Valorant is born and bred to become an esport.
There’s the game engine, highly-optimized to make the game playable no matter how old your computer might be. It’s a hero shooter, but unlike Overwatch, all the heroes are the same size, which lets players determine “hit boxes” around opponents easily and consistently across the game.
The game is Counter-Strike: Global Offensive with magic, a mash-up of that game and Overwatch. Riot Games may chafe at the comparison, but it’s a favorable one. Fans drew the comparison when they first got wind of the mysterious “Project A,” the first-person shooter game that was to be Riot Games’s follow-up to flagship title League of Legends, the reigning king of esports properties.
Like Counter-Strike, each match begins with a “buy phase” where players gear up with earned cash from previous matches. And each hero has their own unique superpowers governed by various cooldown meters. The closed beta offers the standard five-on-five bomb disposal mode that influencers and streamers played earlier this year.
Players nursed on Call of Duty, Apex Legends or even Fortnite are going to come into this with a bit of a learning curve. Why am I, and everyone else, moving so slow? Counter-Strike has always been a more tactical shooter, and Valorant will likely further popularize the style.
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Within seconds, it’s immediately clear how Valorant is tooled for slower, methodical strategy mixed with quick, responsive plays. The aiming, guns and movement are butter smooth. And most importantly, the most prominent ambient sound is your opponent’s footsteps. This isn’t a game meant to tell a story or suck you in. This is just a game, and you need all your senses engaged to win.
Like the two games it’s inspired by, Valorant will heavily rely on team play and voice chat. The players in my first few matches understood this, constantly chattering about open lanes and rushing in. Some players were confused, running all over the map until other players had to gently remind them to slow down. Maybe remember to hip fire, and not aim down sights like we always do in Call of Duty.
“You never played CS:GO?” said one teammate. The other teammate replied, “Oh yeah,” and then modified his approach. We ended up winning the match.
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The map design is straight out of Counter-Strike, with lots of boxes and blind corners. A one-way portal offered to each team expands the options a bit. Again, this isn’t built for immersion, this is built for sport.
The art style is right in line with the expressiveness and style found with League of Legends champions. They’re bland compared to Overwatch’s mech-pilot hamsters and gorilla soldiers, but in a match, they’re distinctive and easy to spot.
I did notice that a lot of my weapons looked the same. I couldn’t easily tell the difference between the SMG and the assault rifle, and kept picking up the wrong guns for the wrong moments. This is likely something that’ll get easier over time, but Riot could implement a few simple design tweaks to make the guns more distinctive.
It’s hard to give more solid impressions of what appears to be an early beta. This isn’t a “Fortnite beta” either. It’s closed for a lucky few, and the promise of access codes on Twitch streams boosted the game to an audience of 1.7 million people yesterday.
The intoxicating mix of two game styles, and Riot Games’s experience in esports, will make Valorant a contender for at least the first year it’s out. The beta, in its game and the hype its produced, is merely Riot Games showing off that they’ve ticked off all the boxes.
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Most importantly, this is going to further diversify its fan base, expanding beyond the battle arena fan base it’s conquered. And who knows? Maybe all the competitive shooter scene needed was a little bit of magic.
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