When comparing Counter-Strike: Global Offensive vs PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, the Slant community recommends Counter-Strike: Global Offensive for most people. In the question“What are the best online multiplayer games on PC?” Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is ranked 8th while PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds is ranked 42nd. The most important reason people chose Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is:
Each round of CS feels more like a game driven more by careful tactics than a frivolous fast-paced and lethal paintball arena of which too many modern First-Person Shooters are guilty of. Positioning, timing and thinking are key ingredients of a successful game and cooperation is crucial if you want to win.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Driven by tactics and cooperation
Each round of CS feels more like a game driven more by careful tactics than a frivolous fast-paced and lethal paintball arena of which too many modern First-Person Shooters are guilty of.
Positioning, timing and thinking are key ingredients of a successful game and cooperation is crucial if you want to win.
Pro Runs well on most hardware and even on older hardware
It's a very optimized game and runs smoothly on even outdated hardware.
Pro Carefully-executed changes to existing maps
The updates and improvements made to existing maps have been pretty clever and useful.
For example, cracked glass is more opaque, making it harder to go on a sniping rampage. Or the stairway which was added to the bottom of de_dust made the route more viable for the Terrorists, while keeping the original purpose of that area serving as a bottleneck.
Pro Will be familiar to CS 1.6 and CS: Source players
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive builds on the strengths of its predecessors, even though those predecessors have been constantly improving for over a decade now.
Nonetheless, Counter-Strike veterans will feel right at home in Global Offensive, albeit with some minor differences. The MP5 is now the MP7, The TMP has left its place to the MP9 and you can't attach a suppressor to the M4.
Pro Awesome combination of looting, survival and combat
You start the game getting dropped from a plane where you parachute into a random point of the map. You got to loot to get as good gear/weapons as you can before the game forces everyone to converge to a location for an intense firefight.
Pro Great co-op
You can play in a squad of 2-4 and the teamwork makes the game infinitely more fun.
Pro Every match feels as fresh as the first one
Even though all matches start the same (with you dropping from a plane), chances are, you will rarely have the same experience twice.
Up to 100 people can join the server which is practically a 8x8km island. The choices you (and every other player) make from the moment you touch ground onward, will alter the course of the match in unexpected ways. Items are also randomly-generated, which means you never know what you'll find.
Pro Always keeps you on the edge
Managing to survive usually means that there's a relatively great time investment going, this increases the stakes of the game and keeps you on the edge at all times.
Pro Lots of different strategies you can take
The massive map, the great array of weapons, and the amount of different choices each player can make give you a great deal of strategies to follow to win the game. Even dropping from the plane to start the match is a choice that can greatly affect your possibilities of winning. Do you drop early to gain an edge over opponents? Do you drop close to the centre of the island in order to prepare for the final stages of the battle?
Even after dropping from the plane you can choose different strategies. You can play aggressive and try to hunt and kill other players, or you can bid your time, hide inside a building and wait for other players to kill each-other. The possibilities are endless.
Cons
Con Has a large skill gap
Since it's a pretty old game, most players are veterans at this point and have been playing for a long time. This may make it hard for newer players to jump in and play.
Con Can have a bad community
As it is a large game, it should come as no surprise that the community just won't be up to par. You may be kicked for strange reasons (like bottom scoring or the all too common random hacking accusation) and many could give you a 7 day ban. It can be very frustrating as missions in the mission system require you to play certain things while crossing your fingers.
Con New maps and modes feel pretty mediocre
Even though old maps have been revisited and improved by a wide margin, new maps and modes released with CS:GO are pretty mediocre.
Half of the maps available are locked under Arms Race (which is a re-imagining of the original community-created GunGame) and Demolition (GunGame without insta-respawn and bomb defusal) modes.
These game modes feel pretty safe and unimaginative, especially for veterans who have played their predecessor.
Some of the new maps are pretty compact and designed to act as instant-action meat-grinders akin to modern FPS (like Call of Duty) instead of requiring any tactics to win.
Con Hard to see if you are hitting someone
One of the things that were changed in CS:GO is firing feedback.
When someone is shot in GO, they don't wince, there's only a small amount of blood and audio that conveys the information that you are actually hitting someone. But omitting wince animation from character models makes it harder to see if you are actually hitting another player, especially at distance.
Con Less time spent playing a game
This is a feature that makes kills and hits (no health regeneration) more impactful, but also a lot less time is spent playing the game, especially if you die early to a sniper peek. Newbies will be playing a lot less of the game than more experienced players.
Con Still in early access
PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds is still in early access and there might be issues and bugs that have not been fixed yet.