All for team effort

BENGALURU : I tend to focus on single-player games in this column, because those are what I usually play. Today, however, we’re taking a look at a multiplayer game that’s been making waves in recent months – Valorant, from Riot Games. Valorant is a 5v5 team-based multiplayer FPS that lies somewhere in the middle of Counterstrike and Overwatch. As comparisons go, those aren’t bad names to be mentioned with; however, those are pretty big shoes to attempt to fill. So how does Valorant measure up?

In its default game mode, Valorant sticks very closely to the Counterstrike formula – two teams face off, the attackers are tasked with planting a spike at one of the designated sites on the map while the defenders attempt to thwart them. Should the spike be planted, the defenders win if they defuse it in time and the attackers win if it explodes (or they take out the other team). The first team to win 13 rounds wins the match.

The Counterstrike influence is clear with the format, but also with the arsenal of weapons you can buy from as well as (to some extent) the gunplay itself. If you’re a veteran CS:GO player, you’ll likely do pretty well at Valorant – it’s by no means the same, but some of the skills will cross over. It definitely feels more slick than CS - Riot has put a lot of polish into this game, and it does show. Looks aren’t everything, but the core gameplay loop of Valorant is extremely solid.

Now we come to the agents you play as, and here’s where the Overwatch inspiration lies. At the beginning of the match, each player selects one of 12 potential agents (depending on what you’ve unlocked so far) to play. Each agent has their own special powers they can use in addition to the weapons they all share. These vary wildly, although perhaps less so than Overwatch – Sova has recon arrows that can reveal enemies’ positions, Omen can teleport short distances, Jett is extremely agile and can pop up in unexpected places and Raze tends to blow up everything in sight. This is barely scratching the surface of how these agents play, however, because each of them has access to three unique abilities plus an ultimate – which, as you might imagine, are pretty damn powerful.

So how does this blend of shooting and superpowers work? Quite well, actually. Here’s the thing – Riot have said that they will always ensure that the first-person-shooting part of Valorant will remain the most fundamental, and that’s certainly the case right now. If you can master the gunplay aspects of the game, you’re going to have a fair amount of success even if you ignore your abilities. You’ll still have to deal with your opponents’ abilities, though, and obviously the best players mix them both to good effect.

In that sense, it’s perhaps a little more accessible than Overwatch, and accessibility is hugely important to Valorant for one big reason – Valorant is free to play. That means that it’s open to a much wider audience than a typical AAA game with this level of polish might be, which is both good and bad. The bad is that your online experience can vary wildly – you’ll meet a lot of great teammates while playing, as well as a lot of terrible ones. That kind of swinginess can really sour players on a game, through no fault of the game itself, and Valorant can be problematic in that regard. Of course, if you manage to get enough of your friends to play along with you, you don’t have to worry about random teammates and you’ll probably enjoy the game more.

Ultimately, Valorant is a very good game. Is it a CS/Overwatch killer? Not yet, but it’s certainly worth trying out. It’s also fair to point out that it only officially released in June, but it’s already seen new agents, a new map and a host of improvements. Riot is, of course, best known for League of Legends, one of the biggest videogames in the world; and they are throwing their considerable talents behind Valorant, which means this is definitely one to keep your eye on.

Microsoft Flight Simulator
The granddaddy of flight sims is back, and it’s better than ever. It seems like everybody and their uncle’s playing this one right now, to the point where people are chasing real-world hurricanes that are being modelled in the game’s realistic weather systems.