Demo review for HvH: setting up CS2 to watch your own kills

In a normal CS2 match, demos are for highlights. In HvH, demos are forensic. You died inside one frame to a hitbox you couldn't see; the only way to know what actually happened is to slow the demo down and walk through it tick by tick.

Where demos come from

CS2 records demos automatically when you join a server that has tv_enable 1. Most HvH servers run with GOTV enabled, which produces a .dem file you can download from the server's TV port or from a community archive. Some servers post their demos to a Discord webhook after each match; others let players run record and stop manually in console.

You can also record your own client-side demo with record demoname in the developer console as soon as you spawn. Client demos are first-person to your view but include all networked entities, which is enough for most analysis.

Loading a demo

Drop the .dem file in ...\steamapps\common\Counter-Strike Global Offensive\game\csgo\. In console:

playdemo demoname

The HUD shows the demo controls. Spacebar pauses. The number row controls playback speed: demo_timescale 0.1 slows to 10%, demo_timescale 0.05 to a frame-by-frame crawl that's the whole point of demo review.

The HvH-specific bindings

Three binds make HvH demos useful:

bind "[" "demo_timescale 0.05"
bind "]" "demo_timescale 1"
bind "\\" "demo_pause"

This lets you tap "[" to slow time, "]" to resume, and "\\" to pause when something interesting happens. Combined with spec_player <name> to lock onto a specific player, you can sit behind the cheater that killed you and watch their resolver in motion.

What to look for

When reviewing a death:

• Anti-aim resolution: scrub frame by frame across the moment your enemy fired. If they hit your real head when your model was facing the opposite direction, their resolver beat your anti-aim. If their crosshair was 30 degrees off and they still hit, that's lag-comp / backtrack.
• Their fake yaw: when you fired and missed, watch the model carefully. The real yaw is usually a tiny rapid flick a few frames before their shot. Most anti-aims show a brief "real" twitch you can spot at 5% playback.
• Round timing: see whether your shot registered server-side at all. The killfeed in the demo only shows what the server saw. If your name flashes on screen but you don't see them die, your shot didn't reach the server in time.

Saving stills

For posting clips, the recommended path is the in-game demoui (open with demoui) which gives a scrubber bar. Set in/out points, then use OBS or Steam's built-in clip recorder with the demo running at demo_timescale 0.5 so the recorder gets clean frames.

Why this matters

A lot of HvH discussion online is people guessing why they died. Demo review removes the guesswork. After ten or so reviews you'll start recognizing patterns — certain anti-aims that always lose, certain peek timings that always die — and your actual play improves, even if you never touch a config file.