This game is larger than the sun, so rather than tell you about it, I'll tell you about my experience with it.

I began playing Counter-Strike in 2005 with CS 1.6. I watched Wisenhunt and cut many old habits from shooters like Halo using long practice sessions and much research. I found internet cafes that hosted local competitions and placed in the tops on all of them. I got down more than a few times going into a higher level of play. Learned discipline, sportsmanship, and respect. I worked my way through the professional scene into national competition, and only once landed into internationals.

My Global Offensive rank is Silver Elite as of this review.(Supreme Master First Class before the 'Great Elo Shift')

I will wholly recommend this game for anyone who wants to learn the basics of competitive shooters, have a good time, and make new friends.
I will never recommend this game as a professional competitive environment without utilizing a third party system.

Valve is an entirely different company, and this game is no longer a Counter-Strike game in my view. So many updates down the pipeline of this former Source console port has seen it deteriorate into a fully accessible CS Clone with many issues.

Let's begin with proper configuration to play this game in any semblance of professional play.
Block https://blog.counter-strike.net from your network
The ingame widgets drag anywhere between a few kb's to 100MB/s from your network and stay on even during a match
Use custom configuration maps or files to remove in-game bloat
Change your entire game options tab to suit what anyone in the game would actually use (Why would default be anything other than 1???)
Then hopefully you've paid your way into competitive, or you're in for some of the nastiest third world country behavior you've ever seen on your road to arbitrarily rank a different leveling system than you'll ever pay attention to for the rest of your life, outside of once a year for a participation trophy (or way more colors of said trophy if you play 24/7).
You'll be very naive to believe you can play this game solo, especially without Prime. In the end if you want to be serious, they will take your money, and your data as you'll have to fork your phone number out to another ripe internet repository to be stored indefinitely whilst you play.
As a previous iteration user, you'll find controls are never as responsive, spread is rampantly enforced now, and you'll be placed with anyone between an equivilent to complete noobs to professionals all in the area of around 4 ranks as the 'Great Elo Shift' mentioned previously has taken full affect in bringing some of the worlds strongest players to the end of Silver rankings whilst complete imbeciles are still amongst them as well. You can no longer use skillful strategy, as shots are left entirely to chance, noone else knows to lower their latency by blocking the CS blog, and everyone has an entirely skewed idea of what "skill" even looks like.
this is where I have to say. for the set of users like myself that helped build an entire community around Counter-Strike...
Press Uninstall, and enjoy Source.

_Edit: CS:2 largely fixes a lot of this.

This game is larger than the sun, so rather than tell you about it, I'll tell you about my experience with it. I began playing Counter-Strike in 2005 with CS 1.6. I watched Wisenhunt and cut many old habits from shooters like Halo using long practice sessions and much research. I found internet cafes that hosted local competitions and placed in the tops on all of them. I got down more than a few times going into a higher level of play. Learned discipline, sportsmanship, and respect. I worked my way through the professional scene into national competition, and only once landed into internationals. My Global Offensive rank is Silver Elite as of this review.(Supreme Master First Class before the 'Great Elo Shift') I will wholly recommend this game for anyone who wants to learn the basics of competitive shooters, have a good time, and make new friends. I will never recommend this game as a professional competitive environment without utilizing a third party system. Valve is an entirely different company, and this game is no longer a Counter-Strike game in my view. So many updates down the pipeline of this former Source console port has seen it deteriorate into a fully accessible CS Clone with many issues. Let's begin with proper configuration to play this game in any semblance of professional play. Block https://blog.counter-strike.net from your network The ingame widgets drag anywhere between a few kb's to 100MB/s from your network and stay on even during a match Use custom configuration maps or files to remove in-game bloat Change your entire game options tab to suit what anyone in the game would actually use (Why would default be anything other than 1???) Then hopefully you've paid your way into competitive, or you're in for some of the nastiest third world country behavior you've ever seen on your road to arbitrarily rank a different leveling system than you'll ever pay attention to for the rest of your life, outside of once a year for a participation trophy (or way more colors of said trophy if you play 24/7). You'll be very naive to believe you can play this game solo, especially without Prime. In the end if you want to be serious, they will take your money, and your data as you'll have to fork your phone number out to another ripe internet repository to be stored indefinitely whilst you play. As a previous iteration user, you'll find controls are never as responsive, spread is rampantly enforced now, and you'll be placed with anyone between an equivilent to complete noobs to professionals all in the area of around 4 ranks as the 'Great Elo Shift' mentioned previously has taken full affect in bringing some of the worlds strongest players to the end of Silver rankings whilst complete imbeciles are still amongst them as well. You can no longer use skillful strategy, as shots are left entirely to chance, noone else knows to lower their latency by blocking the CS blog, and everyone has an entirely skewed idea of what "skill" even looks like. this is where I have to say. for the set of users like myself that helped build an entire community around Counter-Strike... Press Uninstall, and enjoy Source. _Edit: CS:2 largely fixes a lot of this.