The longest-running multiplayer first person shooter, Counter-Strike, introduced 1999, still got a big following in the online gaming community, and perhaps even the airsoft community. It is the FPS multiplayer game that many veteran airsoft players will always fondly recall and I met a lot of airsoft players who got into airsoft influenced by Counter-Strike.

Counter-Strike is a mod of Half-Life done by designed by Minh "Gooseman" Le and Jess "Cliffe" Cliffe. It is an objective-based, multiplayer first-person shooter in which two opposing teams --- Terrorists and Counterterrorists, need to prevent the other from accomplishing their missions which usually are hostage rescues and bombing missions. Winning rounds award the players in-game currency in which they can then select their gear and weapons to use for the next mission.

De_Dust 2 is the most popular map in Counter-Strike. Optimus Prime vividly remembers the vicious firefights in this map to prevent terrorists or counter-terrorist from accomplishing their missions during LAN parties. He usually loves going through the darkened halls in one of the buildings rather than going under the walkway as teams just throw flashbangs or smoke grenades. For those with less powerful graphic cards usually find themselves slowed down with the smoke during the early years of the game.

The map is so popular than Optimus Prime mentioned an airsoft game site in the Philippines that is called after the map. That should be a fun game site where players try to plant a “bomb” with others rushing to defuse it if they don’t get killed on their way to its location. Here is an explanation why the map is the all time favourite of Counter-Strike players:

Now, the map gets remade in Unreal Engine 4 and if you have not played the game for some time now, the rendering might make you go back and try it again. Artist Wiktor Öhman, who has involved in games such as Far Cry 3 also had fond memories of the map at LAN parties that he decided to render it using the Unreal Engine 4. He took the recent version of map from CS:GO and did his own twist on it by combining several of the iterations into something new.

How he did is explained in detail at Medium, but if it is TL;DR for you, then here is a video:

But before you get excited about being able to play this map, you will be disappointed as it is not available to download. Will Wiktor relent, and allow it to be freely used? We don’t know, but you will appreciate the effort done in order to make the map look event better.