Game Review: Valorant

Valorant: a free-to-play, competitive first-person shooter game. | Picture from: Google

Few games have ever been as focused as Valorant, Riot Games' new free-to-play, competitive first-person shooter.

Valorant's excellent mechanical design is its most important feature, and the company has wisely decided to push almost everything that isn't gameplay to the side.

This strategy makes sense. Valorant is Riot's first game since the mega-popular League of Legends was released in 2009, and that release taught Riot some valuable lessons.

You can improve character selection, balance, map design, and just about every other aspect of the experience over time, but you have to start with a rock-solid foundation if you want the game to take root in the long run.

And Valorant's foundation, the action that will support all of those potential future additions, is as solid as anything I've seen in the competitive scene.

It all comes down to what the company refers to as "competitive integrity." Riot Games wants you to believe that when something goes wrong in a match, it is your fault, not a problem with cheating, balance, or anything else you can blame on Riot Games. If your losses are yours and yours alone, your wins will be yours as well.

The playable characters in Valorant. | Photo from: Google

Valorant's robust anti-cheat system, as well as the game's outstanding deployment including top-of-the-line servers to decrease latency are all geared to support this concept, and it's a brilliant approach to multiplayer design and implementation for the most part. Many studios have prepared for the future, whereas Riot Games appears to be doing so.

This approach can also be observed in the game's design, which borrows concepts from a variety of current competitive shooters and demonstrates once again that execution is far more crucial than originality.

When you sprint, Valorant isn't afraid to let your bullets go wild. You can stroll, and your first couple of rounds may be reasonably accurate, but the majority of real conflicts require you to halt completely and aim at your targets.

This has little effect on the game's rhythm which is shootouts are concluded quickly enough that the real halt generally lasts a beat before the winning player or players resume rushing across the map.

In most situations, the issue of who will get the killer shot is resolved fairly rapidly, and it comes down to who has superior aim, yes, but also who began the encounter in a stronger physical position.

To see what Valorant looks like, watch this amazing clutch/ace gameplay by me.