Counter-Strike: Global Offensive's best new weapon is this STALKER-inspired guitar mod

You're part of the Global Elite in Counter-Strike. You've got a gruff Scottish accent, AK-47s coming out of the wazoo, glove skins, music kits, tournament sprays, hairsprays—okay, I slipped that last one in (Valve: my commission's 10%). But what even the greatest Counter-Strike player didn't have, until now, was a playable guitar.

The tuneful new addition is the work of modder DepoSit, who also posted a video showing how they made elements such as the guitar, how tools such as DeepMotion were used to animate characters, and constructing the environment from its references. The most obvious is STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl. The guitar is a minor symbol of the Stalkers, who relax around the fires and take temporary respite from horrors to various quite beautiful tunes.

In Stalker, however, the guitars are played by NPCs. The six-button radial menu implementation of this mod that lets you pluck away is inspired by last year's PlayStation 4 exclusive The Last of Us Part 2. As you can see and hear, it's a chilled-out and relaxing oddity.

You can adjust for six different levels of pitch using a nearby control box, hop around the small STALKER-inspired setting, and imagine a life other than constantly fighting against Counter-Terrorists. Just two folks in their hoodies and facemasks, playing a song to stave off the end of the world: see you there in a few years, eh.

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Rich is a games journalist with 15 years' experience, beginning his career on Edge magazine before working for a wide range of outlets, including Ars Technica, Eurogamer, GamesRadar+, Gamespot, the Guardian, IGN, the New Statesman, Polygon, and Vice. He was the editor of Kotaku UK, the UK arm of Kotaku, for three years before joining PC Gamer. He is the author of a Brief History of Video Games, a full history of the medium, which the Midwest Book Review described as "[a] must-read for serious minded game historians and curious video game connoisseurs alike."