“Rush Time” update adds a new game mode and silent reloading, and brings back clan tags.

Valve has done it again; they’ve dropped a surprise update with massive changes for casuals and competitive players alike.

The headline is obviously the new game mode, but that doesn’t mean the other changes aren’t interesting too. In fact, one of those changes could seriously affect your future games. Another means you’ll have to change your crosshair ASAP.

So, let’s waste no further time and look at this update:

Rush

A new fast-paced 3v3 mode that’s unlike anything we’ve seen before.

The core idea is that you play through several maps randomly selected each time, so no two games are the same. Each map has a tower you must control to win. You must do so before you eliminate the enemy or time runs out. You’re basically playing a tug-of-war to reach each other's castle and win the game.

The selection of maps is as follows:

Randomly rotating these should keep the game fresh for a while. There’s also a tie-breaker map not listed here, which has both teams placed on a moving train fighting for the win.

This game mode should be absolutely amazing for playing with your buddies and having a good time. There’s a leaderboard, but no real ranking system, which means you can just enjoy it without it becoming a measuring contest.

Since we mentioned maps earlier, let’s look at the Premier map change as well:

Premier map voting

Voting is an entirely different system now.

Instead of voting to ban maps, you’re now voting for maps you would like to play. Teams will be voting to pick two maps each. Team 1 picks one, Team 2 picks two, then Team 1 picks the final map. After all four maps are picked, a random map will be selected, and the game will start. This means an indie cool kid stack might have to play Mirage and Dust II, while the non-English-speaking mechanic demons will have to play Nuke or Ancient.

This is largely a good change, especially for solo queue players who are tired of playing two maps over and over.

We’re fans of Valve making Premier a better casual experience; most serious players are on Faceit, if we’re honest. Premier doesn’t have to be a Faceit replacement, but it can be its own separate experience that’s actually good for the average CS player.

We can’t wait to queue a game and try the new gameplay changes:

Gameplay changes

There are quite a few, so hold onto your hats.

The biggest one has to be the new quiet reload. Holding your reload button now causes you to reload slowly, but silently, allowing for your lurk to be more potent, or for your map control to stay undercover for longer. This will probably be the biggest change of this update for the competitive scene, as pros find ways to use this to their advantage.

It’s not the only change added for sneakiness: unscoping weapons no longer makes a noise, so if you FalleN scope into Mirage Palace, unscoping won’t give it away anymore.

But beware of shooting, because it’ll be easier to spot the damage you cause.

Bullets and blood are now far more obvious in-game, with bullet holes becoming almost comically large, and blood being generally more… blood-like?

Crosshairs have also gotten a fresh coat of paint, though this one might annoy a few of you.

They’ve made crosshairs the same regardless of resolution now, meaning you can copy people’s crosshairs, whatever their settings, and have it be 1:1. This also comes with a revamped crosshair creator and new shapes. This does mean your current crosshair has likely been reset, so you’ll have to port it over yourself. Bummer, but at least the feature is pretty cool.

The rest

Here’s the stuff that didn’t fit neatly into one spot, but still matters.

For one, and this is a big one for a lot of us, clan tags are back. If you never played GO, you wouldn’t know it, but you used to be able to pick a Steam group’s display name and have that appear in front of your username in-game. This obviously led to a lot of interesting choices, but it also let you and your friends LARP as a team by changing your clan tags to your silly team name. And isn’t that what CS is all about?

We’re really glad this is back.

Another neat change they’ve made is allowing stickers on the C4 now.

We’re a little surprised it took this long, to be honest; this seemed like a layup for Valve. You can now customize your personal IED with anime girls, animals, or brand logos. Here’s an example of what it looks like in-game:

That covers most of the big updates, except for pet chickens, whose files have been added to the game. It’s unclear how far along this feature is, with some people saying they’ve already been getting eggs in their weekly drop. We suspect that might have been a mistake on Valve’s part, since there’s no mention of them in the patch notes. But we’ll leave you with videos, so you can see for yourself: