Counter-Strike has never been just about the clash between special forces and terrorists. The engine's flexibility has always allowed for the creation of new modes: people compete in movement skills on bunnyhop and surf maps, and cooperative enthusiasts are drawn to custom maps. There are even locations where players role-play as prisoners and guards in jails. Now, CS has introduced a map for football fans.
The map, aptly named *Futsal*, was released in CS2 at the end of July, with its latest update on 29 August. Here, two teams play football in a hockey rink.
The rules are straightforward: score more goals in the opponent's net than you concede in your own. The game lasts until three, six, or nine goals, adjustable via an easy-to-use in-map menu. However, despite the simplicity, winning is quite challenging—the ball's physics in CS is far from realistic, making it difficult to predict its trajectory and speed. Also, don't forget that CS is a shooter, so you can shoot the ball, causing it to fly in the opposite direction. While shooting doesn’t damage opponents, it does slow them down.
A special mechanic for lifting the ball was developed for this map. By holding a specific button, you can pop the ball into the air, and a well-timed shot will send it flying.
Additionally, you can activate a cool playlist with music, choose a team logo and name, and even select a helmet so players from different teams don’t get confused. Options include a red or blue helmet, a snowman’s head, and a traffic cone.
Playing is incredibly easy: download the map from the workshop, launch CS, gather friends in a lobby, and start the map from the “Workshop Maps” tab. Once in the game, you can enable or disable ball lifts, remove weapons, turn on music, and select logos.
Football has always had a connection with CS due to the *Dust 2* map—at the attack spawn point, there’s a football that players love to kick around. In honour of this, a special sticker was added to the game.
In the month since its release, the map has been downloaded by 10,000 players. However, you can’t play with bots on it yet, so you’ll need to gather friends—playing 1v1 can get quite boring, so it's best to have at least four players.