I genuinely do not understand what sort of appeal this game has. How in God's name can people play this every day? I seriously don't get it.

This is a game that suffers from schizophrenic game design and business decisions. It tries so hard trying to replicate and compete with CSGO and yet it fails spectacularly at understanding what made CSGO's mechanics work so well in the first place.

It feels like a game that just tries to cash in on the ever still popularity of CSGO while also double dipping by copying other games like Overwatch, Fortnite, and Rainbow Six Siege.

I don't even know where to start with this shit. I'll have to go category by category just so that you can fully understand how every single issue this game has all adds up to a messy fuck burger of a product.

And holy fuck this review turned out longer than I thought it would. But I salute you a hundred times over if you manage to get through it, cause goddamn, this game is much worse than I thought it was when you go in-depth.

Let's start with one of the most important aspects of this game, the gunplay. And already we're at a bad start, because they botched it to all fuck.

[ 𝙏𝙃𝙀 𝙂𝙐𝙉𝙋𝙇𝘼𝙔 ]

The gunplay in this game is the definition of inconsistent. The main problem with the shooting is how it feels like you are shooting a buckshot shotgun no matter what weapon you are using.

How gun accuracy works is that as you move, your weapon gains more bullet spread. Walking gives you slight inaccuracy, jogging gives you the most inaccuracy.

Standing still makes your shots more accurate, and crouching gives you the most amount of accuracy. The less you move the more accurate your shots are.

The difference being that you can also ADS (Aim Down Sight) so that you can get some zoom in for those longer range targets.

It's the exact same as CSGO right? Well, no, it isn't. It's total shit.

Whether you are walking, standing still, or even crouching, the bullet spread is so much more severe than in CSGO.

There are so many goddamn instances where I could be shooting at an enemy standing even a few feet away from me, but the bullets spread so much that I can't get the kill, even if I shoot in short bursts or single tapping.

The bullet spread is so bad that it can feel like you're shooting at fish in a barrel. How is the spread so bad that even single tapping your enemy isn't effective half of the time?? The only exceptions where it isn't so bad is with the pistols and the shotguns.

Whether it's hip firing or aiming down sight, it feels like you have to rely on RNG to kill people in this game. Especially when the bullet spread can actually get you the most random headshots even if you're not aiming for the head.

Even crouching in Valorant does not give you as much accuracy as you may think it does like in CSGO. Your shots can still miss, and it's a fuckin' joke.

The one shot headshots in this game is some of the most random bullshit I've experienced in a shooter, and it's especially worse if you experience D-Sync.

Some of your bullets won't register on your enemy but they can just one shot kill you with no problem at all, and this is due to how shitty the servers are. It can also be why you can get shot before you even see your enemy around a corner.

The lag is also just atrocious. Sometimes the game would tell me that I have a ping of around 50 and yet I'm lagging like crazy. It makes the game virtually unbearable to play.

Here is another major issue with the aiming:

In CSGO, the amount your crosshair would bloom depended on the weapon type. The bloom is categorized from lowest to highest

Pistols
Shotguns
Submachine Guns
Rifles

However in Valorant, the submachine guns have relatively the same amount of bloom as the rifles. Meaning that jogging, hell, even walking with SMGs will still have a shitload of bullet spread.

This is stupid because SMGs are meant to be the run and gun type of weapon. So combine this with the slow movement speed that feels sluggish, like you're trying to run in an elementary school swimming pool full of pudding, and the SMGs just straight up suck, because weaker damage and yet higher spread than the SMGs in CSGO.

How did they fuck up SMGs so bad in this game? But the fucked up thing is, a very good portion of your match you'll have to use the SMGs, and I'll get into why later.

So because of random bullet spread, random one shot headshots, random D-Sync and random lag due to shit server issues, and SMGs being straight up anal sauce, this can all create a game where the skill comes from how lucky you are.

This is why it's nearly fucking impossible to get kill streaks going. This is why players get negative K/Ds in most matches. Even the Pro players struggle going positive while playing this game.

This game is brutally fucking difficult, but for all the wrong reasons.

Many times you will just be asking yourself

How the fuck did this guy kill me? or How did I not kill this guy?

Get used to it, because that is the whole game.

[ 𝙏𝙃𝙀 𝙈𝘼𝙋𝙎, 𝘼𝙉𝘿 𝙇𝘼𝘾𝙆 𝙊𝙁 ]

Let's make a comparison. CSGO launched with 6 maps, and as of now the game has around 40 maps.

Overwatch launched with 12 maps, and now is crossing the 30 territory.

Keep in mind, these games came out years ago.

Valorant is a game that was released in 2020, and guess how many maps it launched with?


4...

Just, 4. And as of this review, they've only added TWO maps. Is this a joke? Six maps??

Hell, two of these maps the community absolutely fucking hates: Icebox and Bind.

This might be the lowest amount of maps a competitive shooter like this has had, well.. ever.

So because of the insanely low amount of maps, the game gets very repetitive. You can't even choose what map you want to play on to avoid playing on the shitty ones. So you'll just be getting the same 1 or 2 maps over and over and over.

Each map in this game is very gimmicky. They have something exclusive to them in an attempt to differentiate from each other, but if anything, it's minor, and just makes the game more annoying to play.

One map has rope rappels, another map has portals, another map has doors that open and close, which is pretty cool. And yes that was sarcasm.

Bind and Haven or example are total shit because those maps have three bomb sites.

How the fuck can you cover three different bomb sites with just five people? Who is the numbskull that thought this was a good idea?

These gimmicks are nothing more than just gimmicks, because they don't compensate for just how poorly designed these maps are.

The maps in this game have so many fucking angles and corners that the game can become a camper's wet dream. Camping is actually an insanely viable strategy because of the shitty gunplay and bad servers that I mentioned earlier, as well as the terrible map design.

[ 𝙏𝙃𝙀 𝙈𝙄𝘾𝙍𝙊𝙏𝙍𝘼𝙉𝙎𝘼𝘾𝙏𝙄𝙊𝙉𝙎 ]

Oh ho ho ho ho my fucking god. Holy mother of shit. I honestly thought I wouldn't reach a point in time where I can safely say that a company has managed to make a game that is as greedy if not even more greedy than Star Wars Battlefront 2 in its early days.

This is one of the most egregious and predatory examples of monetization I have ever seen in a game. Is this what we get instead of loot boxes now? We're going from one scummy monetization scheme to another huh?

Battle Passes and overpriced paywalls. Seriously, why are the gun skins so fucking expensive in this game? It's flat out disgusting. And it's disgusting that there are people out there who buy this shit thinking that charging over $100 for cosmetics is totally okay.

Here is an example. As of this review there is a Spectrum Collection being sold right now. It comes with the Spectrum skin for the Classic Pistol, the Phantom, the Guardian, and the Bulldog, along with other stupid shit like sprays and charms.

It costs 10,700 Valorant Points. How much is that? Oh, you know...

$100...

And apparently the bundle is on discount. Oh, I'm so fucking sorry, Riot Games, let me give you a round of applause for your generosity, you really deserve it. Now instead of having to spend 170 fucking dollars I now only have to spend $100..

I'm going to have an aneurysm.

And that's not the worst part. The bundle comes with just the base skin. The base skin can be upgraded to have extra effects, upwards of 3 times. You need 10 Radianite Points for each upgrade. How do you get Radianite Points?

Oh, of fucking course, by either buying Battle Passes and grinding the fuck out of them, or you straight up buy it from the Store.

20 Radianite Points costs up to $20, which is the lowest amount you can get.

So even after you spend this RIDICULOUS amount of money on gun skins, you STILL need to spend even MORE money just to get the COMPLETE version of that skin.

The whole game is like this!!

And if you wanted to buy skins separately from a bundle, you still have to pay upwards of 2600 Valorant Points. $26 for a single weapon skin?

$53 for a fucking melee weapon skin??

You want proof? Well here are some screenshots I took.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/HpPiXcAv6YfbHASQ6

https://photos.app.goo.gl/1PSVq2735MEGzrMe8

https://photos.app.goo.gl/BeW4YDNzT2uZKyTm8

Seriously, this shit alone is reason enough to say that this game is a piece of shit. If you're one of those people who spent upwards of $200 buying skins for this game, you are the reason why corporations keep doing this shit, and get away with it.

You're the type of person that caused Grand Theft Auto V for the PS5 and Xbox Series X to exist, by making Rockstar and Take Two Interactive $1 billion alone from buying Shark Cards. That is the game that you deserve.

I'm sorry but I'm taking a stand against prices like this. This is just grotesque.

And don't give me that same copy and pasted retarded as fuck statement:

"But it's a free to play game."

That is seriously a meme at this point. The game being free to play does not justify having $200+ paywalls when the game doesn't even have loot boxes. This is the kind of shit that I expect from mobile games.

Who wants to play a game only to be greeted by a paywall that is more expensive than three newly released $60 AAA games?

There is nothing that kills my motivation more and makes me want to not play a game than opening up said game only to be greeted by giant price tags being shoved right in my face.

Stop letting this horrible shit get into our core gaming Industry. I don't want another EA or Activision/Blizzard, and you shouldn't either.

I never thought I would say it but Fortnite actually did it right when it came to cosmetics. You buy a skin, which is no more expensive than 2000 V-Bucks which equals $20, but not only is it not too expensive, but there are many ways to easily earn V-Bucks so that you don't have to buy them at all.

Not to mention, if you wanted to unlock additional effects and or variations of that skin, you just had to play the game, and that's it. So what is Riot Games' excuse?

I hate Fortnite, but I have to give credit where credit is due and give the W to it. Rogue Company has much more reasonable prices as well, not to mention the skins look really fucking good in that game so yes I'm giving a W to that game as well.

[ 𝙏𝙃𝙀 𝘾𝙃𝘼𝙍𝘼𝘾𝙏𝙀𝙍𝙎 ]

The game has a class system, each character has a different set of abilities that can change the tide of battle, along with an Ultimate ability. You've got your Fraggers, your Supports, your Defenders, etc.

This is supposed to be the main game changer opposed to CSGO. A CSGO type game but with unique characters with abilities like Overwatch.

The best of both worlds, but it’s more like double dipping your cock into a bowl of ghost pepper salsa.

There is a major problem right off the bat when you have hero shooter ability mechanics in a competitive shooter like this. No matter what, whether you nerf a character or buff a character, there will always be another character that is better than that specific person.

This game will always have balancing problems. And because of this, it creates a trend where people will mostly play meta characters.

80-90% of my matches always have me face an enemy team that has either a Sage, a Jett, a Viper, a Raze, a Kay/0, or a Reyna.

Maybe Omen or Phoenix.

And sometimes, it's a combination of all of these characters. Because these are all the best characters to play. They are the most powerful. And yet there are like, 7 other characters.

A team consisting of a Sage or a Skye, a Jett or a Viper, a Raze or a Kay/0, along with a Phoenix or an Omen is literally the most versatile team comp. It's pretty much what many teams like to run even in the Pro scene.

Like, why would you play Cypher, Breach, Astra, Sova, Brimstone, or Yoru, when you could play Sage, Raze, Viper, Phoenix, Kay/0, or Jett?

Hell, Jett alone can break the whole game because of her insanely powerful utility, being able to throw smokes, soar into the air, and dash.

And her ultimate allows her to shoot kunais and quickly dispatch enemies if you know how to aim them. And each time you kill someone they refill.

You see how stupidly overpowered Jett is?

See, this is the problem. Most players go with the latter option. They just play whatever is the meta. And while I am on the topic of abilities, I want to get into the problem with the Buy Phase.

[ 𝙏𝙃𝙀 𝙄𝙉𝙁𝙇𝘼𝙏𝙄𝙊𝙉 ]

For some fucked up reason the developers decided to increase the prices in the Buy Phase. Guns and Abilities during the Buy Phase have have either gone up in price or went down in price but these are all minor tweaks if anything. It's still difficult trying to get money.

This just makes it even harder to purchase what you need. I reach many instances where I get really frustrated with not being able to buy what I need.

If the SMGs were actually viable then it wouldn't be such an issue, but no, they're shit, and yet you are forced to use them for a large portion of the match because you need to save money for the rifles and abilities.

The rifles are expensive as shit. It's even worse when you also have to buy armor before each round starts which already takes away at least a quarter of your earnings. So you either have to buy pretty much nothing or you're always gonna be either broke or near broke.

The developers did this for balancing, to reduce the amount of ability spam. To make the game more centered around gun skill rather than utility game.

Maybe if the gunplay actually fucking worked then I could understand this. But it doesn't. So this change just comes off as vapid and tone deaf. You just made the game even more irritating to play than it already is.

And speaking of the game being irritating to play, I need to address a gigantic issue that I just don't see enough people complaining about. It is still one of the most stupefying game mechanics that results in a problem I tend to roast Rainbow Six Siege for.

[ 𝘼𝙁𝙆 𝙋𝙀𝙉𝘼𝙇𝙏𝙄𝙀𝙎 𝙄𝙉 𝘾𝘼𝙎𝙐𝘼𝙇 ]

I seriously can't stress enough how much of a plague game penalties are. It is the biggest example of how a game becomes less like a game and more of a Chinese sweatshop.

Basically, if you get removed from the match from being AFK or if you leave a match early, you get a penalty, in which you have to wait on a timer to reach 0 before you can play again.

Keep in mind, if you're playing with friends and at least one person has an AFK penalty timer well guess what? None of you can fucking play. You either kick that person out of your party or you can't play.

What? Why? Who fucking came up with this? This is fucking stupid, I wanna play with all of my friends! Why should people have to wait on me if I get a penalty? I already commonly go AFK as is.

See, if it was a Ranked mode like in CSGO and Siege, that is totally fine. Throwing a game and going AFK not just affects you but your team as well. If you go AFK a lot then you shouldn't be playing Ranked.

But, some dumbfuck(s) at Riot Games and Hi-Rez (the guys who made Rogue Company) decided that it was a good idea to give these timer penalties to players who get booted out of Casual matches.

Well then that just defeats the fucking purpose of Casual now does it? Why the fuck do you have both Casual and Ranked modes but if you get booted from a Casual match you still get penalized for it?

These timers can go up to a fucking hour, even two hours. Two fucking hours? Are you out of your fucking minds??

Also, if you do get penalized you can't play ANY mode for that duration of time. Not just the standard plant and defuse mode, but even modes like Deathmatch, Fracture, and Spike Rush.

So you know what that means? If you get penalized, you can't play the game. At all. So you know what you gotta do for the next hour? Either fuck around in the shooting range, do private matches (if you have anyone to play with), or you fight against bots.

Or you could just..you know..play a better fucking game instead.

Seriously, what was the thought process here?? Punishing players for going AFK and leaving Casual matches mid-session?

Why not just give players the ability to join in the middle of a match? If you have a teammate that leaves the game, why not have that person replaced with someone else?

Rainbow Six Siege does this and CSGO does this. In CSGO, if you're playing Casual or Deathmatch or Arms Race and you're having a terrible match and you're just frustrated and you don't wanna be there anymore, you should not be punished for wanting to leave.

Not to mention, going AFK should not be as much of a sin as the developers seem to think that it is. Do you have any idea how long matches last in Valorant? Upwards of 25 minutes, sometimes even 35.

You have to win 13 rounds in Valorant's Casual mode, as opposed to CSGO's Casual where you only need to win 8.

Think about how many rounds you have to play before you win. It's a minimum of 13.

Matches can fucking go on forever in this game, and yet you are expected to not have to go AFK at all. Nothing else is more important. You are either playing the game 100% or fuck you, don't play at all.

You know, I'm not sure if the developers were aware of the fact that people like me have real lives. Shit that we have to do. And yet we get punished for having to go AFK.

Again, I get Ranked, but why Casuals? And why prevent players from being able to play the game at all because of something as common as "Oh shit, hang on, I gotta do something, I'll brb."

Why not just have a vote to remove player system like in CSGO? And then have that player replaced with someone else?

Seriously, this is Marvel’s Avengers (the 2020 game) levels of fucking stupidity.

Same shit with Rogue Company. The game has both Casual and Ranked modes but going AFK in Casual modes can result in getting temporarily banned from matchmaking for at least 30 minutes, instead of just having a system where players can join matches already in progress.

Because of this AFK and throw mentality but with the only option being to surrender to the enemy team and force the match to end, it reaches a point where it's less about you and more about the game. You become the fucking game.

It's non-stop sweat all the time. And this is the same shit that I get on Siege's ass for.

[ 𝙄𝙏'𝙎 𝙉𝙊𝙏 𝘾𝘼𝙎𝙐𝘼𝙇 𝙀𝙉𝙊𝙐𝙂𝙃 ]

There's never a moment in this game where you can get a chance to breathe, maybe experiment with the different characters and learn the maps.

There's no such thing as fun in Valorant. You either sweat, or you get fucked in the ass repeatedly by the enemy and get yelled at by toxic man babies on your team.

CSGO has a pretty steep learning curve. At first I didn't like the game, but as I kept playing it and I was getting better and better, I started to fully appreciate the game for what it was because of the fact that you can make the game as sweaty as you want it to be.

CSGO can be a pretty sweaty game, and yeah I can get frustrated at it sometimes, but if I get tired of one mode or lobby I can just go into another one with no punishment unless it's Competitive. It also does have that casual side to it as well. Hence there's modes like Deathmatch and Arms Race, to get you ready for Casual, and then that gets you ready for Competitive.

It's a long staircase that takes time to run up, but as you get better, you start to feel like you're on top, that you are reaching that goal.

But in Valorant, you never feel like that. Yes there are good and bad players obviously.

But if you're someone like me, someone who doesn't snort G-Fuel up your nose and inject Adderall into your throbbing erection, you never feel like you are getting better at the game, because of how broken the mechanics are. I've been playing FPS games for a good 15 years now, and Valorant makes me feel like I'm total shit.

Hence why the game is as toxic as it is. Seriously, this might be the most toxic game I've played since DayZ and Rust. And that is because of how badly designed the game is. The game fails at being a CSGO type game and it fails at being an Overwatch type game, and because of this, there is no such thing as playing the game to just have fun.

And now for the final big elephant in the room. And you probably already know about this even without playing the game. I'm talking about the infamous anti-cheat the game forces you to install.

[ 𝙑𝘼𝙉𝙂𝙐𝘼𝙍𝘿 𝘼𝙉𝙏𝙄-𝘾𝙃𝙀𝘼𝙏 ]

What I'm going to be explaining is going to sound pretty nerdy, so I apologize in advance. I'm not a software engineer, but this is based on information I read online.

So before you are even allowed to start the game you have to install the anti-cheat known as Vanguard. Basically, it requires access to Ring 0.

Basically what that means is that your operating system has different "layers", Ring 3, Ring 2, Ring 1, and then Ring 0, which is the kernel center of your computer's security.

Vanguard requires access to Ring 0, basically giving it the most amount of access to your PC. This is why Valorant requires you to restart your PC in order to finish installing it, because that's how you give software access to Ring 0.

Ring 0 is not what you should be allowing a lot of programs access to, as that is where you are the most vulnerable.

The anti-cheat runs at all times while your PC is on. It only scans your PC while you're playing Valorant.

A lot of people like to call these "root kits" which are basically backdoors for hackers to break into your PC.

How Vanguard works is that it uses an AI to scan your computer for cheating software, and would automatically ban you as soon as you try to play the game with said cheats.

Which sounds good right? Well, it's shitty for two reasons.

First of all, it can lead to players getting banned for absolutely no reason at all even though they didn't have cheats installed, because the software isn't perfect.

And second, it can be dangerous.

Vanguard itself is not dangerous, but it is potentially dangerous. And that alone was enough for me to uninstall the game after I read about this shit, because I was not going to risk having my $800+ PC rig compromised from playing this shit game.

Because there could be a situation where you are playing Valorant and a hacker decides to use the backdoor to get into your kernel, cause mayhem on your computer, and possibly steal valuable information from you.

It's like when Grand Theft Auto V first came out on PC and there was a massive security breach on the Rockstar Social Club.

Thousands upon thousands of people had their information leaked out to hackers.

Not only did they have access to people's social media accounts, bank accounts, and other critical information, but these people got locked out of their accounts meaning that they could not play the game that they just spent $60+ on, because you have to be logged into the Rockstar Social Club's servers in order to play GTA5, even for the single player, which is fucking horseshit.

Rockstar's Social Club Accounts May Be Compromised (2015)
https://www.overclock3d.net/news/software/rockstar_social_club_accounts_may_be_compromised/1

Not to mention playing GTA Online gives you the risk of hackers grabbing your IP address and whatnot simply by just being in the same lobby as you, because that is just how awful Rockstar's security and anti-cheat are.

There is an awesome video that perfectly goes in-depth about just how bad all of this is. I will leave a link if you are interested.

Gypsy - Rockstar's Dirty Little Secret
https://youtu.be/C_fdhCXlPI0

But I'm only bringing up GTA5 because well, Valorant has the same problem. It also really doesn't help that Riot Games is owned by Tencent which is one of the largest corporations in all of China.

And unless you have been living under a rock, you'll be aware that Americans are really not the biggest fans of the Chinese market.

Riot Games have claimed that they are not planning to do anything malicious with Vanguard, and yet the idea of having someone breaking into your computer just by playing the game, it's fucking horrifying. I've seen it happen.

Big companies get hacked all the time. Remember when Sony and the PlayStation Network got hacked in 2011? I'm sure a lot of people do. What if the same were to happen to Riot Games? But it's much worse because this puts your whole PC at risk.

So again, the anti-cheat itself is not dangerous per say, but it is prone to be exploited. So even if you got past literally everything I have gone through in this review, then I would hope that you are feeling at least a bit weary about this shit right here.

[ 𝙁𝙞𝙣𝙖𝙡 𝙏𝙝𝙤𝙪𝙜𝙝𝙩𝙨 ]

Okay so after all of this fuckin' nonsense you get the idea of just how terrible this game is. In a nutshell, the game suffers from all of these things:

The gunplay is heavily reliant on RNG with ridiculous bullet spread, D-Sync and laggy servers, and random chances of getting headshots or headshotted

There are an insanely low amount of gimmicky maps with a shitload of angles and corners that results in a camper's paradise

The game is chock full of revolting, anti-consumer, and ridiculously overpriced monetization that has the fucking audacity to ask for even more money from you even after it already asks you to spend a fuck ton as is (upwards of $200+)

The game suffers from the infinite problem of balance because players will always play whatever the meta heroes are because it is the most viable option to do well

The developers inflate the prices of some of the guns and abilities in-game in an attempt to reduce ability spam but then stupidly forget that the gunplay is total shit

You can get AFK banned even from playing Casual modes, preventing you from being able to even play the game for very long periods of time which defeat the purpose of a Casual game mode, especially due to ridiculously long match times (25-40 minutes long)

The game isn't casual enough in which there is no such thing as just playing the game to have fun, it's non-stop sweat and toxicity all the fucking time

And to top it all off, the game forces you to download an anti-cheat that requires access to the Ring 0 kernel in your PC's security, which can serve as a potential risk for hackers to use the anti-cheat to create a backdoor to break into your computer and either damage it or steal your personal information.

You can't delete Vanguard by the way. If you delete it then you can't play Valorant, but you know what? I could give a fuck less. Because this game deserves to be thrown in the trash heap where it belongs.

Just go play CSGO for god sake. It is an infinitely better game. Go play Rainbow Six Siege, go play Verdun or Rising Storm 2 Vietnam or Squad or Enlisted or Insurgency Sandstorm, just, fuck this game.

Hell, even Standoff 2 does all of this much better than Valorant, and that's a fuckin' mobile game.

I hate this game, and I hate this company.

Funny enough, this game was actually developed by people who played CSGO professionally. And after playing this absolute shitshow of a game, it makes me grateful that I'm not a "pro" myself. Because everything in this game just comes off as gross and embarrassing.

And it doesn't take a game developer or a player in the eSports scene to expose the god awful flaws in your game.

Playing this game only just makes me appreciate other games that did all of this shit way better.

2/10

First Impressions (kind of a new format I wanted to do, I kind of treat backloggd as a journal of my thoughts to begin with so why not!)

It's good.

Better than I expected from the team that sucked a lot of my adolescent hours away for a moba I'm incredibly mixed about. It does a pretty fun accessible combination of CS + hero powers, and it's fast paced enough with neverending split second decisions. Mostly just happy about how they landed the ingame economics, not just of where you spend money, but how you make moves at any point.

The biggest standout difficulty curve to climb was weapon and ability swapping, as whenever you ready something there's a HUGE startup, and that can very easily be your downfall. Knowing exactly when to do something as simple as that is a key point, adding that onto map control, the tradeoffs of weapons and ability usage, and you have something that is probably really interesting.

I tried out mostly Commando and Jett, and also the two meme modes. Spike Rush is just "I feel like wasting time", and deathmatch is "I want to lab my aim". Neat stuff.

There's a couple other miscellaneous stuff there, game looks bad but perfect for competitive play and weaker end systems, so it's just a heartless tradeoff but whatever. Feedback is INCREDIBLY good, in that you don't even need to like know all the agent abilities, they're very intuitive to figure out just from looking at them. Some of the best visual info stuff I've seen in a while. Matchmaking was smoothish, but not knowing what map you're going to get queued on can make things disgusting when you're thrusted from maps you haven't yet learned to ones you were just getting to learn.

Overall, good time, looking forward to coming back and getting not-shit at it.

A mix of Counter-Strike gunplay with Overwatch hero abilities. An interesting concept in theory and it can be fun for a while but the problem comes in with the maps. Too many fatal funnels and too many corners make the game a contest to see who knows all the hiding spots very quickly. These maps are clearly designed by an inexperienced team and if you're going to try and compete with Counter-Strike which has a dedicated playerbase that have been playing the same maps for almost 30 years then mediocre maps just don't cut it.

Huge steaming pile of garbage. The game is impossible to enjoy without initially sinking ~60 hours into it, only around half of the guns in the game are actually viable, the players are beyond insufferable, and the anticheat is an actual virus, which PERMANENTLY slowed down my PC, and uninstalled my keyboard & mouse’s softwares. The mind-numbing gameplay consists of nothing more than either holding one angle for god knows how long, or two players peeking back and forth from that same angle, only describable as being like Footsies in fighting games if the characters didn’t have legs. The worst part is the players’ reaction if you try to deviate from the brain-rotting meta and have the AUDACITY to try and have fun. One time I was playing ranked with my cousin in the same room, and I was so sick of the fucking yoo-hoo gameplay that i ran into the bomb site, immediately got sniped, and my cousin got up and roundhouse kicked me in the head. 0/10 would rate lower if I could.

how do i give 0 stars

seriously, i tried but it is just a colorful flashbang and smoke wall fiesta where people always abuse the same spots on the map and that is the meta.

just go play csgo already, it is less broken and more balanced.

Riot Games presents their own take on the counter-strike franchise, but notably with agents that have their own abilities. As someone who has like 1.5k hours in CS but had hit a clear wall in skill, this was refreshing and very fun to play.

Gameplay wise, the shooting and aiming is easier as is the economy (which is really just more fun since you don't have to save as often), but the characters and their unique abilities give the game a lot of depth. Characters have smokes, flashes, teleports, healing, etc. I also particularly like the addition of things like teleporters to maps, adding a new level of depth that CS can't.

Because the game is new and built on a newer engine, there are many QOL fixes over CS. The economy is much more user friendly to view, you can sell your guns before the round starts, you can ping, etc. There are some notable misses though: you can't view your own games, and the anticheat is intrusive (though at least it works, which is more than I can say for CSGO matchmaking). They also postponed an update to nerf a broken gun because an esports tournament wasn't over yet, which means they somehow could not get a tournament patch working. And you can't que for specific maps, presumably because Icebox would turn into the Office of Valorant.

Overall, this game was pretty darn fun to unpack compared to CS. There will always be problems since it's an online competitive game (trolls, toxic people, etc) but I had a lot of fun in Valorant as I slowly improved and will likely come back to it to grind. Sometimes you just want to view the more colorful aesthetic of Valorant compared to the duller colours of CS. As a player and an esports fan, it's an exciting game.