Valorant Review For Closed Beta: Counter-Strike And Overwatch Hybrid - Hard To Play But Fun When Mastered

Valorant is a great combination of aspects that people thought would never going to match together: tactical realistic gun combat and magical ability. Some people called this game a CS:GO - Overwatch hybrid... and they definitely have a point doing so. In this Valorant Review, we would point out some of the strongest points of the game and how they could improve them further.

1 - Valorant Review: General Design

There are a lot of types for shooter games, but we can usually divide them into 2 categories: the realistic type and the unrealistic type. CS:GO, PUBG, Call of Duty Modern Warfare... and the like are focused on realism, with the usual assault rifle, sniper, grenade, and everything. The gameplay in these "realism type" would focus on gunplay, accuracy, the weapon used... and the kill time is generally fast, with stuff like the Sniper Rifle has the ability to one-shot people. The unrealistic type of shooters would be stuff like Overwatch, Apex Legends, Fortnite... in which the gunplay plays second fiddle to the abilities, and characters can be pretty bullet spongy with all the HPs.

2 - Valorant Review: Gameplay

If you have ever played Counter-Strike at any point over the past 20 years, Valorant's high-stakes round-based matches would be really familiar. The default mode is pretty much bomb defusal, the classic mode in CS. Teams are divided into 2 groups, attackers and defenders. Attackers' winning condition is planting the spike-bomb at some point on the map and protect it until the thing blows up. Defenders' job is to prevent them from doing that by defusing the bomb. The alternate win condition is to kill all the members of the opposing team, of course. Each match would last up to 25 rounds, with the first team manages to reach the 13 win mark become victorious.

You might have thought the inclusion of abilities in such a serious, realistic competitive shooter would be pretty out of place... however, Riot has managed to balance them in a way that would preserve the usual feel of a normal shooter. The time to get a kill in Valorant is extremely low - a single accurate bullet is enough for a kill, unlike in Overwatch. This creates a sense of tension similar to that of CS.

>>> Read more:

• Review For Last Shelter Survival Gameplay: A Real Time Strategy Zombie War Game

3 - Valorant Review: Ability Balance

The ultimates of characters were balanced by using the Killstreak system in Call of Duty. Instead of recharging ultimates based on cooldown, you have to kill or be killed to get points for recharging them. The main method of recharging ultimates is picking up points from nodes however - it creates an extra objective for the teams to work for. Both teams have to try to play aggressively and control the map - otherwise, the enemy team would be able to charge their ultimate ability up.

Even the lesser abilities are not available immediately for players at the start - you have to pick and buy into them individually. You would have to make choices playing Valorant, such as spending your hard-earned cash immediately for a gun or holding them for another round to purchase a better ability. This is Valorant's way to introduce the Hero Shooter elements into the game without having it overwhelm the normal gameplay aspects. It would take some time for you to get used to this type of resource management.

4 - Valorant Review: Graphics

Valorant's minimalist art style was designed specifically to increase combat readability in matches. Riot has years of experience in designing MOBA that can easily be applied to something like Valorant. Every visual cue is distinct and recognizable from each other - from a simple muzzle flash to a flashy ultimate skill.

The reason behind this is that MOBA titles are more often than not filled with special effects that would overwhelm inexperienced players. This is actually a pretty bad thing, as the various effects would reduce the watchability of the game, which in turn affects the game's success commercially. Overwatch is one of the biggest examples - while the game is really fun to play, it is not fun to watch, with the Esports scene hanging on a thread. This is probably why Valorant took the simplistic style into its design.

5 - Valorant Review: Gun Balance

With the main focus of the game being gunplay, it is of utmost importance that Riot work on designing the guns arsenal of the game. While Valorant uses a completely new roster of weapons - each and every one of them is just a sci-fi version of an existing gun from CS. The Operator is the AWP, the Phantom's the M4, the Vandal's the AK...etc. In order to get more familiar with the guns in this game, it is best that you spend the first few hours inside the in-game firing range to practice and get a handle on which guns are which. This is rather important, as using a gun without knowing what to expect would make your first few games pretty awful.

The 128 tick server and better pings also played a huge role in Valorant's gunplay, as the 128 tick server communicates with the clients twice as fast as CS:GO's 64 tick. All Valorant players are guaranteed to get good pings as well - with Riot using their Global League infrastructure to support Valorant.

Interested in more of our articles related to Valorant? Please check out this post for our first impressions of the game and how to get a closed beta key for it.