The Best Bad Map in Video Games - CSGO's Office 

Office is like so far on the based side it doesnt show up, right?

office is the only map that makes the sawed off look like a good gun.

Back in the beginning, CS was about simulating actual real-life terrorist situations. The oldest maps and modes were a testament to this. And irl, hostage situations ARE very one-sided. They are tense, often lethal affairs and maps like Office and Warehouse were my favorite for precisely that reason. I loved going CT on Office and actually winning the round, despite all odds, because I played smart and went hard. Honestly, I miss that aspect.

Still crazy to see that office at some times has the second lowest queue times after mirage.

I miss the times when fun maps were allowed to exist. Before Vertigo remake, my pals and I would only queue for Militia, Italy, Vertigo, Dust, Assault and Aztec.

I disagree, VIP is the Forgotten CS Game Mode, Ct’s had to protect the VIP by escaping the map and the VIP only had a USP with 24 Bullets but 200 Armor. If The Vip dies, Cts lose.

Office truly is the last bastion of old CS. When half the servers in the browser weren't even playing a real game mode and were just running zombies or scouts & knives or some jank implementation of gun game, when most people playing the game didn't even know what 'balance' meant. Never leave us Office, we need you to remember who we were.

Office is the best map and will really help you develop skills as CT. If you struggle to retake sites, playing office will help you with that too, even though it is a hostage map because of how T sided it is then it's basically a hardcore retake map. The skills you develop as CT are enormous, you will learn to properly peek, clear angles, have good crosshair placement, game sense (anticipating where enemies will be, are moving around, hiding etc.) - things you won't develop as fast or as extreme in any other map. Office might be one sided, but with enough strats, tactics etc. you can win, even as CT. It requires a lot of team work and just killing to win won't often cut it, unless those kills are done in a very impactful and tactical manner. Rushing is often a death sentence in that map. I have thousands of hours playing office and it's the one my friends and I play the most.

The last time I played this map in competitive mode, one of my teammates was only there because he forgot to deselect the map in his queue. So he spent the first few rounds begging us to kick him, spent the next few rounds being mildly annoying, and then started team-killing. We still wouldn't kick him, and he eventually left. Ah, good times. P.S. - I legitimately prefer the revolver, as I can't hit a damn thing with the deagle.

I'm just imagining a world where no maps were removed for csgo, why couldn't all maps have the same fate as office

Office is definitely my favourite map. The fact that's imbalance makes it fun to play, where you should stop playing competitive and just have fun. I would not say that winning on CT side is impossible, or that T side is easier. It all depends on your team and organization.

2:49 that is what makes office so great, when you options are limited you are forced to think of new startegy and exploit map knowledge to get ahead, specially on the CT side, there is a good reason why the map is still there

Office is still being my favorite map to this day. It's the only map at the moment that rewards CTs for using shotguns and SMGs. If you play this map very competitively (say, 3-4 people rush through the paper and other 1-2 guys watch the flank) than T's will struggle a lot to defend themselfs. Office forces CTs to use their utility, it is nearly impossible to win without a flashbang and a smoke on a CT side.

people who complain about how "unplayable" csgo is should be punished by a office cure, meaning they can only play office for thee next 7 days, and i can tell you they'll realize how fucking great the game and maps are and in just a couple of hours they'll beg to play anything else, yes, even vertigo

When I was little, the map Office is what I imagine I would grow up and probably work in. I now work a 9 to 5 office job, but the office is crowded and noisy. I like the childhood office better :(

Office was always my favorite. CT side is basically High-Risk, Low reward but there were always those rounds where you might actually get away with a hostage rescue

chaos of everyone not being tryhards was what made office fun

Office is the only thing keeping from moving on from csgo. the experiences i had on this map are some of the best and worst i've experienced online. it's truly an amazing place and i've dedicated most of my csgo time to just messing around. it will be a sad day when/if it gets removed.

I've played this map extensively the last couple years. You really start to see a lot of the same names, so a sort of community has been built around it. It plays incredibly different from normal Counter-Strike maps, and it's a lot of fun. I wish Valve would give it the attention it deserves since office is one of those fan favorites since 1.6.

Office holds a special place in my heart, i played this map alot in 1.6 when i was a kid. The chaos that came when playing 16v16 on this map was amazing

id like to consider myself a *pro* office player around 2 years ago, me and my friends started to mostly only play office, and this lasted months we played dozens of games in it, and every single game was the same, except when we had a hostage in papers (fairest position for ct): 13-2/14-1 as t side (maybe 10-5 with the papers hostage), then try to get a round or two because of a mistake by the other team as ct, and viceversa i assure you it was the most fun i had playing cs, cause the magic of it is that you can both tryhard it, or relax and chill and yeah, meta was camping with negev and smgs

I still really miss cobblestone, I played so much in 2015-16. They even made some changes like cutting t spawn if half and changing a site completely but it hasn't seen any action since. I hope they are going to add it back one day

A few years back I used to play on a 24/7 office server, after a while I got to be kinda cool with the regulars on there. This brought back those good memories of us all just chilling, playing and not really caring about the outcome of matches. They are some great gaming memories honestly!

Bro for 6k subs your videos are amazing , interesting themes and very well edited and written , i hope you keep going . As someone with around 5k hours on csgo i really appreciate your attention too small things in the game and analyzing

bro, just found your channel a week ago and saw a few videos now. Good stuff, thats exactly the content i needed, somewhat out of that esports box but still well produced. Keep that on, good shit!

I remember playing this in competitive a year or two ago. There was a t in spawn with an awp that had like 4 kills per round. Needless to say we lost like 16-5

I’m and office only player and I agree lmao also Your videos are underrated af keep up the good work

those areas aren't completely unused , it's just that they're only used in the hostage extraction portion of the round . there is a super-ideal way to play office that involves strange hairpin tactics by CTs supportinh each other from off-map areas and getting lost in the maze . still t-sided before extraction but not horribly so afterward .

You hit the nail on the head that CS was once a game built upon fun first and competition second. It's why I really love hostage maps and wish more were still in competitive matchmaking. The overwhelming majority of my matches in the first years I played CSGO with my first group of friends in the game were on Assault, Office, and if things were not going our way we would add in Train, Vertigo and Inferno depending on who was playing that night. This was back around 2015-2017 btw so we are talking about old versions of these maps anyway. Why did we play these niche maps? Because it was more fun than the moshpit of kids sweating over their rank in the core group. Hell wanting a fun map that is rather imbalanced is what made me fall IN LOVE with Cobblestone, because it felt so much less rigid and formulaic and more built upon finding ANYTHING that works.

Oh, So happy that u are back. I watched episode about de_fire 3 times and the last time I did it, I was thinking if you can come back, so happy once again :D

9:24 i went to see a live viewing of The Room in my city with an appearance from tommy wiseau and it was as weird as you'd expect. the whole time he was selling wiseau underwear, he had like 4 belts on and he made people come up and lift weights, and during the movie everytime that one painting of a spoon is shown the entire audience threw plastic spoons

There should be a tunnel from the unused office area to the projector room with another entrance to the projector office

The atmosphere of your videos are so cozy. I feel so snug listening to this.

I was looking for a normal crack for a long time and stumbled upon you, thank you very much

Bro'. The clips you pick and everything. You're a legend.

I remember first playing CSGO and only playing casual office for the first 60 hours or so because I was too scared to try competitive.

You will be huge soon bro ure fantastic to listen to and u have a sense of humor

bruuuuuh your channel is growing quick, just last week you have, idk. 20k subs now its 25k sheeeeeesh this is awesome

Queing onto a 64 man (or even the hellscape that is 128 man) office server are some of the funnest memories I have of CS:Source. It's an awful map, but DAMN was that somehow fun.

bro i felt u when u listed the other bad good maps.. man exactly the ones i miss so much :(

Good stuff Penguin! Liked and Subscribed!

Awesome vid bro, keep it up!

Been playing ESEA for about 6 years with a 4 year gap between the first 4 and the most recent 2 and in that gap i found my current friends and got back into CS by playing Office with them. i guess you could call us "Offic Tryhards" but we really play the map to fuck around but still win and we all found it really fun to find smoke and [op flash lineups, poor into a chokepoint trading for eachother and overtime this feeling led me to asking them if they wanted to try ESEA ( we still played Defuse maps so this isnt that crazy). I love office it was my favorite map as a kid playing 1.6 next to D2 and i feel i lost that after getting more into clan competitve 5v5s and im really happy that in my 20s i got back that love for a map i had over a decade ago. Great video man you got a sub

highly underrated, great video was expecting more views and subs haha

As someone who only played cs KZ, Bhop, and Surf I too love those buttons and dropdown menus

i love queueing office and agency. some of the most fun ive had was playing these maps with my friends, buying r8, sawed off, negev, and b hopping and no scoping good times

Every so often you get an office game where everyone on both teams is actually trying their best and honestly that's why I still play it. The problem isnt so much that it is a joke but that so many people cant see it as anything but. The reality is that with some imagination and willingness to flex from traditional defuse strategy, it can be very competitive.

7:26 thx dude for put soundtrack tekken 4 its really make me remember of old days

holy shit a video that finally understands me, i shit you not i only queue for office just because of how fun it is, i know its T sided but thats what i love. Its not that i queue hoping for tside first half its just that i like the yin and yang of the two sides. First half you try hard second half youve got it in the bag. I love it

Fantastic video, thanks! The only thing is it's difficult to watch on mobile when the example video becomes small 🙏

Playing CZ/1.6 in 2004/5 era, Office was on rotation a lot. The big maps then were Dust 2, Dust, Nuke, Cobble, Train, Office, Aztec, Stadium, Prodigy. And probably one or two others I forgot right now. Edit: Inferno was another one, of course.

your channel is so underrated, good content! :))

I love that you use everhood songs in your videos! That game is such a banger.

Office is my guilty pleasure. It's just so fun running around with a negev or autoshotty. It's just so fun to play, like the map layout, chokepoints, and breakable props, it's just... special. There's a million hiding spots for saving, cool little details and corner spots to hold choke points, and more. I also like the fact that it's an enclosed building, making it extremely clausthophobic and unexploitable even for such an oooold map.

Office, Assault, Militia, Dust, Italy, Aztec and Vertigo. Me and my homies used to queue these every day. Things just haven't been the same since "the purge". Now we play like 1 game a month.

Office for me felt like the only map in CS:GO that screamed the lore into your face (Other than Agency) in which you start in a garage right outside an office that’s been taken over by some young angry men wanting to send a message who are way clearly overconfident in their abilities to defend an office building from trained professionals. However they removed all of the fucking factions in CS2 so we don’t have the anarchists anymore and office just feels sad without someone saying “These guys are going down.” At the start of every Terrorist round. I loved the anarchists character design please valve I will literally give my life to put these guys back into the game.

3:36 based

I liked to play on CT-side in casual match of the Office and the Assault because it is more challenging and I actually found a tactic to win on CT-side, but unfortunately one man on casual match can’t do much of a difference.

I swear the day Valve removes Office may be the day I move on from CS. It’s a guilty pleasure, but I have so many fond memories on Office and most of my best clips were hit on it. The noscope potential, the ace potential, and the mind games you have to resort to are just fantastic. You can’t replicate Office matches on any other map.

Office really has always been THE map to play when you just want to have fun and fuck around. back in the day we never took Office seriously, most of us probably never analyzed the map enough to know why, we just felt in our hearts that the map was built different. very nice vid, takes me back. God i'm old.

More analysis of your teams demographics when solo queuing please. The subtle roasts were great.

As a office main, no matter how T sided the map is, a well cordinated push with lots of utils always seems to do the trick, usually smoking paper and pushing elbow will be most viable since elbow separates paper and long hall, meaning if as a ct you gain control of elbow, from there, you will be able to push from behind enemy lines.

I used to spend hours in high school playing nothing but this CSS 24/7 office server that was like maybe 15v15. We had a good group of regulars and it was some of my most fun gaming. Met one of my best friends to this day there that happened to live only a few miles from me. Really appreciate your coverage of this beautiful piece of garbage

If every player in the server has a decent amount of knowledge for this map it actually becomes more balanced than you might think. I personally have invented a handful of creative flashes, smokes, and nades for this map that make it more ct sided. There is also one significant part you did not mention and that is that CTs have the opportunity to make a lot more money than defuse mode. As a CT you get $800 just for picking up a hostage and your team gets a $500 reward. So a rescue kit is very worth it. You also get $1000 if you rescue a hostage in addition to winning the round. Also that hostage combination you pointed out at 3:09 is not possible.

Office has made my most used load out be the sawed off shots I named taser backup the r8 revolver and the taser and I'm proud to call it my most played map

Thanks for making a video on Office. I started playing this map on my old shitty laptop because it gave me most fps and no other map excited me ever after that. I have like 5.5k hrs on it and play with a team who also have similar hrs. It's definitely not a solo queue map. With a team, it can be the best map. I don't think imbalance necessarily means "bad". There's nothing more satisfying than winning a game after losing the first half 1 to 14 and winning 15 consecutive rounds while being under pressure to not make any mistakes (against other office pros obv). I don't think you can do that as easily in any other map. But it requires a full team working like a hivemind. If you solo queue though, it is annoying.

nuke is where people who think they are sigmas go to play, office is the true sigma paradise

I owe this map one of my favorite videos I have ever made. It's stupid but it's hilarious because people know the "status" of this map and play accordingly, especially in casual.

Office is the only map where I'll hear a Negev in the distance more than 3 rounds into the game and I love it for it. Edit: I can also run the same route as a CT to the snowman ladder entrance every time and either I run into someone and my round is interesting already or I hear full blown firefights while I toss a smoke and stroll down the hallway to be a few doorways from a flank.

i actually like office because of its one sidedness, its a huge challenge theres nothing better than that 1 game in 50 where you roll the t's as ct's

Holy crap, Penguin last video Inwarche dog yours, you only had 10,000 subs, you'veore than doubled that already! Yew! Good stuff sir

Omg this hits so close to home. My clan is absolute trash (despite most having 1k+ hours of CSGO) and we literally only ever queue office xD

I really want a new version of de_port. Had some hilarious LAN parties in which we modified the gravity factor on de_port and flew around with AWPs.

Favorite strat on office is to duo queue. Buy 4 negevs and perma lockdown a hallway Buy shuffling loaded negevs on the ground

I remember playing prop hunt in office and won the round hidden as a sofa at the T spawn

I feel like the old maps still praise the fun of just that, fun. CS was a game for fun not competition. Games used to be made to be fun and then became competitive over time if it was enjoyed by the community. Now a lot of games are made to be competitive from the start and lack the fun imo

yes, i love it when the video essay man brings something relatively obscure, yet relevant to my attention, and through this, teaches me a valuable life lesson.

Office has so much pointless detail, i love it. Like, when you shoot the computers, they fall apart, with the mainboard and graphics card falling out of the case.

Lol pubmasters video. I remember those, they were so fun to watch and made you want to try those whacky strats in scrims.

I think office should be added to the competitive map pool. I love watching people hold angles for hours.

I'd like to add something. Rushing on T side is really high risk high reward on office. For example 1 or 2 Ts taking over window is usually a huge loss for CTs since mid wont be as safe anymore for them. People often say that you should camp near the hostages but that's a good way to get cornered by CTs.

It's fun to play with friends. You should have tried getting into a office only discord or something to get other players thoughts who play this map a lot. Had another RU-vidr come up to me and my buddies who play office for fun and he made a pretty good video.

As someone who nowadays often plays cs maps on casual if not climbing or surfing, Office is a great map where you learn good playing habits, especially on CT side. Also, it has a whole different meta, which you only implicitly mentioned when you compared AK and M4: it is a map where playing with standard weapons exclusively is a bad choice! MGs, MPs and Shotguns can be used very efficiently, reducing eco rounds and enticing different strategys like pushing through smokes, prefiring, throwing nades very precisely as you want to be exposed as few as possible etc. Also, there are many sniper spots which sucks at first, but there is not a single one you can't bypass/push with some utility. When the hostage is placed outside the T Spawn on the long side, it's actually a very solid balance as you can reach the hostage and bring them out with bascially 2 players + full utility. T's have to cover hostage rescue zone from 2 sides so you have great battles in 1on1 or 2on2 with the hostage carrier the deciding factor. I think that's what some hostage maps are dearly missing (e.g. militia, italy): the T's having uncertainty about pathing when a hostage has been taken so you don't want to camp the hostage zone once a hostage has been taken. It shouldn't be a double disadvantage for CTs in both getting the hostage against camping Ts and then reacing the hostage zone against camping Ts again. Once the CTs reach the hostage and bring them out of the camping area, Ts are in deep trouble. Btw a small list of good habits to practice on this map, even in casual against noobs: -peeking, esp crosshair placement -prefiring, esp crosshair placement -AWP play (as T you can practice holding angles) -counter AWP play (flashing/smoking/grenading, baiting shots, using missed shots/cover when reload to gain ground and get another angle on the AWPer, especially since the AWP clip only has 5 bullets) -using utility (every single one can be the factor to win the round, even decoys) -claim or defend space with said utility -guarding angles and space -learn about weapon up- and downsides in specific situations -using space to your advantage (walking to be minimally exposed, when to run and when to walk etc.) -teamwork, especially making very precise calls with clear instructions and duty splits if you queue with some friends -experimental play (you can play this map fast or slow, you can push some rounds as T or claim important places like toilet or garage)

Office is a certified BANGER, comp players seethe

A comment outside of the video's idea: I have a special heart about Agency, the outside of the building ( CT spawn ) is the most memorable part of the map for me, and why is a special place in my heart is beacause that the steam account I and my bigger brother playing CS:GO is an old CS:GO account, back then, our bigger brother used to play CSGO, the playtime and the screenshots of the game tells this, the screenshots of him falling down off the building while he's inspect the dragon lore AWP ( that is I think he's not owed on the inventory beacause we didn't find it when we entered his CSGO account ), yes, I've never played it beacause I'm playing in Casual only ( and I don't know if I gonna enter the competitive mode ), and it's hard to find full players on a hostage map ( also you can play Assault, Italy, Militia and Canals exclusive to Casual and Deathmatch, and I want Dust and Astec and any other popular map that isn't good for competitive to only add in Casual and Deathmatch), you can't feel what I feel but Agency is very memorable for me, and I am glad to see it as a permanent map.

I like that old CS vibes, Counter Strike Online 2 just feels like this old cs community feel and bad maps galore incarnate. I play it on and off recently, thanks to revival of it by community. Microtransactions removed pretty much. I wish it was released on steam and tweaked a bit with few things from GO like better natural feeling bot ai and bit support for all the modes CSO2 has.

My favorite maps are surf_ ski2go and greatriver_xre4m in competitive combatsurf mode with nospread plugin, so you can shoot while surfing (mid air) instead of camping, then it’s funny skill game, cause I can surf backwards and or sideways while creating headaches with awp. :)

I play exclusively on office since my favorites were removed like Aztec, Assault, Italy, Cbble...

3:08 the hostages never spawn like that One of them always spawns at the bottom (5 possible positions) and another one always spawns at the top (4 possible positions). But it gets pretty hard to rescue them yeah

for some reason i have played hundreds of hours on office on gmod completely alone. feels like home

I would like to see if CS would do something different with office. Maybe switch the CT and T. CT would be body guards protecting the VIPs and T would be the aggressors. Swapping the spawns and story of the map would add some balance but also keep the same fun

I love this map. It just feels like a normal realistic setting to me, and a great time to use shotguns. Somehow I find myself liking maps that feel like places I would normally be in the most interesting. I used to love office only servers in earlier CS games too. It's the only time I get to hear that satisfying Cruuuunch Crunch Crunch sound of the M4 shotgun because why would I ever use the shotgun in CS normally. And it was usually like 32 person servers so there were some pretty intense battles with all sorts of holdout spots. I can see how it'd be less fun with only 5v5 because there's no need to spread out and defend different areas. This is definitely a for fun map. Also I really liked Aztec. Some of these maps are so close to me due to all the memories I had as a kid. Now that I think about it, Counterstrike is actually the game that helped me figure out WASD and mouse controls. I used to play Doom and Quake with keyboard only. Then I tried some games and remapped controls to arrow keys because I was like WTF are these random WASD controls. But then I was at this internet cafe where we played CS and the controls were set to this fuckin weird random WASD thing. And it clicked for me. Wait, WASD is literally the way the arrow keys are arranged only it makes more sense because my fingers can hit other keys easily. And I don't have to have my left hand awkwardly positioned right next to my right mouse hand. So that's the story of how CS was a part of my early gaming life in the 2000s and why I love maps like office and aztec.

I havent played cs since source but man do i have a fondness for the hostage maps. Either as a big challenge as a ct or a bork around and improve your kdr as T. The only times they truly sucked (which admittedly was often enough) was when the best players stacked the T side. When the superior players picked CT, though, that was the best times I had playing CS. Felt legitimately tense and cool to be kicking down doors and trying to get those poor helpless souls to safety.

I think a good way to balance office would be to give it a second floor where always 1 of the hostages is placed in.

office is easily my favorite map. the amount of other old buggy source games i have played on the office map combined with the hundreds of hours i have spent holding long hall with the R8. Ahh really makes me love CS. if they dont end up having a office for CS2 i wont be playing it

In CS:GO this map had lowest PC requirements. It was the only map I could play in GO in more than 30fps. Now it's CS2, I have quite good PC and I'm still rushing paper on cs_office with my P90.

Used to be not uncommon that the only servers you could find with more than 4-6 players were 24/7 Dust II and Office servers. Oh, how times have changed.

How did the hostage end up in an office is a good question. Did they work there or who brings hostage in to a workplace? Nuke looks pretty much like office but the hard thing on that map is to know where bomb is planted if it is up or down on b :)

Cs_office second most favorite map after dust2. Spend here hundreds of hours in counter strike source.

Office is a pretty popular map here in Australia. We got a pretty good community who plays it as well just to mess around and joke around on the mic.