Valorant: Riot’s Project A, thought to crush Counter-Strike…

We were invited in mid-January to Los Angeles to test Valorant, codenamed “Project A” on the premises of Riot Games, the studio behind League of Legends and a slew of projects for six months. Presented for a few hours back and forth, Valorant therefore allowed itself to be approached for two days, the opportunity for us to take our first steps and our first frags … Competitive FPS, thought to counter the competition, Valorant shines more with its future strategic positioning within the online shooter scene than with its ideas…

Just a simple “Counter Strike with powers?”

To be perfectly honest, we were, at first glance, a little disappointed with what we saw … Valorant did not put us a slap and never really surprised us. It only reproduces and optimizes what the competitive FPS has offered us the best for 20 years, drawing ideas here and there at Rainbow Six Siege, Apex Legends, Overwatch, and placing this melting pot within a gameplay. signature frankly very close to that of Counter-Strike, or even CS 1.6.

It is also interesting to note that we would not necessarily have believed in the potential of Valorant if someone other than Riot had presented it to us. Because it is on its long-term support and on its reliability in competition (via an effective anticheat and a reliable network mesh) that Valorant will be or not a success. Besides, the developers have already shown us that a Battlepass was in preparation and we could see a string of skins for our weapons, for the moment very sober. However, there remains a vagueness around the economic model of the title, planned as a free to play. The gameplay base of the game, which we could try, was not necessarily dreaming, but still offered some potential and exhilarating sensations during big clashes.

Despite everything, this “Counter-Strike with powers” still needs to find its marks and is in fact constantly evolving, Riot having made us try two different builds during the event, probably on purpose to reinforce this “evolutionary” aspect. in our perception of the game. In terms of positioning, the game is intended as a competitive tactical shooter, with extremely low TTK (time to kill), and will therefore glorify rapid decision-making, precision, and coordination between the members of the game. ‘one team.