I've been putting this off for more than a month, but I think I've played enough of this game to finally be able to talk about it. BACKGROUND:
I'm generally averse to online multiplayer shooters not named Splatoon, but given enough insistence from friends, I'll join in. That's what happened to me with CS:GO, and what happened to me here with Valorant; I'm only here because I have people to play with. PLOT: Valorant is almost exclusively focused on the competitive aspect, so a lot of the story is left for you to piece together through in-game text or outside media. The gist of it is that there are these Agents from all around the world with unique backgrounds coming together to face an as-yet-unknown larger threat. Once again, I find a similar issue in this game that I had with Overwatch, in that despite the characters being quite diverse and interesting individuals, there isn't really a strong narrative to carry them through. I think they're taking the Fortnite/Spellbreak approach where they gradually build on the story per update, which is fine (and a novel approach, mind), but isn't personally satisfying to me as a storytelling approach. PRESENTATION: The game's visuals look pretty nice, with a good amount of detail in the models and textures, plus incredibly distinct character designs that rival even that of Overwatch. The style overall reminds me a bit of Fortnite, which is a bit cartoony, but Valorant leans more towards realism with its character models and location designs. As this is a shooter, there isn't much in the way of music, and a lot of the focus is in the overall sound design in gameplay. They did a great job with this, as even with shitty headphones, you can really tell the relative distance of sound effects and have a good idea of which side they're coming from. These tend to be important elements in competitive shooters, so it's good that they got it right. GAMEPLAY: Valorant is a competitive first person shooter where you play in teams of five. I like to describe its core gameplay as the love-child of CS:GO and Overwatch. Allow me to elaborate. In Valorant's main mode, teams are assigned to be either attackers or defenders. The attackers are tasked with planting a bomb (AKA spike) in one of the map's designated plant sides, while the defenders are trying to prevent this (either by eliminating the opposing team or defusing the spike in time before it explodes). During each round, each player spends credits (which you earn between rounds) in the Buy Phase to purchase weapons and armor. First team to reach 13 points wins. If you've played any iteration of Counter Strike before, this should sound awfully familiar. The Overwatch part comes in with the Agents. Before every match, you get to select one of a handful of unique characters. Each of them have three special abilities, as well as an ultimate that charges over time (or charged with Ultimate orbs found around the map). Some characters have mobility-based abilities (like Jett and her dashes), others control space (Brimstone and his smoke), others provide support (Sage with her healing), and more. There are a lot of different ability sets that fit all sorts of play styles, so you're bound to find one that suits you. What makes some of these abilities tricky is that you have to buy them during the Buy Phase, which adds an interesting wrinkle to your finance management. Although the judicious use of character abilities is very important, there's still plenty of emphasis put into the gunplay. Things like controlling your spray, aiming for the head, and holding still to maintain accuracy (all of which I am terrible at doing) are just as critical to success as a well-positioned smoke or properly set traps. The game has plenty of training modes for you to hone your shooting skills, meaning you won't have to go far to make an effort to improve yourself. In terms of weapons, your loadout will have space for a primary weapon, a sidearm, and your knife. There are only a handful of primary weapon types, each with only a couple of variants, but they're all different enough that you're bound to find at least one weapon type that suits you. From what I can tell, the metagame favors certain weapons for their damage output, but you can get away with using other things if you have the skill. You also have to take into account the price of each weapon, so depending on your cash situation, you can't always go for your main rifle. There are only a handful of stages, but the layouts are all pretty unique and provide more than enough variety for your approaches. They all have multiple plant sites and plenty of branching paths and openings to watch out for, which means there's a lot to think about whether you're attacking or defending. Stage knowledge is super important here, as proper callouts of specific locations (something I also fail at) can spell the difference between victory and defeat. Thankfully, there's a way to mark crucial locations such that your teammates can see. There are a handful of modes you can play. You have Unrated and Competitive, which have the standard ruleset (one being your casual mode, and the other ranked play). Spike Rush is a quicker paced version of the normal rules, except it's only a Best of 7, there's no Buy Phase (loadouts are random), and there are special modifiers and power-ups you can activate. Of course, there's your Deathmatch, which has no abilities and is purely for practicing gunplay. There's also the Range, which is where you can access all of the game's various practice modes., as well as a Custom mode where you can set up private matches. As you can see, there's not a lot of purely single player experiences, so if you don't like online multiplayer games, there isn't much you can do here. As far as the actual modes go, there isn't a lot, but there's a good enough balance of short burst game modes I can play during a break, and the main modes are satisfying in terms of length. Outside of all this, you have a Battle Pass mechanic, which is an optional purchase that gives you neat stuff whenever you earn XP. Most of what you earn is purely cosmetic, like weapon skins and avatar customization. Alternatively, you can spend real money to purchase some of the game's premium currency, which you can then use in the in-game shop. As far as microtransactions go, this is largely inconsequential in terms of the game at large, and there are not loot boxes, so I don't care. The game also has something called Contracts, which work sort of like Battle Passes, but you don't have to purchase them to activate them. Each Contract corresponds to one of the game's characters, and earning XP while one of them is active gets you character-specific cosmetic items, Most importantly, this is how you unlock the rest of the Agents for use in gameplay; the base roster selection is good, but you'll likely find the others more enticing to play if you've tried them out on the Range. I was concerned that you'd have to pay money to unlock characters, but it's good that you can unlock them just by playing (even if it does take a while). New players get free unlocks if they earn enough XP, making jumping in a bit easier. From what I can tell, this game gets pretty frequent updates. At the time of this writing, a new Agent had just come out, so I do expect that this game will get bigger and bigger as time goes on. VERDICT: As somebody who's generally bad at and avoids competitive shooters, Valorant is one such game that I ended up liking a lot more than its contemporaries. It has the character and ability-based gameplay I enjoyed from Overwatch mixed in with a straightforward objective-based core mode that is easy to understand. Even with my below average skill, I was able to slowly improve my gunplay, learn maps and basic strategies, and figure out the best uses for abilities, which are things I tend to have trouble with in other similar shooters (either because the barrier of entry is too high or there are too many good players online). While it helps that I have friends to play this with that make the overall experience a hundred times more fun (and not to mention more positive, given their patience with my incompetence at this genre), this is one of the very few online shooters where I feel a tiny bit comfortable playing by myself, which is quite a rare occurrence. Despite a lack of a focused story mode for its otherwise interesting cast, and the usual swath of assholes online (many of which have come at me personally since I'm not very good at the game), I still like this game a lot (though not enough to play religiously or constantly subject myself to shitheads in solo queues). If you're itching for a new competitive shooter to play, this is definitely one of the rising stars to check out. I think it offers enough depth in terms of strategy and loadouts, plus a good amount of variety with how team compositions shape up and how individual rounds can go. If you're more of a single player kind of person, you may not enjoy this game as much unless you happen to like going solo in online multiplayer. Personally, this is a type of game I would only play with friends on the account that it's team-based and people online can be massive douchebags. Now, you don't have to take my word for it, as Valorant is free-to-play. Download it here and see if it's for you: VALORANT: Riot Games’ competitive 5v5 character-based tactical shooter (playvalorant.com) - end -
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June 2024
Derryck
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