Valorant
Valorant
Valorant Champions theme “Ticking Away” released
Nicholas James
The new Valorant Champions theme “Ticking Away” has been released, featuring musical artists Grabbitz and bbno$. Riot Games loves dropping major musical releases with prominent artists ahead of its international esports events. This began with League of Legends and has continued into Valorant’s largest international tournament, Champions. For Valorant Champions 2023, Riot Games has released a music video for the new anthem Ticking Away. The new song takes inspiration from …
Valorant
This wild Deadlock bug causes Spike to disappear
Fariha Bhatti
Deadlock is deadly, but the icy agent is now doing the impossible, dealing 900,000 damage in a wild bug. The latest addition to the Valorant protocol is equipped with blood-curdling abilities. However, she’s now pulling insane tricks by crook. A new bug is letting her cause mayhem in the server by delivering insta-death with astronomically high damage using her ult, Annihilation. Popular streamer and Valorant personality AverageJonas shared this rare …
Valorant
VCT Masters Shanghai is coming in 2024
Olivia Richman
Riot has revealed VCT Masters Shanghai as part of the Valorant Champions Tour 2024 season. For the first time ever, the Valorant Champions Tour is heading to Shanghai, China. According to Leo Faria, the global head of esports, the VCT Masters Shanghai will be to celebrate one year of Valorant being available in China. “With Chinese teams starting to participate in our global events, including an amazing run in Masters …
Valorant
How to get the Valorant Champions 2023 free drops
Fariha Bhatti
Valorant Champions 2023 brings free drops for esports enthusiasts who like collecting charms. Valorant Champions 2023 is on the horizon, and Riot is eventually sharing the content as part of the Champions celebrations. Earlier, the developer revealed a first look at Champions 2023 bundle, featuring a shiny new Vandal and melee, and now leaks have unveiled free rewards. If you can’t afford the pricey time-limited items, you should tune into …
Valorant
Valorant players demand melee gun buddy after odd bug
Fariha Bhatti
Gun buddies are strictly for weapons but one Valorant player somehow got a charm on his melee, and the community loves it. Valorant has numerous in-game cosmetics, but gun buddies are the cutest and most affordable. Those who can’t purchase the pricey skins opt for unique weapons charms to add some colors to their default skins. Unfortunately, these tiny buddies are only available for guns, not knives. However, an odd …
Valorant
All we know about Valorant release on Xbox or PlayStation
Fariha Bhatti
Riot’s shooter was an instant hit among PC users, and now console players are wondering if Valorant would be available on Xbox and PlayStation. Valorant was released in 2020 as the biggest FPS game of the year. It quickly became the go-to shooter for players who had given up on other popular titles. In 2023, Valorant is competing with FPS giants, but players want more. Currently, Valorant is only available …
Valorant
This new Deadlock counter is too good to be true
Fariha Bhatti
Barrier Mesh is the deadliest tool in all of Deadlock’s toolkits. But it’s possible to counter it without emptying a whole clip. The latest Valorant agent is perfectly balanced, slightly inclining towards being underpowered. However, she’s relatively viable for a sentinel. While the rest of her abilities may seem a bit underwhelming, Barrier Mesh is the star of Deadlock’s toolkit. The wall’s life and health make it overpowered, but this …
Valorant
Riot to ban agent insta-locking application in Valorant
Fariha Bhatti
Riot Games is finally cracking down on the agent insta-locking app called Recon Bolt. Picking your preferred agent in Valorant is no cakewalk. You must be lightning fast if you want to grab that Reyna or Jett before anyone else can. For this reason, players pull many stunts, including seeking help from unauthorized third-party apps like Recon Bolt. However, Dunskus, the app’s creator, has revealed that Riot has sent him …
Valorant
Use this Sova lineup to grab intel across map on Haven
Fariha Bhatti
It’s now possible to keep an eye on Valorant map Haven’s C-site while holding A, but only if you’re willing to learn the Sova Recon lineup. Recon agents in Valorant are brimming with unlocked potential. They require tons of time in custom maps and range to perform to their fullest. But some basic lineups are so simple even green players can pull them off. This latest A-to-C Sova lineup is …
Valorant
How to get Valorant Premier Ignition rewards
Fariha Bhatti
Valorant Premier Ignition is cut-throat, but participants can get valuable rewards out of it even if they don’t win. Valorant’s in-game esports circuit is officially beginning, but Riot is testing the system one last time before rolling out the first stage. Premier Ignition is the first open tournament since the new mode came out of beta. The tournament will be open to all eligible participants. However, Premier will be highly …
Valorant
How to get the rare Ignite Melee Capsule in Valorant
Fariha Bhatti
It’s official! The Valorant Ignite melee is now available for everyone to purchase. Valorant China was announced with an exclusive replay feature and a knife bundle, which had everyone salivating. Fans had expected that the visually pleasant fire-themed melee would also be limited to Chinese servers, but now Riot has cleared the confusion. The Ignite capsule will be purchasable for all, but there’s still a catch. On July 13, Riot …
Valorant
Valorant’s rarest China melee to become available for all
Fariha Bhatti
Since Valorant China’s announcement, players have their eyes fixated on the exclusive “Kitana” melee. After leakers’ claim it may not be as exclusive, Riot has now confirmed Fire Fan will be making it worldwide on July 14th. Valorant players are always on the lookout for time-limited, rare cosmetics, even if they have to pay a huge amount for them. The exclusive items are worth every penny. Besides being a flex, …
Riot Games has long looked to expand its footprint beyond the success of popular MOBA League of Legends, and one of its biggest successes to date in this regard is the tactical shooter, Valorant. Blending traditional first-person shooter elements with unique and flashy hero abilities, Valorant seeks to combine the best attributes of tactical shooters and hero shooters into one cohesive experience.
Based on player feedback, the game has largely succeeded in accomplishing those aims. It’s not an easy balance, and it’s one that is arguably still tenuous, but Riot Games seems to be doing as good a job of it as most fans have hoped for.
What type of game is Valorant?
Valorant is a first-person shooter that represents a unique blend of the tactical shooter and hero shooter subgenres. There are some games that represent similar gameplay elements, but not many that offer the exact experience that Valorant puts forward to players.
The tactical shooter genre is often considered to have been defined by the release of the original Counter-Strike, a multiplayer mod for famed single-player PC title Half-Life that later became a standalone game of its own. While most multiplayer FPS games to that point emphasized prolonged battles between opposing players zipping around the game at high speeds, Counter-Strike slowed things down significantly and made players much more susceptible to each other’s firepower, requiring players to take a more tactical approach to play.
That slower and more tactical approach, combined with the lightning-quick nature of action when it does occur, proved reliably popular. That popularity can still be seen today with the ongoing success enjoyed by the Counter-Strike franchise, and it’s this gameplay type that represents the core of Valorant. It’s no accident that former Counter-Strike developers were drafted by Riot Games to help create Valorant during the game’s formative stages.
What differentiates Valorant from CS and other tactical shooters it that each of the game’s characters, called agents, wield a number of unique abilities. Some are typical for tactical shooters, like flashbangs and smokes, while others are wildly different, such as an ability that transports two players to an isolated dueling arena for its duration.
These agent abilities are more reminiscent of hero shooters, a subgenre that arguably got its start with the Team Fortress games but has best been popularized by Blizzard title Overwatch. The abilities, combind with the tactical considerations that are at the core of Valorant, separate it from most any other FPS experience available for play.
How does Valorant esports work?
Like many other popular competitive shooters, Valorant does have a thriving esports scene. That scene is differentiated by the way it’s run and controlled by developer and publisher Riot Games. Riot uses a model based on the success of its League of Legends esports scene, which sees the globe’s competitive players and team’s separated by region. These regions play out their own competitions in their sections of the world before coming together at regular intervals for international tournaments featuring the best teams from each individual region.
While League of Legends once boasted a variety of regions and regional types, Riot sought to simplify that model when setting up esports for Valorant. The game has only a handful of major regions, and these regions are held as largely equitable, each sending their best teams to international events leading up to the year-end VALORANT Champions event.
Valorant
Valorant
