Valorant – a new project of the company Riot games – creators League of Legends and Legends of runeterra. This is an online first-person shooter in which players take control of one of ten characters with unique abilities and are divided into two teams of five. One should mine a point, the second – to protect it.
Act Valorant happening in a world of near future with augmentations and magic. All heroes have unique abilities. However, the ENT game has not yet been revealed, we can only guess about the origin of the characters and places of action. Nevertheless, game cards are very similar to the locations of real countries. In a closed test, three cards are still available.
Among the heroes:
Breach – character instigator.
He cleans the territory in which the enemy puts bombs, knows how to blind and stun opponents, and can also create a nuclear charge that passes through the wall and causes damage.
His superpower is a seismic charge that throws players into the air.
Cypher – a guard, an expert in defense.
Able to throw a “cyber cell” to catch enemies in it, slowing their movement. Throws a camera that sticks to the wall, after which Cypher can look through it at any time. Also knows how to set a banner that highlights and stuns enemies.
His superpower – when hovering over an enemy, reveals the location on the map of all enemies.
Omen – Specialist, master of control of heroes.
May limit enemy visibility and teleport short distances.
His superpower is teleportation to any place on the map, but at the same time the hero makes a noise that enemies can hear.
Brimstone – Specialist, master of control of heroes.
It has a grenade launcher with incendiary shells, with the help of a map it can create a smoke screen area and uses a beacon that increases the rate of fire of the allies.
His superpower is an orbital strike. Deals periodic air damage to enemies in an area selected on the map.
Jett – a duelist, a killer, from whom other characters expect high-performance games.
Able to do strafe up and sideways, so it can jump on tall objects on the map. It creates a whirlwind, a kind of smoke screen, which can stick to surfaces and change shape upon mouse click.
Her superpower is a storm of blades. The Jett is armed with five daggers that recharge when killing enemies.
Phoenix – a duelist, a killer, from whom other characters expect high-performance games.
Throws fireballs in an arc to the right or left, depending on pressing the right or left mouse button, which blinds the enemies. His other ball of fire sets fire to the area into which he lands. He can also put up a wall of fire, which causes damage to everyone who comes into contact with it, but she heals the Phoenix itself.
His superpowers activate the resurrection mode, which helps to avoid death.
Raze – Another duelist, killer.
Throws an explosive pack similar to C4. It has in its arsenal a cluster grenade, which in the event of an explosion disintegrates into small shells that explode one more time. Launches a “bombotron” – a small robot that explodes when it collides with an enemy.
Her superpower is a one-time rocket launcher that kills with one hit.
Sage – guard, defense expert, doctor.
Throws a sphere of deceleration, which freezes the area under enemies, and can also heal itself or party members. Able to set up a wall that breaks through only with damage.
Her superpower is the resurrection of a dead ally.
Sova – another instigator.
Owns a shock arrow that inflicts damage on an area when hit, can release waves that highlight enemies, an owl drone that can be controlled while flying on a map, and also highlight enemies when hit by a dart.
His superpower is the release of an arrow that inflicts damage even through walls and illuminates enemies wounded by it.
Viper – Specialist, master of control of heroes.
Throws a grenade with a poisonous cloud that blocks the view of opponents (can be picked up to use again). He puts a toxic curtain – a wall of poisonous smoke, which blocks the view and causes damage to enemies who fell into it. Viper also shoots a dart that spills a puddle of poison under opponents, which slows down and causes damage.
Her superpower is spraying a huge poisonous smoke screen, inside which the enemies see worse and receive damage, and the heroine herself does not receive damage.
The character’s feature is an additional gas indicator, which is needed to activate the abilities. It replenishes automatically when Viper does not use abilities. When the gas runs out, Viper cannot use his superpowers.
In fact, the division of the characters into the classes of specialist, instigator, guard and duelist in Valorant is conditional. It is only advisory in nature. Gamers in matches realize the potential of the heroes the way they want. You can play in your own style.
The match begins with the purchase: you acquire weapons and abilities.
All characters have two abilities available for purchase, the other two are restored during the match and do not need to be bought. After using paid abilities, at the beginning of the next round of the match you need to buy them again, if necessary.
Money is awarded for killing enemies, helping party members, winning and losing the match. If the team loses, then it has less money, which means that it can only buy cheaper weapons.
From the experience of the matches played, I can say that the abilities of all the characters in the first place give a tactical advantage, but at the forefront is the skill of owning weapons.
Weapons in Valorant have their own characteristics, bullet scatter pattern, firing and reload timings – knowing the strengths and weaknesses of guns is vital.
The basic gameplay is like two drops of water similar to Counter Strike: Global Offensive – up to the fact that some guns duplicate the parameters of guns from CS, and some actions are assigned to the same buttons on the keyboard. Even the key CS chips are in place, such as jumps, lumbago, acceleration with a knife in his hands and so on.
At the start of the beta test during matches, almost everyone played Valorant as in CS: GOsimply forgetting that they have abilities. But over time, this changed – it became obvious that the skills of the heroes should not be neglected. It is they who are the main feature of the project, refreshing the established formula of the gameplay of the hit from Valve.
Most likely, you will not kill enemies with abilities (with the exception of some), but you will get a tactical advantage due to them and you can turn the tide of the match. This adds drive and excitement by holding in front of the screen.
The design of the cards leaves only the most pleasant experience. There is nothing superfluous on them: they are simple, understandable, but at the same time they do not look boring. It’s nice to play, you can easily navigate and always understand where the enemy can launch an attack from. Cards are easy to memorize during the game and so far do not bother.
In a huge plus game, you can record detailed statistics. In the menu you can always see how much damage you caused, how much health you had, when and where your allies died on the map, how much help you provided to them, at what minute the bomb was planted, and so on.
I watched Valorant from the release of the closed beta and I can say that despite the absolutely explosive indicators of interest in the game, very many shooters caused a negative due to the identity of the game mechanics with CS: GO. However, if the players still decided to try, then the opinion of Valorant changed literally on the same evening to the opposite.
The game is really addictive. I tried to understand what makes people reconsider their position and came to the conclusion that all its elements work very successfully together at Valorant. A pleasant and concise visual style at first impression is not amazing, but the simplicity of the graphics benefits the gameplay, especially in view of the enhanced esports focus of the shooter.
All characters look original and memorable. At the same time, they have a restriction in the size of the hit box – it is the same for everyone. This means that the size of all body parts in all skins will always be the same.
The weapon is not knocked out of the general style and already has a set of cosmetics.
The game pleases with very high quality and elaborate animations. They have a huge amount of small details. The animation of reloading the same gun for different characters may differ, which emphasizes the character of the characters. For example, Omen has supernatural powers and recharges a machine shop with telekinesis. And the cheerful Raze, when preparing to throw a grenade, twists the check on his finger.
Valorant has a great sound design. The menu features pleasant ambient, and the sounds of shots, activation of abilities and hitting enemies – juicy and bright. You can always clearly hear where the sound of steps behind the walls on the maps comes from.
The entire user interface is implemented as conveniently as possible, the buttons can be reassigned directly during the match from the menu. From there, you can at any time in the convenient editor to change the scope and adjust the sensitivity of the mouse. All menus for choosing skins, purchasing weapons, organizing lobbies, viewing statistics are very convenient and easily accessible.
The network code is already working perfectly and does not allow accidents to spoil the mood. You always understand how and where this or that action came from in order to adjust your strategy in the next match. On the game website, you can watch ping from your computer to the nearest game server. And in the process, the ping never rose above 50. Shots are always recorded as correctly as possible and without delay.
At the same time, Valorant is an absolutely undemanding game and will run on almost any PC, which increases its availability. On my graphics card ASUS ROG Strix RTX 2080 Ti she gives out order 300 fps in mode 4K at maximum graphics settings.
Valorant is free and does not have a lootbox system. The game has a donation currency – with it you can buy cosmetics in the store. But you can get cosmetics for free by completing daily tasks. Developers plan to implement a combat pass similar to Fortnite and Apex legendsbut at the moment it’s not there yet.
Among the shortcomings, a rather high entry threshold can be distinguished, since the similarity with the CS: GO mechanics attracted more experienced players from the project Valve. They quickly felt in Valorant like a fish in water. Partially solve this problem can the ranking system, which will appear a little later.
After three days of active play, it is safe to say that Valorant is a success. She is very addictive and has great potential in e-sports, which is further confirmed by the records set by the game on Twitch. It is interesting to follow the development of the project, and we will certainly share a more detailed opinion on the final version of the product in the summer in a full review.
Read also: Sony has no place for AA games: Marcus Lehto talks about development Disintegration and turned to Russian gamers.
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