Gaming
Gaming
Your guide to Inferno’s new look
CS:GO’s idyllic village has had some renovations done over the summer, so what works now?
You want the fountain...smaller? And more coffins?
© Valve
Now that Valve are ready to let pros loose on Inferno again, after a brief holiday for the Italian village, they’re finding the streets are a little different to how they remember. The odd lick of house paint and a finally constructed church aren’t the only renovations to notice, however, as the streets themselves have found themselves widened or re-routed entirely.
So much space for activities
© Valve
Big Banana
One of the stickiest sticking points for old Inferno was just how impassable Banana was. With the right grenades, and sometimes even the wrong ones, no-one could make their way up or down the dog-legged back street. Now, with a much wider road and a small wall at the top of the alley, utility like molotovs or smokes are less effective unless double-stacked and exactly on their mark. This boost applies both ways as the entrance to B from CT is also widened, requiring either two smokes or one absolutely perfect drop to fully conceal the site from that angle, but most likely the wider Banana makes it easier for T to attack and harder for CT to defend if they keep throwing sloppy smokes.
Little Fountain
To compensate, the B site is much roomier too, owing to the town planning committee installing a smaller water feature in the centre of the square. It turns out it was stopping people from being able to appreciate the views across the site, so you might be more likely to see AWPers holding B more effectively. Don’t be too surprised to see double AWP setups on Inferno now, so teams who historically aren’t top of the board with Inferno’s close-quarters gunplay but have two very good snipers (cough-SK-cough) might be a bit more into the map, now. However this also reduces the number of places you can hide without ducking into one of the alcoves at the back, which should help Terrorists attack and CTs retake.
The A site gets an open air feel
© Valve
Second mid and apps
A lot of tiny alterations (knocking through a wall here, building some stairs there) mean running second mid is now a lot faster for Terrorists, and the apartments are far less claustrophobic, too. While the residents of Inferno will surely appreciate the extra living space when the dust settles, teams on T-side will be more than happy to make use of that extra room when challenging apts. Stacking as five and running a Hail Mary down boiler might not immediately end in death from a single through-and-through, letting teams be a bit more unconventional with their desperation plays.
Open Plan A Site
Continuing the theme of Inferno’s big facelift, the workmen have extended into some neighbouring gardens to make pit slightly larger and the site, as a whole, is open plan. Maybe the roof got caved in by a crane and they didn’t want to have to rebuild all those arches. The lasting result is that A site is now begging for grenade executes. Flashes everywhere, smokes on car, lamp post, library, the site itself, nothing is off the table anymore now that they can drop in from above.
There are a few solaces for CTs, though, to make up for basically everything getting a T-side advantage in this update. Crates on the corner of A give you another angle to watch the wider-open balcony exit, and another spot for peeking Terrorists to have to check before rushing out. Overall, it’s a small gesture now that the map appears to be a little more in the favour of Ts – honestly, what was the mayor thinking?
For more eSports coverage, follow @RedBullGames on Twitter and like us on Facebook.
