First-person Riot Games shooter VALORANT bears striking CS: GO-like parallels, one of the genre’s best-known.
VALORANT is a tactical hero shooter that tracks the storey of multiple agents. Those hyper-natural characters are built upon a multitude of cultures from real-world places, all of which seem to have some kind of future biological changes that make them the most deadly group.
Nevertheless, VALORANT has much more to offer and is clearly different from CS: GO despite having similar elements of gameplay.
The biggest shift is with respect to the over-natural, combat forces. Such agents are similar to Overwatch since each one has its own skills. Riot stressed that these skills are simply tactical choices, which implies that gunplay is the key and critical characteristic.
There are actually seven officers we care about:
- Viper, a female agent with a deadly attitude
- Sova, a male agent with a heroic look
- Phoenix, an agent with fire abilities
- Jett, the quick and light runner, similar to Tracer from Overwatch
- Cypher, a bionetic cowboy
- Sage, the healer, who’s similar to Mercy
- Brimstone, the brawn
VALORANT’s collection of guns is comprehensive with conventional and futuristic weaponry. For example, the’ Kingdom’ rifle is a high-tech weapon that can carry one-shoot enemies. But like CSGO, there’s a gun in the game, but it’ll probably be as powerful as the Desert Eagle as the R8 Revolve in CSGO.
The big difference is Iron Sights. It looks like all weapons will be able to see, but it will not be as effective as in other sports. Many weapons in CSGO are similar to the-47, however they are tailored to the future of the VALORANT setting.
VALORANT’s round system is CSGO-like but will have the best of 24 rounds, rather than the round advance system of CS: GO that consists of 30 rounds, with a first-to16-team winner or an overtime winner after each group has completed 15 rounds.
VALORANT’s dotsystem will have perpetrators vs. defenders and not counter-terrorism and terrorists, indicating the game may be more competitive and endemic.
Over the years, Valve has criticised its infamous VAC banning programme for its inefficiency. But the introduction of the overwatch programme has taken positive steps recently, enabling other players to monitor competitive matches and determine whether a cheater is involved. However, Riot did not mention that a similar system would be implemented.
In League of Legends Vanguard, VALORANT will be using the anti-cheat tool. Hack detection software seeks to eliminate abuse. VALORANT would implement the server-authoritative infrastructure for game-changer cheating, such as teleporting and speed hacking, making it impossible for cheaters to use.
One of the main distinctions from VALORANT is that it is possible to play public matches on 128-tick servers, which varies from the 64-tick server of CS: GO in regular matches. Which means that on public servers VALORANT will be much smoother but stable. Riot aims at most players having 35ms, thereby boosting hit registration and slowing for most players.
Even if the opponents are lagging due to poor internet connexion Riot will upsample all the player actions in a 128 frame per second. And happily, players who skip around the map will not kill you.
As described in the official trailer, Riot has gathered to battle the eyes, which can provide players with low-quality network connexions.
Instead of the modern approach of GO to war, VALORANT is on a near-future Earth. The League of Legends is close with high contrast colours and sharp edges.
But Overwatch is mostly associated with the theme, as it is a bit cartoonish but still realistic.
VALORANT is expected to be released in the summer of this year, which is close to CS: GO, and free to play at launch.
