How to Watch CS:GO Highlights

If you’ve ever played a multiplayer shooter game, you probably know what highlights are. When you die in-game, you see a video replay of it from another perspective. When the game is over, the players can view the best overall highlights.

In CS:GO, the popular demo viewer allows the user to watch the aforementioned highlights. This is important because it can help you improve your strategies and pinpoint mistakes. So, how can you watch your CS:GO highlights?

How to Watch Highlights

To watch the CS:GO highlights, navigate to the CS:GO start menu. Toward the top of the screen, you’ll see a couple of tabs. Select the Watch tab. Here, you’ll see a list of games, achievements, and get to check recent and popular scoreboards. To navigate to your matches, well, navigate to the tab called Your Matches.

A new screen will open, listing them. On the screen, you’ll see two “highlight” options: Watch Your Lowlights and Watch Your Highlights. Clearly, accessing highlights/lowlights in a match is as simple as selecting either of the two options. But what do they mean, exactly?

Well, highlights are some of your best moments in the match. This includes overall kills, bombs planted/defused, assists, and so on. However, there’s a weird thing about the highlights – it also shows the situations where you killed yourself or your own teammates.

Should You Watch Highlights or Lowlights

So, highlights or lowlights – which is the better option? Are they good options to begin with? Well, the answer to the first question is a bit complex. The answer to the second kind of answers the first, but not completely – yes, highlights and lowlights are both great options.

With highlights, you’ll get to see your kills, but also moments of infamy. These are displayed from your perspective, which is useful to an extent.

Now, lowlights are the moments you died by someone else’s hand. In most cases, these are killcams from the opposing team members’ perspective. This can be very useful because you get to see your death(s) from a different point of view – your killer’s. Like we said, you can learn a lot of this way, both about your mistakes, and how your gameplay appears from an opposing player’s perspective.

That said, lowlights also display your teammates’ moments of friendly fire (when they killed you), which may seem useless. However, it’s still a moment where you get to see your gameplay through another player’s eyes, which can be an advantageous experience.

How to Watch Replays (Demo Mode)

In the same screen you’ve been to before (your matches), you’ll be able to rewatch the replays of entire rounds that you’ve played recently.

On the vertical list to the left, you’ll see the matches you’ve recently participated in. Double-click any of these matches and the main screen will display the details regarding it. Toward the bottom of the screen, you’ll see a horizontal line, indicating the rounds. This is important because you’ll see the rounds where you’ve performed well and the rounds in which you died.

Rewatching a particular game can be a valuable tool – you can pick up the things you did right and wrong, as well as watch what the other players are doing. To start a round replay, click any round from the horizontal list.

You’ll be able to distinguish the rounds by the red/grey skulls, indicating whether you’ve died in the round, killed an enemy or enemies, or both.

Simply click the round that you want to rewatch, and it will start, displaying everything from your perspective.

If you don’t want to watch through the entire round, you can fast-forward things. Use the Shift + F2 command to bring up the menu and use the x2 or x4 commands. The 1/4 and 1/2 commands allow you to slow the replay down. The slow-down commands are particularly efficient if you want to get into the nooks and crannies of CS:GO gameplay.

The Best Things About Demo Mode

Although the rewind and fast-forward functions are very useful, there are more commands that can be of tremendous help when trying to better yourself as a CS:GO player. In Demo mode, you can actually view the games from different players’ perspectives. Use the Left Click on your mouse to move to the next player and the Right Click to return to the previous one. This will shuffle through players on your team, as well as through the players in the opposing team.

Another cool feature is being able to switch between the first and the third person. This can give you a much better viewing angle. Use the Scroll Wheel to switch between the two. There is a third option with the scroll wheel: free camera mode.

Keep in mind, though, that the free camera matches the overall speed of the replay – if you fast-forward the replay, the camera will go faster. If you slow it down, it will be slower. If you pause the replay, you won’t be able to move at all. This is somewhat of a downside that should definitely be mitigated – having a free camera that can work independently of the player’s speeds would be extremely useful.

Highlights and Replays

Although CS:GO highlights/lowlights can be extremely useful to help amp up your overall skills, it’s the replays (Demo mode) where you can truly benefit. Although there are some deficiencies with this mode, it still remains an incredibly useful tool in your CS:GO learning arsenal.

Did we help you find what you were looking for? Are you already thinking about making the most out of both highlights/lowlights and replays? That’s definitely the smart way to go. If you have any additional questions, feel free to hit the comments section below and fire away. Our community is always more than happy to help.