Valderi Valdera, Valderi Valorant!

Riot’s New Free To Play 5v5 Tactical Shooter Arrives

According to Rock, Paper, SHOTGUN’s review, Valorant is what would happen when someone spliced together the DNA of CS:GO and Overwatch and set it free.  The base idea of the game will be very familiar to CS:GO players, one team has a bomb to deliver and one is there to stop that from happening, with a full match finishing when the first team manages to win 13 rounds, roughly 30 minutes or so in most cases.

For Overwatch players it is the character based play which will feel familiar, each offering their own assortment of special powers.  During the beta there were 10 characters to choose from with one more added just in time for the launch.  The characters each have five powers to use during a match, and as opposed to other games in the genre these powers are tactical in nature as opposed to dealing direct damage to your opponents.  You will always have access to a Signature ability during play and each has an Ultimate which needs to be charged over the course of several rounds before it can be activated.   The characters also have two additional skills, but they must be purchased at the beginning of a round.

The weapons look and feel like those in CS:GO, with a similar process at the beginning of a round to equip yourself or team mates if you are feeling generous, both with weapons and the two aforementioned extra abilities.  Once you have armed yourself as best as you can the round starts is when the gameplay shows how different this is.  You will have to deal with people teleporting around the maps, long lasting aerial smoke cloud bombardment, wall piercing weaponry and even the occasional resurrection. 

The hardware you will need to play the game is not taxing at all, you should be able to play on just about any computer you have on hand.  At 1080p, the recommended specs to hit 60fps is an Intel Core i3-4150 or equivalent, 4GB of RAM and a GeForce GT 730.  If you want to work your monitor and hit 144fps you would need to find a Core i5-4460 or equivalent, 4GB of RAM and a GeForce GTX 1050 Ti. 

Follow the various links to learn more about the game, or just head to Riot and grab it now and start singing as you are swinging.