Very few games are exactly like Counter-Strike 2 or any of its earlier iterations. It stands atop a mountain mostly of its own making. But today, there are more contenders to the throne. Here are my Top 10 games to play like CS2 (or as close as they can be).
10 Games to Play if You Like Counter Strike 2
Many titles take some or a lot of inspiration from CS, whether it’s in their gameplay, the level of mastery required, or the stakes present in every match. CS is also a trailblazer for gameplay-centric economies, even if the only other commonality it shares with these other shooters is that you shoot guns. Let’s jump in.
10. Team Fortress 2
Team Fortress 2 shares several key elements with Counter Strike: few aim-down-sight options, role-based classes, and a focus on mastery. Each of its nine classes can take hundreds of hours to properly learn, and you can easily spend thousands of hours with one without losing your love for the game. I’ve got almost 1,800 hours in Team Fortress 2, with about 1,000 as Spy. I still go back from time to time to remind myself why.
9. Hunt: Showdown
An old-west, hardcore, permadeath-style FPS, Hunt: Showdown is perhaps one of the most aesthetically unique of its ilk. It shares a lot of DNA with another entry on our list, but its main connection to Counter Strike is the gunplay mastery required to play. Movement within maps is similar, too. You can spend hundreds of hours learning optimal routing and still only be a novice.
8. Escape from Tarkov
Tarkov, like Hunt: Showdown, is a hardcore FPS. However, EFT is set firmly in the modern day. And like Hunt, its main connection to CS is in the mastery it demands. To actually be good at Tarkov means putting in the work. It can take some players 1,000 hours to leave the newbie stage. CS also influences the game’s massive, mostly player-driven economy. Controlling the recoil of Tarkov’s many weapons is a bit like CS, as well.
7. Squad
I’ve put Squad on this list primarily for the sheer volume of teamplay opportunities that occur in a match. Playing Counter Strike 2, and games in the series as a whole, lives and dies on your coordination with teammates. There are, of course, an almost endless amount of shenanigans available in Squad that you won’t necessarily find in classic CS, but the modding scene is bound to change that.
6. Deep Rock Galactic
As with Squad, Deep Rock Galactic is here primarily for its cooperative aspect. The silliness that can occur every match if you’re not trying your brains out is a plus. Public match CS2, like Camelot and DRG, can be a wild place, but it’s one you’ll want to visit again and again to try something new or experience the wonders (and sometimes horrors) of a large community.
5. Ready or Not
On the flip side of the tryhard angle, Ready or Not is up there on the hardcore scale, simulating high-intensity situations military and police forces encounter. It’s not as fast-paced as Counter-Strike 2, and it doesn’t have a competitive element, but there’s perhaps no other game on this list that demands as much laser focus to play well. Except for CS2 at the highest levels.
4. Insurgency: Sandstorm
Insurgency: Sandstorm is very much a bridge between the hardcore shooter and more casual options. Though it certainly leans harder on hardcore than it does casual. The weapons, like those in Counter Strike, can be tough to wrangle, there are fewer means of knowing where the next threat is coming from, and the maps are built more specifically to the game mode you play on them.
3. Call of Duty Search and Destroy
Don’t put me on the hobbling wheel for placing this heresy on a Counter-Strike list, but Search and Destroy is basically CS in CoD. It has all the qualifications and asterisks that statement brings. There’s borderline broken movement tech, killstreaks, less specialized maps, and much more forgiving gunplay, but the core of the Call of Duty game mode and Counter-Strike are essentially equivalent.
2. Rainbow Six: Siege
Rainbow Six: Siege is the first of two games on my list that are basically “Counter-Strike but with X” games. The main modes are roughly the same in Siege — defuse a bomb and save hostages — but Ubisoft’s entry adds not only classes but also environmental alteration.
You can win an entire match for your team by looking through a tiny hole in a wall you made with a single bullet (ask me how I know). Or you can deny access to somewhere with a well-placed steel barricade. And like CS, the maps are small but endlessly replayable, with deep shooting mechanics and plenty of learning opportunities with every death.
1. Valorant
Valorant is, at its most basic, what you get when you take Counter-Strike and add character abilities. It’s not a carbon copy, as the simple act of adding powers rewrites how engagements can play out, and the map design has to keep that fact in mind.
However, the five-vs-five setup with a buy phase, similar round-based economy, and challenging weapon mechanics without an ADS option push Valorant right up to the line between inspiration and imitation. You could even say that line blurs to the point of nonexistence, but I leave such judgments to those with much more experience playing both games than I have.
That’s my list of the Top 10 games you should play if you like Counter-Strike 2. For more lists like this one, check out our lists of the Top 10 upcoming RPGs to watch in 2024, 10 Best FPS games of 2023, and the Top 10 best CS2 console commands.
