Valorant First Impressions: Fast, Fresh, Fun

Valorant, Riot Games’ foray into the tactical first-person shooter genre, is now in closed beta. With fast-paced gameplay reminiscent of titles like Counter-Strike and smooth visuals, gamers around the world are eagerly awaiting its release.

Over the course of the last week, two of our FPS contributors had the chance to play the game. Here’s what they thought:

Interface: Clarity is King

Gian “GGKalbi” Calvi: The first thing to note with this game is its visual clarity. It is easy for both players and spectators to know what is going on. I appreciate that the background is in the background and the focus is on the characters. This game is designed to be the next big esports game, and it shows based on the visual design choices alone.

Alex “Platypus” Nguyen: Playing the game itself was very intuitive. The large map in the corner, as well as indicators for going into the “buy menu” felt second nature to me and for the most part had incredible visual clarity. Something that stood out to me was how well the shop overall was done.

Requesting weapons and the ability to sell items that were mistakenly bought was a great quality of life addition to the genre. It was also nice to see a streamlined buy menu, especially when compared to Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. 

Gameplay: Familiarity with a Twist

GGKalbi: The gunplay is solid and similar to CS:GO — which is far from a bad thing. All the guns, based on their size and somewhat familiar shape act like how you would expect. The best part is that all the types of guns are available for both sides from the get go, which streamlines the learning process.

If you don’t like CS:GO, this may not be the game for you — unless you like the idea of abilities.  They add a significant amount of depth to the game without making it overly confusing or bloated. Some function as the typical flash bang or smoke grenades you can find in any shooter, but more unique ones that like healing, wall placement and surveillance also exist. 

Platypus:  Echoing what Gian said, Valorant was very reminiscent of CS:GO given similar spray patterns on the weapons. Every weapon shot and sounded as expected and seemed reasonably powered.

The outlier in Valorant that makes it special was the usage of abilities. Being only a novice at the game, I felt as though I wasn’t utilizing the abilities to their maximum value but knowing that there’s so much to learn and such variability between each game due to abilities is very exciting. The abilities aren’t the most obvious to use at first but very quickly become second nature.

New User Experience: Built for Success

GGKalbi: The training mode resources are quite nice. The flick trainer is a nice warm up before and in between matches. The adjustable moving target is also a useful tool to practice spray control. In other games–most notably, CS:GO–those kinds of tools are not implemented in the base game and have to be added through the Steam workshop.

Which FPS Scene will Have It Best?

Platypus: Addressing the comparisons of VALORANT to CS:GO and Overwatch, CS:GO players should be expected to feel much more comfortable than Overwatch players when starting this game. Almost every aspect of the game feels like CS:GO save for the choice of using abilities, but the actual use of the abilities is still more utilized by the game knowledge from a CS:GO background.

Coming from an Overwatch community, I had the opportunity to play with people who had both backgrounds. It seemed like all of the CS:GO players performed much better than the Overwatch players.

Final Thoughts

GGKalbi: Games are going to by fast. Each match is best of 25 (first team to 13 rounds). Unlike Counter-Strike, the round count is smaller by a considerable portion and will lead to faster matches. I don’t see this as a terribly big problem or an improvement either, but it’s too early to tell.

Platypus: It’s a good game. It’s not the best game I’ve ever played but I definitely think that Riot did a great job with the game’s pacing, combat and potential skill ceilings. They took the backbone of CS:GO’s gameplay and supplemented it with abilities to make every match feel like a whole different game.

Because of the variability of the ability usage, I believe that the professional potential of this game is very high and I am excited to see how professional teams will approach composing team compositions and interesting ways that they can use the skills. 

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