Valve has updated Counter-Strike: Global Offensive with a brand new revolver, a series of Christmas themed weapon skins and a brand new killcam. But don't worry, the killcam is only available in the casual modes. They aren't going to break the sensitive balance of competitive play like that.
The news was rolled out over on the official Counter-Strike website where they detail what the new features are like. They've added in gifts and gift leaderboards that will be made available up until January 15th, 2016. They added a revolver case, as well as new sticker capsules and service medals for 2016.
Of course most gamers are only concerned with what new goodies they can actually utilize during the actual gameplay of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and in that regard Valve introduced a few new goodies, including the R8 Revolver that occupies the Desert Eagle loadout slot. It's a secondary weapon that comes with high-impact stopping power for mid and close range bouts. The R8 isn't just a fancy letter and number attached to the “Revolver” name, the R8 refers to the fact that this Counter-Strike secondary weapon can hold up to eight rounds in the revolver's cylinder. This gives you two extra shots compared to what's available in most other standard six-cylinder revolvers. So you get a little extra power per shot and a couple of extra shots to down a target before having to reload.
The Killer Replay is the one feature that may have a few hardcore Counter-Strike: Global Offensive fans a bit on edge. But don't worry, this killcam equivalent isn't meant for competitive play. Valve implemented the feature for casual play and for the Demolition mode. What's more is that server operators can turn on Killer Replay or turn it off. It's available in the game settings and it's even possible to use control variables to modify certain properties of the Killer Replay in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.
The actual replay mechanic allows players to quickly see how they died from the enemy's perspective. It's identical to the killcam from Call of Duty and games of a similar ilk. The point is to help give gamers an idea of how and where they were killed from in order to adjust their game and devise a plan on exacting a little bit of revenge.
A few other additions have also been made on the gameplay side of the equation, with very moderate tweaks made to the Competitive Matchmaking times, as well as new times for the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Major Championships. In addition to this they added a new timeout feature that allows a team to call a single 60 second timeout during a Competitive Matchmaking round. In order to incite a 60 second team timeout a vote must be taken. Only one timeout is allowed per match, so don't expect to see it spammed.
They also made some changes that will be more convenient for streamers, such as the autodetection of graphics settings to match a machine that's running multiple windows at a single time. This will automatically adjust the shadow, lighting and geometry and texture details to fit the best performance of the player's machine.
You can check out the rest of the changelog over on the official Counter-Strike website.
