Winter landscapes are not often seen on CS:GO maps, and there are technical reasons for this. First of all, displaying snow can place a greater load on the video card, and saving computing resources was especially important in the early years of the game. In addition, on a white background, player figures will look different than on the summer maps, and this will also affect the gameplay. However, several winter maps still exist in CS:GO, although not all of them are available in competitive matchmaking.
Hostage Maps
The most famous winter map can be called Office. It still remains popular among players despite the fact that it is already more than twenty years old: it was first added in the beta version of Counter-Strike. Most of the action takes place in office buildings where players must free hostages, but there is also a small fragment of a snow-covered city. Many people consider this map to be unbalanced, since the large number of narrow corridors gives an advantage to terrorists. Nevertheless, they don’t stop playing on it.
Another popular card with hostages – Militia. The action takes place in a mountain village. It’s interesting that “winter” This card did not appear immediately. After the map was removed from the competitive mode, with one of the patches the summer setting was replaced by a snowy landscape, Christmas lights and other decorative elements appeared. Now it is only available in “Regular” mode.
Winter maps as part of operations
It is worth mentioning a couple more winter maps that were available to players only for a limited time. For example, as part of Operation Bloodhound The “Rails” location appeared in the game, but after the end of the event it was removed and it is now impossible to play it on official servers. The card Royal from Operation Wildfire suffered the same fate. This is probably due to the fact that both of them, for various reasons, did not enjoy much love from the players, and the developers decided not to waste resources on their further support and development.
Winter maps from the workshop
You can download versions of maps that are now unavailable in the game from Workshop Steam. Those who lack official locations can also find many other maps with winter landscapes there. One of the most elaborate – card Subzero from FMPONE. In October 2018, this card even appeared in matchmaking, but did not stay there for long and was eventually removed from the game. One can only regret that the developer stopped developing it and switched to other projects.
Fans of the Danger Zone mode may like the Frostbite map, created through the joint efforts of several community members. Open snow-covered spaces, where it is difficult to hide from enemies, give the game additional tension.
Which winter maps for CS:GO do you like?
