NiKo rattling the GOATs: The Samurai in Shanghai
With the shepherd’s staff at his side, NiKo may reach for the trophy he has fought for so long. Will he come through now that the world has shined a spotlight on him once again?
In the crazy and confused landscape that is competitive Counter-Strike, few things have remained consistent. The shifting tides of competition capsize teams quicker than you can memorize their flagship banner. Players with unknown names are left stranded, searching for new homes. Many of them, even some of the best, do not find their way home, either lost at sea forever, or disappeared after one major wreck.
One thing that has remained intact for as long as I can remember watching Counter-Strike, is the exceptional talent of Nikola “NiKo” Kovač, a Bosnian prodigy of Counter-Strike whose gaming excellence knows no spatiotemporal bounds. Getting his break in mousesports in 2015 (now known as MOUZ), he began his Tier-1 career in international teams, where no player around him spoke his native language. Not only was NiKo the super-star of mousesports, putting up individual performances on par with the very best in the game statistically, he also took on the captaincy of the team. He simultaneously juggled being responsible for the team’s tactics and put the team on his back. Think of trying to play like Michael Jordan and being Phil Jackson at the same time, to a team of mixed Europeans trying to understand each other.
In an underwhelming year for mousesports, their main highlight was likely ELEAGUE Season 1. At this event, they came fourth in a stacked roster of teams, with NiKo carrying them with an exceptional 0.82 kills per round while also leading the team. Using just a Deagle, he crushed FaZe by himself in a now immortal highlight on Cache – another mark on the gargantuan wall dedicated to NiKo’s deadly alliance with the hand cannon. Another immortal highlight featured NiKo yelling at his teammate to shut up all the while, trying to keep his troops in order.
For 2016, an unsuccessful year for mousesports, NiKo was ranked 11th in the world by HLTV. None of NiKo’s teammates were ranked in the top 20, and would have been (frankly) lucky to make the top 40. For most players considered hall-of-famers, what NiKo did in 2016 is the peak of their career. For NiKo, that was just the beginning.
The star’s confirmation
Despite not being considered a top 10 player in 2016, when NiKo joined FaZe Clan in February of 2017, it was clear that his talent was far beyond that of mousesports. Instantly becoming the spearhead of FaZe Clan, they instantly attained four finals appearances and a trophy in the first half of the year, when FaZe had not even gotten a sniff of a trophy before. At his second tournament with them, he carried FaZe to victory against the best team in the world, the Danish superteam Astralis, earning his first official MVP award in doing so. In the second half of the year, when FaZe upgraded their roster with two more signings, NiKo elevated his superhuman form to a new level, helping FaZe win two trophies right from the start. These two tournaments were exceptional even for NiKo, as he broke the record for the highest-rated tournament ever in CS:GO at the first at ESL New York 2017, logging an absurd 1.70 rating, as his team went undefeated for the entirety of both events.
During this time, NiKo showed a form that was equally impossible and stimulating as it was frustrating to watch as a fan of opposing players and teams. He wielded the rifle, usually volatile and difficult to control, as if it was a high-powered laser. He would reset his aim, smooth as anyone, and release streams of bullets with the precision of a sniper and the self-control of a Zen buddhist. It made it doubly frustrating to watch him dome my favorite players, as he would often do it while using half the bullets they did, leading me to cope with dialogue like: “this shouldn’t be possible.”
Players like ScreaM and Twistzz have shown a comparable kind of aim, but what makes NiKo different is his ability to read the state of the game. He plays patiently, as opposed to others in his position who are always looking for head-to-head duels. It is incredibly rare to see NiKo ever peek into more than one player. On the defensive side, he peeks at the perfect timings to isolate individual attackers while they are momentarily separate from the rest of their team. On the attacking side, he could sometimes be overly passive on mousesports and later FaZe Clan, until he was able to take his skillset and apply it to become a trailblazer for T-side aggression in CS:GO.
Struggles to convert finals and beyond
FaZe’s new iteration after the middle of 2017 amassed 9 finals appearances, 5 of which led to trophies. By every reasonable standard we have, that is an incredibly successful campaign, but something was amiss after a certain point with this group of superstar players. The perception around FaZe and NiKo was irreversibly marked after the ELEAGUE Major 2018, where they were one round away from taking the team’s first Major trophy, the highest prestige available in Counter-Strike.
They shockingly lost to the North American hopefuls, Cloud9, in an unforgettable final. On the decider map, Inferno, NiKo had an unusually poor performance by his standards, and the North Americans snatched away victory from FaZe’s jaws at the last second. That final felt like biting down when you think the trophy is all but secured and then feeling the sharp pain burning in your mouth.
Since then, NiKo began to have a perception of “choking” around him. That FaZe team went on to have more finals appearances, winning a couple of them, but fell short of those trophies with the highest prestige. They had to watch their rivals Astralis take all of the titles in 2018, including the mantle of “best of all time”. Losing faith in their captain, Finn “karrigan” Andersen, FaZe eventually removed him from the team at the end of 2018, a decision attributed to NiKo by the community. NiKo became the leader of the team for most of the time going forward.
FaZe with NiKo at the helm never reached the same heights as they did in 2017, and only picked up a couple of small trophies along the way. Fast forward to today, NiKo still does not have a major trophy to his name, despite still being a shining star of Counter-Strike esports.
Suddenly, it's November 6th, 2021. G2 Esports is playing against Heroic in the PGL Major Stockholm semi-finals. It’s the decider map of the series, Inferno, and NiKo has carried G2 to this point in the major. They are facing Heroic, an all-Danish team that lacks superstar talent like NiKo but makes up for it through fraternal teamwork merged with ballsy strategies. Heroic are on the verge of taking the third map and another major away from NiKo, and when it seems all but lost for G2, the world shines a spotlight on NiKo. No one could have reasonably blamed him for giving up at that point. He was the reason G2 made it that far, becoming the main aggressor and initiator of the team to make up for its faults. Instead of being the cold, calculated lurker, he shifted his skillset to become the aggressive rifle player of the team, taking opening fights for the team to gain them an advantage, giving them a chance to fight against superior teams. NiKo already showed that he was a player with a skillset unlike every other player, and yet he still managed to add dimensions to his game.
Playing as the terrorist on T-side, NiKo began to own the banana position, the place that haunted him in his major loss against Cloud9. He was the laser beam that become the scourge of Heroic, destroying them round after round. At the A bombsite, NiKo did the same to them. In that moment, NiKo put the word “choker” far away from anything he could ever be.
In the final, he had another remarkable performance, but not enough to take down the destructive machine that was Natus Vincere in 2021. But what NiKo did proved he still had that exceptional talent that we all came to know him for. He held onto it, and added even more to his game we didn’t even account for.
Why can’t he be the GOAT?
When people bring up the GOAT discussion in CS, two names often come up before NiKo. Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev and Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut are the two main candidates considered normally. I would add NiKo to this very short list without question, because he, like them, is talented beyond belief. His longevity exceeds theirs, and has had to play outside his region his whole career, putting up consistently exceptional performances all without the aid of the superior sniper rifle in his hands.
In terms of peak, I’d put the likes of s1mple and Kenny “kennyS” Schrub ahead of him. For consistency, ZywOo’s got it. Nicolai “device” Reedtz has got the bigger trophy cabinet. But NiKo has managed output like theirs while never being able to speak his own language or use the best weapon. That, by itself, speaks volumes. As of today, he is still the one standing strong of those who have been around the longest. Today, he could still be the best rifler in Counter-Strike, while being the best in the game’s history. If NiKo had had teammates like device did, there’s no telling how many majors he could have. But because of the cruelty of Counter-Strike, he instead has none.
All in all, NiKo has probably the most unique skillset of any Counter-Strike player. It is instantly recognizable as the gold standard of rifle play. NiKo still manages to make a star out of himself today, being the silencing scourge of the uncanny bulldozer that is Daniil “donk” Kryshkovets. Before the Shanghai Major, he defeated Spirit and donk once again by carrying the game, could this be the world putting NiKo in the spotlight again? Is this his time to take the major home? Since Stockholm, NiKo has been heroic, but going into Shanghai he has never been born to win. Shanghai will mean the samurai’s final seppuku or his final step into a world of legends.
