Valorant Review: Maps / Graphics / Animations / Weapons / Game Modes / Upcoming

12 min readAug 1, 2020

VALORANT is a new tactical 5v5 First Person Shooter aka FPS, that is developed by Riot Games. Riot Games is also maker ”League of Legends” which is debatably the most popular game in the world. In VALORANT, you are either an attacker or a defender. Attackers try to successfully plant a bomb and win if they kill all defenders with abilities or guns. They can also win if the bomb blows up. Defenders try to defuse the bomb and win if they kill all opposing players before the bomb is planted or if they defuse the bomb. Most of the people are saying that Valorant is mixing of CS GO and Overwatch, still, they love this game. Today we are going to review Valorant and see if this is CS GO killer or not. We will review this game on Maps, Agent, Guns, Types of the game, etc. We will also talk about upcoming updates and agents. In this article, we are going to review Valorant Game, on the basis of maps, agents, guns, upcoming things, etc.

*THIS REVIEW IS WRITTEN AFTER PLAYING GAME AT DECENT AMOUNT OF TIME. MY PERSONAL COMPETITIVE RANK IS PLATINUM 1. *

Before getting into details lets talk about some stats.

No of maps: 4
No of Agents: 11 + 1 (Upcoming 4 Aug)
Types of Abilities Per Agent: 3 + 1 Ultimate
No of the game mode: Unrated, Competitive and Spike Rush + 1 (Upcoming FREE FOR ALL)
Types of Guns: 16
Types of Shield: 2
No of Players worldwide : 3 M players logged in every day (1 June stats)
Concurrent Viewers on Twitch: 50k to 70k
Concurrent Viewers on YouTube: 10k to 20k

Our Findings and Opinions:

Valorant Review: Maps / Graphics / Animations / Weapons / Game Modes / Upcoming

*THIS REVIEW IS WRITTEN AFTER PLAYING GAME AT DECENT AMOUNT OF TIME. MY PERSONAL COMPETITIVE RANK IS PLATINUM 1. *

Before getting into details lets talk about some stats.

No of maps: 4
No of Agents: 11 + 1 (Upcoming 4 Aug)
Types of Abilities Per Agent: 3 + 1 Ultimate
No of the game mode: Unrated, Competitive and Spike Rush + 1 (Upcoming FREE FOR ALL)
Types of Guns: 16
Types of Shield: 2
No of Players worldwide : 3 M players logged in every day (1 June stats)
Concurrent Viewers on Twitch: 50k to 70k
Concurrent Viewers on YouTube: 10k to 20k

Our Findings and Opinions:

+ve

Free To Play
Light Weight Game (Less than 10 GB)
No FPS Drops
Different Tactical Agent Abilities
Satisfying ULTs
Decent Pleasure Gunplay
Colorful Artstyle
Amazing Character Designs
Intense Combats
Insane Gun Skins / Animations
In-Game Training Area
Rejoining Game after DC
Anti Cheat Software
Stats / Performance Report
Team Game

-ve

Limited Maps
Limited Guns
Fewer Agents / Characters
No Agent Skins
Not Very Original
Many Bugs / Glitches
Weapon Skins are expensive AF
Server Lag sometimes
Packet loss sometimes
Team Game
No Replay cam

A Victorious Amalgamation / COPYCAT:

When RIOT games are planning to design and develop valorant, they got the idea to grab the best of Overwatch and CSGO. The main reason why Overwatch and Valorant are being compared is that both have playable Agent or Hero. But the irony is that Overwatch has 32 playable characters and Valorant has only 11. One new agent in Valorant is coming on 4th August with a new Act II.

In Overwatch, agents are categorized as a tank, damage, and support, and the size of the team is 6. Now when it comes to Valorant agents are split into 4 categories: Dualist, Initiator, Sentinel, and Controller, and the size of the team is 5.

Let us talk about how similar is Valorant and CSGO. In Both Valorant and CSGO, hard work, practice, and talent are rewarded. Not to mention, both games will screw up aimless and sprayers. Both have 5 players in one team. The main concept of both games is that one team will try to plant the bomb and one team will try to defuse.

But, now the main story begins, how Valorant differs from CSGO. Valorant is not just a SHOOTING game. You have to learn about the agent’s abilities to use. Your every movement matters here. You have to know when to peek and how to peek. Unlike Overwatch, where much of the attention is on how players use Agent’s abilities, Valorant remains inflexible on rewarding players for skillful aim and gunplay with abilities of agents.

Combat arena (MAPS):

Where CSGO has 7 maps and Overwatch has 21 maps, Valorant has only 4 maps. We understand that game is just launched 4 months back still if they launched with more maps, gamers can grind hard without getting bored.

Valorant Maps are Bind, Haven, Split, and Ascent.

Agents of Valorant (HERO):

From the left, the first agent is Breach, then Phoenix, Raze, Viper, Omen, Sage, Brimstone, Jett, Sova, and last is a Cypher. All have different abilities and ultimate powers that recharge on getting kills, death, and planting/defusing spikes.

Agents categorized as:

1: Dualist

Jett
Phoenix
Raze
Reyna

2: Initiator

Sova
Breach

3: Controller

Brimstone
Omen
Viper

4: Sentinel

Cypher
Sage

Upcoming Agent on August 4: KillJoy

It is still undefined that which kind of agent is this. It can be Sentinel or controller.

Arts and Animation (Graphics):

Valorant’s graphics are not normal or say which other games usually use. Its graphics are similar to Overwatch and Fortnite. Both Overwatch and Fortnite have cartoon type graphics that are not gritty and muddy like Call of Duty: MW and CS-Go, PubG, etc. These graphics allow a computer with lover specs to still be able to run the game, which makes the game accessible to a larger audience. The graphics are clean and this allows the fair matchup, where the only thing that matters is skills.

Normal weapon Loading / Reloading animations are decent. But when you play for the weapon skin ahhhhh, those animations are really insane. When you buy skins and empty your pockets, you get great satisfaction after killing someone. More when you kill the last standing person, that animation is amazing. Personally, I did not buy any skins, but my friends are rich AF, so I trade with them to use skinned weapons.

PC Performance & Requirements:

Thanks to Riot’s low-spec PC requirements, Valorant should run relatively smoothly even on very old PCs and laptops. Indeed, according to Riot’s own Valorant PC requirements page, their minimum spec (which mostly consists of laptop components) is designed to deliver a steady 30fps frame rate, while the recommended spec should get you a smooth 60fps. Their ‘high-end’ spec, meanwhile, is designed for hitting 144fps frame rates, and when you only need a GTX 1050 Ti to get that kind of frame rate, anyone with a fairly recent graphics card should have no trouble at all getting Valorant to run on their PC.

Minimum PC requirements (30fps):

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E8400

RAM: 4GB

GPU: Intel HD 4000

OS: Windows 7, 8 10 (64-bit)

Recommended PC requirements (60fps):

CPU: Intel Core i3–4150

RAM: 4GB

GPU: Nvidia GeForce GT 730

OS: Windows 7, 8 10 (64-bit)

High-end PC requirements (144fps):

CPU: Intel Core i5–4460

RAM: 4GB

GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 TiOS: Windows 7, 8 10 (64-bit)

Conclusion / Verdict:

Valorant is the game with significant potential. But will it stand the test of time like CS: Go? Personally I don’t know. How ever, I think bringing agents with uniques abilities, new maps, and weapons into a fast-paced will hold the gamers. For now, I can say this game deserves 93/100.

7 points cuts for silly bugs, trash ranking system, some glitches.

Valorant may still be more promise than reality in some ways, but what already exists is strong enough to bring in players and keep them there while Riot refines the experience. Valorant, as of this writing, is at a fantastic starting point, and there’s every reason to believe it’s only going to get better from here.

Lastly, I want to add that, they should come with some story and logic that why these agents are fighting for the victory.