Spectre Divide is Counter-Strike for the aim-down-sights generation, and it's so fun I can't stop thinking about it: 'We hope our game becomes your next 10,000-hour obsession'

Do you ever wonder why there aren't many tactical shooters like Counter-Strike? Valve's round-based, economy-driven competitive FPS stood largely unchallenged in a subgenre it created for 20 years before Valorant arrived on the scene, painting over CS:GO's grounded arsenal with a roster of Riot-style heroes and playmaking ultimate moves. Valorant was exciting proof that there's more to be done with the CS formula, and more than enough player interest to support two tac shooter giants.

Spectre Divide wants to be the third. After playing a few matches, I think it has a decent shot.

I know, I'm still on the fence about the name too, but I'll keep saying it out loud until it sounds normal. Spectre Divide is the debut game from Mountaintop Studios, an independent startup with an 80-person team boasting veteran talent from Respawn, Riot, Bungie, Blizzard, and Valve.

I went into a Spectre preview session last week anticipating I wouldn't have much to say. Despite a brief love affair with Valorant at launch and 70-ish hours of CS:GO, I've never managed to embrace their strict stop-and-pop gunplay. Spectre has a buy menu, econ rounds, bomb sites, Shift walking, knife running, and a one-shot-kill sniper rifle just like you'd expect, but its shooting is more accessible with bullets that always go where you're aiming. That alone is a huge change to how these games are traditionally played, but it's actually one of two tweaks to CS/Valorant that Mountaintop considers «core pillars» of Spectre:

The whole Duality thing is as strange as it sounds. You can body swap at any time, but you can also toss a puck to move your other body to a new location. Mountaintop showed us an overview trailer that explained how the spectre is meant to be used: you can watch two angles at once, cover your own flank, or use one body to make a distraction at bombsite A then switch to your other body at bombsite B.

According to game director Lee Horn, who previously worked on Apex Legends and Valorant,