Valorant Vs Csgo : The Game That Challenged A Titan

 Valorant

 is a really fun game, and for a few drafts now I've struggled in articulating why that is. Going into this, I'm just going to assume anyone reading this is familiar with the basic shooty shooty plant bomb type gameplay associated with games like Counter Strike and really nothing else, because holy fuck Valve has a way of always pioneering entire new genres of shooters and maintaining complete uncontested chokeholds over the industry.

Valorant to me is the one brave game that tried to challenge Valve's might by attempting to put a unique spin on the basic Counter Strike formula. You plant bombs, you stop before you shoot, gameplay centers extremely heavily around positioning, utils in the form of blinds, mollys, grenades, and smokes are used for entering sites and making flashy plays, but where the two products differ most at first glance is in the aesthetic.

Csgo is grimy, sheened in gritty realism and a thick intense atmosphere. Locations feel dangerous with an art direction that aims for the most part to look realistic and hostile. Gunplay is fast and brutal, with your firearms feeling loud and clumsy, yet killing extremely fast, exuding an aura of lethality. In spite of how loud gunfights can be in initial clashes when rounds have just started, when teammates and enemies alike have all dropped like flies and you're down to the last lucky few to survive, an eerie silence creeps over the match and you're left with a small group of twitchy players terrified for their lives yet trying to keep cool under pressure.

Counter Strike matches have this extremely volatile tone, where gameplay swings constantly between long slow bouts of carefully pacing forward and peeking round corners continously interrupted and punctuated by intensely realistic gunfights that often last mere seconds. These gameplay elements all come together and do an absolutely incredible job at invoking a real sense of vulnerability which only just adds to the gamefeel.

All the aspects of this grimy unrelenting aesthetic lend themselves to this extremely palpable feeling of humanity that shines through the bleak brutally realistic atmosphere of Counter Strike. You're not some big badass hero, you're a faceless merc no less vulnerable than any of the enemies you're facing. In the time it takes to land a sick headshot you can just as quickly be dropped near instantly by some guy you might've not even seen. At some point death becomes so common that seeing comrades die doesn't even make you flinch, but just coldly and calculatively reposition ready to shoot them right back.

So with that; with how Counter Strike has been around for decades, with how its had the time to form an absolutely massive community of passionate die hard fans and boasts player numbers averaging 900K at any given time, with how its been able to slowly and meticulously fine tune its central gameplay loop over several years and new releases, how could any developer POSSIBLY ever hope to even try butting heads with the geniuses over at Valve? Well, that's what I just so coincidentally happen to be talking about today.

Valorant was released in 2020 being dubbed as the fabled "CSGO Killer" coming up to its launch. It was advertised having the same base mechanics, but coming with an updated look and a myriad of other tweaks to reel players in. At its core it does most of what Csgo did, but followed a slightly different path in terms of gameplay and art direction, and we can see that immediately just looking at it.

Valorant's artsyle combines elements of neo-futurism and cyberpunk, as well as dropping hyper realism for something more stylized. Areas look more pretty and colorful, like somewhere you'd actually want to live compared to Csgo's maps. Gorgeous vistas, riverside retreats and beach resorts, lush cityscapes and vibrant evacuated towns, hugely contrasting the hostile, highly exposed desolation of Csgo's maps. Rather than a bunch of faceless mercs, you actually have a pretty diverse cast of characters to choose from, with agents from quite literally all around the world, backed up by interesting backstories and vastly differing backgrounds. It feels like representation done right in a lot of ways, I love how accents are often so prominent making no mistake where these guys are from. Where the really real twist comes in my opinion, is with the gameplay.

Valorant's most drastic shake up is rather than your utils being a few grenades, each agent has 3 unique abilities, as well as an ultimate that define their roles in battle. Players are presented a total of 25 different characters, split into categories of Duelist, Controller, Initiator and Sentinel. Duelists sport kits centered around creating space, splitting up enemies, and boosting general combat prowess. Controllers unleash smokes and blinds onto sites to allow their team to push into areas a little safer. Initiators specialise in gathering intel and clearing angles, setting up teammates for success and making the Duelist's job a little easier. Lastly, Sentinels are highly defensive powerhouses that focus on holding down sites, stopping pushes and of course gathering intel for easier pushback and retakes.

To some extent each role as per my explanations and the official wiki are somewhat simplified. Agents all have diverse ways they can contribute in any given round, and the system is rife with overlap, with agents that may be branded as one thing but given kits that let them excel in areas you might associate with other classes like for example with an agent like Chamber. Despite being made by the League Of Legends guys however, a very conscious decision was made to ensure abilities weren't too role defining, meaning a majority of the focus is still on pure rough and tumble gunplay, and any character can excel in a gunfight given their aim and positioning are wired tight.

Moving to the gunplay, Valorant still embodies a lot of what makes Csgo's style of shooting so satisfying, but takes a few liberties with the mechanics, tweaking them to make something familiar and also a huge departure from what people are familiar with. Movement for one is slower and more deliberate which hugely contrasts Counter Strike's maniacal fast paced zipping around. To top that, guns shoot slower, and a LOT more emphasis is placed on landing that one beautiful headshot in pretty much every gunfight. Look at any "Times Valorant players went SICKO MODE" type video showcasing kill streaks and you can see each roaring difference on full display, Valorant being clean and well presented, while Csgo is in the corner with players aggresively dumping magazines, guns bursting your eardrums, and seeing a real prevailing sense of chaos on the battlefield that Valorant even at its peak never really manages to match.

Counter Strike's guns had a real presence and weight in the world. They were loud and clumsy, but they commanded a real sense of lethality as I said previously. With the help of high damage numbers and incredible sound design, even the tiny little Glock-17 sound dangerous. To match the aesthetic, because guns had such high recoil, you were forced to either carefully tap enemies and use controlled bursts, or manage recoil by holding down on the trigger and actually aiming below your enemy to the point that bullets fired at your weapon's highest inaccuracy by the 4th or 5th bullet will still hit. 

Valorant doesn't do this. Spray control doesn't really exist because past the 3rd or 4th shot the pattern of your spray is completely randomised. While spraying is still done, they're far from something you can rely on. The only reliable thing you can really do is fire with controlled bursts, and at a higher level one taps become way more commonly used. The speed at which you move is also majorly turned down, making aggresive peeking and proactive darting around in gun fights less effectice. Combining these elements together, slower movement speed and chunkier guns give Valorant gunplay a much more slow and weighty feel overall.

Most guns ditch the whole instruments of wood and iron feel of Cs, feeling more futuristic. Sound design of gunshots are  also more low, with light crispy trills, deep guttural thuds, and loud satisfying whip cracks rather than violent uncomfortably loud hails of bullets. They feel larger in your hand commanding a real sense of heft as your character lugs them around, but they don't exude that same level of danger and lethality Counter Strike guns do. Fights just don't feel as raw and scuffed as they tended to, but I think it fits with the direction Valorant attempted to go with, and saying again, I really think it's impressive how Valorant managed to balance the lighter tone without it detracting from the intensity of a game like this.

Speaking on the atmosphere and overall feel, it's definitely a lot brighter and easier to digest for most people. In spite of the shift in tone to something lighter, it never feels like it oversteers into pure wacky cartoon level bullshit. Even with the introduction of more high tech even supernatural elements, there is still a sense of weight and impact. Once fights die down and you're down to the last few, I think that atmosphere of pure intensity accompanied by the pin-drop silence is nearly just as strong as it was in Csgo. 

Expanding on the writing, something I really didn't expect to like going into a game like this was the dialogue or the characters, but I still found the world pretty oddly captivating in spite of that. Despite being wacky and more fantastical it still feels heartfelt and earnest in a lot of ways. There's a certain method to the madness, an honest effort to abide by a set of rules established in relation to this world they've created. The cheesy lines each agent constantly spout have a certain charm to them, like cheesy saturday morning heroes spouting catchphrases and one liners. The jokes and comments at the start and end of each round are great showcases of their unique personalities, as are all their other lines tied to kills, in game comms and all the other stuff they might say. Even the lines that they repeat constantly with each ability use; there's enough variation that at least they don't repeat the EXACT same line over and over, and their repetition kind of creates an odd feeling of comfort and familiarity when you've played enough. It's all kind of stupid, but feels like it fits perfectly within the world of Valorant. It even serves a purpose gameplay wise, as some voicelines are tied to specific abilities, which you can use to determine what the enemies are throwing your way, rewarding player knowledge and properly paying attention.

So, shit, putting everything together? Valorant is honestly an amazing game. It does something different, and does it really really well, to the point I honestly think it matches Counterstrike in terms of pure fun and gameplay. Comparing the two, I slightly prefer Counterstrike overall, but for anyone looking to get into shooters or CS players pining for something fresh, Valorant gets a hearty recommendation from me. 

And I really didn't expect that going in. At most I expected servicable shooting, annoying writing, but an at least playable experience with foundations in the gameplay style popularised by Csgo, but now? Valorant is an extremely worthy contender to Counterstrike, boasting its own unique mechanics to draw players in, and exuding a level of polish so nearly spotless they even kind of have Valve beat in that aspect.

If you like your shooters realistic and gritty and with  a truer focus on raw aiming and reaction times, Csgo is for you. If you're interesting in entering a new world with vibrant characters and a bright artstyle, and find yourself liking Csgo's ideas but detesting their executions, Valorant might be just the gateway you're looking for into classic bomb defusal based shooters.

I like Valorant very much, and I hope reading this at least made you a little interested in checking it out for yourself. Thanks for reading, have a nice day.