deathmatch and Casual game modes.
Removed Mirage.

[ AUDIO ]

Added distance effects to all positional sound sources.
Improvements to 3d sound processing.
General mix tweaks and improvements.
Fixed bug where sometimes sounds would not respect the occlusion values of surrounding geometry resulting in sources appearing closer than what they were.
Fixed missing low frequencies at certain distances away from sound sources such as grenades and weapon fire.
Fixed a bug where some sounds would be slightly louder or quieter depending on the listeners orientation.
Added music cues to Match Accept and Loading screens.
Added unique audio occlusion layer to help with vertical sound positioning in Nuke.

[ ANIMATION ]

Grenades can now be inspected.
Improved healthshot animations
Improved inspect behavior for various weapons

[ MOVEMENT ]

Fixed cases of unintended slow crouch/uncrouch.
Bunny hopping feel should now closely match CS:GO running at 128 tick.
Added convar sv_jump_spam_penalty_time to allow fine tuning of bunny hop feel.
The readout for cl_showpos has been enhanced to show the maximum speed of the last 3 seconds; this number is in parenthesis on the ‘vel’ line
Players can no longer jump at the end of warmup time

[ NETWORKING ]