FPS General

Heard of CPH Games? No? Shame on you!

CPH Games is the largest CS:GO tourney to date with every top team in the world in attendance and €33.000 on the line. Fan of team Curse? Great! They have both their North American and Finnish squads in attendance. Not only is this tournament important for the teams in attendance, it is also important for the future of CS:GO.

We will finally get a real pulse of how many people are willing to watch competitive CS:GO and thus how willing sponsors are to continue sponsoring events and teams.

So if you like competitive FPS, open that stream and support!

Keep reading for the stream embed and a full schedule!

Hey guys, tune in right now for some Counter-Strike: Global Offensive ESEA action. We've got Curse NA playing We Are Lions starting at 7:30PM PT (10:30PM PT).

It's ESEA on FPS General, tune in right here!

Update: If you missed today's stream, hit us up on Twitch.tv at http://www.twitch.tv/fpsgeneral/b/368443036! Previous article follows.

Join us today as we stream some ESEA action at 2:00PM ET today. Our very own Curse CS:GO Europe will be taking on mousesportsde and we'll be streaming the entire match right here!

Special thanks to dioko for casting today's matches for us, make sure you check him out on Twitch.tv where he streams regularly and also does a bit of playing himself.

Go Curse!

While neither Curse or Dynamic could field their full squads for RyuLAN in Terre Haute, Indiana, the mixed squad would still find success. With Curse’s Cody “ezpk” Shirley on vacation and several Dynamic members unable to attend, the two teams decided to join forces with Curse seeing their three members in Todd “anger” Williams, Tyler “Skadoodle” Latham, and Stan "stan^" Sukachov join up with Sal “Volcano” Garozzo and Eric “adreN” Hoag from Team Dynamic.

The team, dubbed “Cursnamic” by the community, were placed in a group with Frost Gaming (FG), a complete ESEA-I team with a lot of potential. However, the team headlined by Moe “moe” Assad lost closely to Cursnamic 16-13 on de_mirage_csgo. During one of the final rounds, one of the members from Frost Gaming accidently hit his F10 key, disconnecting him from the game. Many spectators believe the result could have been different, most likely resulting in overtime.

Starting out the double elimination bracket, Cursnamic was faced by the Canadian Crucial Connection (c2) team who traveled 15 hours by car to make it to the tournament. Cursnamic easily handled c2 on de_nuke_se with a 16-3 victory. On the other side of the bracket, FG defeated MonoManiac to set the stage for a rematch with Cursenamic in the winner’s bracket finals. This rematch would once again prove how close these teams were as it ended up in overtime. Perhaps renewed with energy, Cursnamic swept the overtime with four straight rounds, winning 19-15. Cursnamic would now wait as the winners bracket finalists to see who they would face in the Best of 3 (Bo3) series for 1^st place.

Keep reading to see what the final results of the tournament were.

Over the holiday season the Curse.NA Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CSGO) team ran into a few hiccups when they saw the loss of juv3nile and frozt. While no team wants to be in the position of replacing two members, the team was fortunate in that there were no major events on the horizon and there are no official ESEA league matches during the holiday season. The team decided to make the most out of the situation and find two players who matched the passion and dedication of the remaining players. After playing with quite a few players, they made their decision by picking up Cody “ezpk” Shirley and Stan “stan” Sukachov.

Keep reading to see what the team captain and new members had to say about the move.

This last weekend saw many of the top CS:GO teams in Europe come together in Stockholm, Sweden for an 8 team tournament. One of the contestants was the newly acquired Curse.eu team reigning from Finland. The tournament started in a round robin group format with the top two teams moving on. Curse.eu was placed in group A with the Swedish Ninjas in Pyjamas (NiP): the undefeated #1 team in the world.

After a disappointing first match with NiP, losing 16-6, Curse took on the Swedish gosu team. While many expected a quick win for Curse, they experienced 6 computer crashes throughout the match which they later lost 16-11. In order to get out of the group and into the semi-finals after losing their first two matches, Curse had to beat the #6 world ranked CPH Wolves team from Denmark, and beat them convincingly. Living up to the situation Curse did just that, taking complete control of the match from the very first round, winning in a 16-8 lopsided victory.

With the victory, there was a 3 way tie as each of Curse, gosu, and CPH Wolves had one victory. To add to the suspense of the moment, Curse took 2^nd place in the group due to round difference (rounds won subtracted by rounds loss), where they slid by with a single round.

Following the excitement in Group A were the matches in Group B with three Swedish and one Danish team fighting to see who would face NiP and Curse.eu in the semi-finals. Unfortunately, there was much less excitement than Group A as the Danish Anexis team won all 3 of their matches and the Swedish Lemondogs went 2-1, although many of the matches were much closer than those in Group A. At this point, CPH Wolves, gosu, Western Wolves, and Absolute Legends were heading home, and the semi-final match-ups were set.

Curse was to play the Group B winners in Anexis, while NiP were to play the Group B runner-ups in Lemondogs.

Keep reading for the full tournament recap!

Todd Williams is a member of Curse's Counter Strike: Global Offensive(CS:GO) team. He's 25, lives in Beaufort, South Carolina and he's been playing competitive Counter Strike since 2002. I sat down with Todd and discussed his pro-gaming career.

Andrew Hamling(AH): Hello there! Let's start off by asking about your training regiment, how do you train for a competition and am I interrupting it?

Todd Williams(TW): Hahahaha!

(AH): I take that as a no...

(TW): Before Dreamhack this year [Team Curse] were playing together as a team for at least six hours a day to prepare. Individually if I had time I would Deathmatch for an hour a day and/or ESEA(E-Sports Entertainment Association) pug after practice with teammates who still wanted to play.

(AH): We're going to step backwards quite a bit here, but what got you into competitive gaming?

(TW): Oh man! I was 11-12ish when I saw my older brother playing Quake 1. I was sucked in instantly and started playing it constantly when I would get home from school. I also played Everquest when it was released on the side, haha! I switched to Quake 2 when it was released and so on. Near the end of middle school a friend introduced me to Team-Fortress and I found out about Counter-Strike on my own.

Todd Williams seen here in the middle with Team Dynamic winning the ESEA-LAN earlier this year. Courtesy ESEA.

Keep reading for more from Andrew's discussion with Todd Williams of Curse's Counter-Strike: Global Offensive team!

Curse Gaming has reached an agreement with the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CSGO) team formerly known as The Hawks, who will now become Curse.EU. The core of The Hawks have represented Finland at major International tournaments for several years in Counter-Strike 1.6.

Upon switching to CS:GO the team has already cemented itself as one of the top teams in Europe. We at Curse look forward to a long-term relationship with the team as we assist them in competing at major events.

Joona "natu" Leppanen said the following of the partnership:

"We are happy to announce that Hawks have finally landed a new home in Curse. This will give us the opportunity to truely show what we're capable of as they have shown great support right away with funding us over to THOR Open on such a short notice. This partnership gives our team the necessary support on our way up the ranks of CSGO internationally, team captain Joona "natu" Leppänen told HLTV.org.

"We hope that everyone that has been supporting us as Hawks will continue to do so in the future under the Curse-flag. You can expect a lot of streaming and other content from the players through various social media and on Curse websites.

"I would especially like to thank Ben and Mike of Curse for believing in us!"

 The full Curse.EU roster includes:

• Aleksi 'allu' Jalli
• Jonas 'ScurK' Finnilä
• Timo 'reflex' Rintala
• Joona 'natu' Leppänen
• Niko 'naSu' Kovanen

You can keep an eye on the team with the following social media:

• Twitter: http://twitter.com/CurseCSeu
• Facebook: http://facebook.com/CurseCSeu
• YouTube: http://youtube.com/CurseCS

Hidden Path Entertainment released a Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CSGO) update today that will have a major impact on the meta-game of CSGO. These changes will be felt most by the pro players in the competitive scene as these changes have gone live with the ESEA North American finals starting tomorrow and DreamHack starting a week from today.

The most important changes in this patch are the following:

• Fire devices have been modified ( Molotovs and incendiary grenades )
• Fire can now be extinguished by smoke grenades and deployed smokes now deny fire device detonation and spreading.
• Fire now spreads a bit faster and not quite as far.
• Fire "tagging" slowdown has been removed.
• Adjusted fire armor penetration value.
• Smoke grenade visibility inside a smoke has been reduced to give less advantage to players inside and more to players outside.

The changes to fire devices are going to completely change how competitive teams play as Counter-Terrorist (CT). Previously, fire devices were overpowered in that they did a lot of damage and they slowed you down. This meant CT's could throw them on major choke points at the beginning of the round allowing them to get into good position and effectively stop any early aggression from the Terrorists (T).

This lead to bank rolled CT's throwing fire devices at every major choke point while they got into ideal position and the T's were forced to sit and wait.

Read more about the effect of these changes, as well as some insight from Michael3D, professional Counter-Strike: Global Offensive player and member of Team Curse CS:GO.

The Curse King of the Hill tournament is a Best of 3 (Bo3) series where the winning team takes home $100 in prize money as well as the status of King, where they will face a new challenger the following week. We've been running tournaments in DayZ and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive for the last few weeks, crowning Kings and dishing out prize money.

Curse is also holding tournaments in other games, namely World of Tanks, League of Legends, DOTA 2 and World of Warcraft.

But we're all about the shooters here at FPS General, so we'll be focusing on DayZ and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.

We're on Week 4 again after Hurricane Sandy swept through the east coast last week disconnecting several players from the Internet. We also have two new challengers as the reigning kings in Area 51 are still travelling back from an impressive third place finish at ESWC in Paris, France.

These two challengers will be facing off to see who gets to take on Area 51 next week. We also have a guest caster in the studio as ZoNdo will be filling in for an out-of-town cika this week.

Teams - Team Curse vs Don't Trust Anyone
Casters - Ben "smokie" Robinson and Kris "ZoNdo" Elizondo
Time - 10pm EST

All of these matches are going to be streamed live at http://www.curse.com/king-of-the-hill!

If you haven't had a chance to play Counter-Strike: Global Offensive yet, Steam is making the game free to play for this weekend on Steam. This means you can play the entirety of Global Offensive, with no limitations, from now until 1:00PM Pacific Time on Sunday, November 4th, 2012.

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is a must-play if you are a fan of first-person shooters. While it doesn't really deliver anything new in comparison to previous Counter-Strike games, the overall experience is as polished and complete a game as you'll want to play. For our money, this is the best Counter-Strike experience to date.

Sure, purists will be cursing our very souls right now, saying something that sounds like ''Counter-Strike: Source' through gritted teeth, but we've really enjoyed Global Offensive over the past few months.

Check out the game at http://store.steampowered.com/app/730/ for a quick download link for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. If you enjoy it, the game is on sale for just $9.99 through November 5th.

The Curse King of the Hill tournament is a Best of 3 (Bo3) series where the winning team takes home $100 in prize money as well as the status of King, where they will face a new challenger the following week. We've been running tournaments in DayZ and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive for the last few weeks, crowning Kings and dishing out prize money.

Curse is also holding tournaments in other games, namely World of Tanks, League of Legends, DOTA 2 and World of Warcraft.

But we're all about the shooters here at FPS General, so we'll be focusing on DayZ and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.

Week 5 is kicking off today with some epic Counter-Strike: Global Offensive matchups, in both European Union and North American regions. The schedule for today looks like this:

EU:

Teams: Next Gaming v lowlandlions

Time: 9:00PM GMT (1:00PM Pacific Time, 4:00PM Eastern Time)

NA:

Teams: Team Curse vs DTA

Time: 10:00PM Eastern Time (7:00PM Pacific Time)

Please note: some members of the North American teams are in the projected path of Hurricane Sandy. As a result, the NA matches may be delayed or rescheduled, depending on the severity of the storm and any power outages.

All of these matches are being casted and streamed at http://www.curse.com/king-of-the-hill. See you online!

The Curse King of the Hill tournament is a Best of 3 (Bo3) series where the winning team takes home $100 in prize money as well as the status of King, where they will face a new challenger the following week. We've been running tournaments in DayZ and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive for the last few weeks, crowning Kings and dishing out prize money.

Curse is also holding tournaments in other games, namely World of Tanks, League of Legends, DOTA 2 and World of Warcraft.

But we're all about the shooters here at FPS General, so we'll be focusing on DayZ and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.

We're on Week 4 now, with matches taking place tonight. Both geographical regions are seeing new kings take on their first challengers after snatching the throne last week. The schedule for North America and Europe look like this:

Edit: Unfortunately, due to conflicting schedules, the EU matches have been postponed until a later date. North American matches will be proceeding as normal, listed below.

EU:
Teams - extensive vs Toxic

Casters - Pansy & Arcy

Time - 8GMT/3PM EST

US:
Teams - Area 51 vs Don't Trust Anyone

casters - Ben "smokie" Robinson and Mike "fallen" Cika

Time - 10pm EST

All of these matches are going to be streamed live at http://www.curse.com/king-of-the-hill!

Week Two of the North American version of the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive King of the Hill tournament will see the reigning champion Sex Pistols take on a formidable opponent in We Are GO Players, the team formerly known as Ultimax Gaming. WAGP were a dominant force in 1.6 and their success has began to transfer over to CS: GO as seen by their 11-5 record in ESEA-Invite.

The Curse King of the Hill tournament is a Best of 3 (Bo3) series where the winning team takes home $100 in prize money as well as the status of King, where they will face a new challenger the following week.

Week Two has a few games seeing off weeks, but during a normal week, Curse will be hosting tournaments in World of Warcraft, League of Legends, World of Tanks, DayZ and Defense of the Ancients 2. A different game every day, crowning a King each week.

Week Two Schedule

North America: October 8th @ 10PM EST

Teams: Sex Pistols vs We Are GO Players

Casters: smokie and fallen

Maps: de_inferno, de_dust2, de_nuke_ve

The entire event is going to be streamed at http://www.own3d.tv/King-of-the-Hill, including the rest of the lineup of games outside of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Join us on Facebook and Twitter to share your thoughts on who will come out on top!

Stop by http://www.curse.com/king-of-the-hill for more information on the tournaments including schedules for other games. 

This Monday will see two Counter-Strike: Global Offensive teams in both Europe and North America compete for a chance to be named King for a week where they will sit until they are challenged the following week.

In addition to the honor of being Curse's King of the Hill, the winning teams will take home $100 prizing money.

The teams will play in a Best of 3 (Bo3) series.

If Counter-Strike: Global Offensive isn't your game, that's okay! Perhaps you'll be interested in the other games we'll be playing.

Week One has a few games seeing off weeks, but during a normal week, Curse will be hosting tournaments in World of Warcraft, League of Legends, World of Tanks, DayZ and Defense of the Ancients 2. A different game every day, crowning a King each week.

The first week schedule for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive looks like:

Week One Schedule

Europe: 8pm BST(GMT+1) 3PM EST

Teams: Perilous vs Skitlite

Casters: ArcY and Pansy

North America: 8PM EST

Teams: Sex Pistols vs beneath the dome

Casters: smokie and fallen

Maps: de_dust2, de_inferno, de_nuke_ve

The entire event is going to be streamed at http://www.own3d.tv/King-of-the-Hill, including the rest of the lineup of games outside of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Join us on Facebook and Twitter to share your thoughts on who will come out on top!

Stop by http://www.curse.com/king-of-the-hill for more information on the tournaments including schedules for other games. 

The Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) ESWC North American Championship finished up earlier today with mostly expected results. Team Area 51 were crowned the champions after convincing wins over HoldMouse1 and Team Dynamic. Area 51 will now represent the USA at the ESWC Championships in Paris, France at the end of October.

Results:

1st: Area 51 (DaZeD, SEMPHIS, hiko, PineKone, seangares)

2nd: Dynamic (AZK, PEX, adreN, anger, freakazoid)

3rd-4th: HoldMouse1 (emong, tm-, Michael3d, juv3nile, Skadoodle)

3rd-4th: Murder Inc. (frozt, tck, marlin, haunt, ezpk)

Analysis:

Area 51 performed as I predicted earlier starting with two close wins over HoldMouse1 of 16-12 on both de_dust2 and de_nuke_ve. They followed these victories up with two convincing wins over Team Dynamic. Throughout the entire tournament Area 51 simply looked like the better, and most well prepared team. It doesn't hurt when you have the best AWPer in North American on your team in seangares. Area 51 focusing purely on CS: GO paid off against Dynamic who hasn't taken it nearly as seriously.

Read on for more information about the CS:GO ESWC North American Championship.

With Counter-Strike: Global Offensive officially launched and out there for public consumption, we're going to be breaking down every single map to discuss potential choke points, open areas, sight lines and more.

In this episode, SmallKiwi goes hands-on with the map Nuke. Behold as Kiwi discusses how to make the most out of your time spent on Nuke, and how you can improve your game if you find yourself struggling. Every map has hotspots and routes, it's just a matter of getting to know them.

Well, here at FPS General, all we know is shooters so we've made it something of a hobby to nail down all of these routes, sight lines and choke points because we don't like losing. And you don't either.

Check out the video above and for more great Counter-Strike: Global Offensive content, drop by http://www.youtube.com/fpsgeneral and make sure you subscribe for more!

One of the great new features introduced in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is Arms Race, a brand new game mode that we've really been enjoying.

The premise behind Arms Race is simple, and it will be a ton of fun for players who are used to a more casual first-person shooter environment. In Arms Race, players start out with the same weapon and unlock more as they earn kills in the match. The first player to get a kill with every successive weapon wins the round. If you've played Gun Game, a popular mod for multiple first-person shooters and a standard mode in Call of Duty: Black Ops, you'll catch on to Arms Race pretty much immediately.

Check out the video above, in which SmallKiwi gives us a rundown of what to expect in Arms Race. Be sure to check us out on YouTube for more great FPS content every single day!