| Genre | Shooter |
| Publisher | Riot games |
| Developer | Riot games |
| Minimum requirements | Intel Core i3-370M processor 2.4 GHz / AMD A6-3400M 1.4 GHz, 4 GB RAM, video card with 1 GB memory, for example Intel HD Graphics 3000 / NVIDIA GeForce 510 / AMD Radeon HD 5450, 10 GB hard disk account Riot Games |
| Recommended Requirements | Intel Core i5-4460 3.2 GHz / AMD FX-6300 3.5 GHz, 4 GB RAM, graphics card with 4 GB memory, e.g. NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti / AMD Radeon RX 550 |
| release date | summer of 2020 |
| Age qualification | from 18 years old |
| Platforms | PC |
| Official site | |
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There are no shortages of multiplayer shooters in the gaming industry, entertainment can be found literally for every taste. Rainbow six siege, Overwatch, the annual Call of Duty and all sorts of royal battles are all completely different, so the appearance of another high-profile novelty does not greatly affect the popularity of the rest. In the case of Valorant, the situation is somewhat different – the game is clearly trying to “crush” or at least weaken the position of Counter-Strike, offering such a similar idea that people familiar with the “counter” instantly learn it. But even de_dust veterans have room to grow – there are plenty of depths in the new shooter from Riot Games.
⇡ #Learned from the best
In each match in Valorant, two teams of five meet each other. One team protects two or three points, the other tries to establish a spike (a bomb in the common people), after which it must not let defenders in until it explodes. Matches last up to thirteen wins, but only twelve rounds in a row the teams retain their roles – as soon as the thirteenth comes, everyone’s inventory is empty, and the players change sides.
By squeaking a bomb, you can determine whether there is enough time to defuse it. How do you know where
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Very often you can see a comparison of Valorant not only with Counter-Strike, but also with Overwatch. Say, here the same characters are unlike each other, having unique abilities and even absolute skills that become available a few minutes after the start. However, the similarities end there. In Overwatch, some of the heroes can be taken by those who shoot with “you”: for Reinhardt, you just need to hold the shield and swing the hammer, the Winston gun does not require any accuracy, and there’s no need to talk about the Angel.
In Valorant, whatever character you choose requires anyway shoot straight. Even the local Ratsavchik analogue (Raise), although it carries two grenades, two mines and an exploding mini-robot, will not defeat the whole team with skills alone – it can kill, hurt or frighten someone, but ultimately the heroine will have to fight with someone in a duel. Of course, there is some kind of role division: Sage is able to heal partners (and even revive them), the Owl uses arrows and a drone to search for opponents. But the skills are recharged long enough, not like in Overwatch, so that the “doctor” quickly becomes an ordinary attack aircraft.
Some of the local abilities even have analogues in the same Counter-Strike. Phoenix throws a ball of fire around the corner, blinding opponents and teammates. Brimstone causes smoke screens in selected areas. Breach makes an explosion stunning opponents – such opportunities are not new for shooters, they are simply used differently in Valorant. But there are also non-standard tricks, such as an acid puddle and a toxic Viper wall or Cypher’s hidden camera – if you want completely new sensations, it is better to pay attention to these characters.
Owl needs a bow only to use skills, they do not give it to shoot at enemies
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⇡ #Familiar but new
Each round goes according to the usual Counter-Strike scenario. The fighters of both teams appear at their respawn points with a certain amount of money, open the store with button B and buy everything they need. There are several categories of goods: auxiliary weapons (four types of pistols and a sawn-off shotgun), primary weapons (submachine guns, machine guns, sniper rifles, shotguns and machine guns), armor (light gives 25 health, heavy 50), and abilities are at the very bottom of the list.
One of them is always available to the character – an arrow-sonar from an Owl, a grenade from Raise, and so on. The rest must be purchased if you want to use something, and, fortunately, the prices do not bite – you don’t have to sacrifice the main weapon for the sake of skills. Not only that – if you bought something and never used it, in the next round everything will remain in place. You can’t spend money only on absolute ability – it accumulates for completing rounds, killing and collecting black spheres on the map, which are not always safe to touch because of opponents waiting for the victim.
During the preparation phase, teams cannot go beyond the designated areas, but, unlike Counter-Strike, here the shootings usually begin much earlier, as well as the use of consumables like grenades. However, matches fail much faster because of this – on average, they take forty minutes. The duel lasts one or two seconds, so everyone tries to be careful, snuggle up to the walls and corners, use walking instead of running (then no steps are heard at all), and if you need to run somewhere, pick up a knife – the hero moves faster with him .
After the match, detailed statistics appear – you can study what happened in each round, and not only
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⇡ #There is something to learn
In many ways, the depth of Valorant is comparable to what Counter-Strike offers. Over time, you better remember cards, you know what angles you need to check and how best to stand. By experience, you find out which walls and boxes are flimsy enough so that through them you can shoot at a hidden enemy. However, the presence of heroes with unique skills is another dense layer, which will be studied for a long time. An owl can not only fire a sonar arrow, but also do so in such a way that the projectile bounces once or twice from the walls. Here it’s not just necessary to know where it costs, but also to look for the most successful opportunities to shoot in such a way as to confuse opponents for at least a second and cover the largest area with sonar. And this is only one skill out of more than two dozen.
Therefore, Valorant, although it may seem unprepossessing due to the controversial visual style, does not disappoint in terms of gameplay. Those who did not play Counter-Strike will have to get used to some features of this subgenre – with the fact that the weapon shoots more accurately when you stand still, after a thousand hours in Overwatch and “spam” A and D in each shoot it’s hard to put up at first . But when you understand everything and start to show more or less good results in matches, it becomes more difficult to break away from Valorant. It’s a pity that voice chat is not available at the beta testing stage in Russia – in matches with random people this is, if not a sentence, then at least an unpleasant flaw.
Another flaw is related to weapon design. In Valorant, all guns are black. It looks good, but distinguishing one weapon from another (at least at first) is too difficult. For example, in the game there are four types of assault rifles, which shoot completely differently, but when you run up to an enemy’s corpse to pick up a captured barrel, quickly determining the model is not easy.
The training ground is beautiful – in the local shooting range you can even quickly change the sensitivity of the sight and check it on the targets
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In the end, it’s worth mentioning about optimization – as Riot Games assured, Valorant was created for weak PCs and laptops as well. I have far from the most outstanding laptop: Windows 10, AMD Athlon 300U 2.4 GHz, 8 GB RAM, AMD Radeon 530 discrete graphics card (2 GB) and an SSD drive. The game automatically set all the settings to a minimum, but even so, it was not possible to catch on more or less reliable 60 frames per second at 1080p resolution – the frequency constantly dropped to 40. The situation got better at 900p resolution – the FPS counter hung out between 50 and 60 (most often in the range 53-57). Personally, this didn’t bother me too much, and if you are at all used to 30 frames per second on your “card”, then there will be no complaints about optimization at all.
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Valorant is unlikely to change much before the release, and it doesn’t need it. The game has almost no obvious shortcomings, but there are enough advantages so that after the next match one would immediately want to launch the next. With a rating mode, combat pass and other monitor-holding elements, Valorant will surely become a big hit – well-thought-out gameplay will help, and an experienced publisher / developer who still collects millions of players daily in his 2009 MOBA.
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