Valorant
Riot Games’ fabled tactical shooter “Project A” had its first official announcement in October 2019, and it was only after a few months that the name Valorant was finally attributed to it.
The League of Legends developers had taken inspiration from other popular first-person shooters like Overwatch and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive to create their very own take on the low-TTK shooter genre.
Valorant had an incredibly successful closed beta launch in April 2020, and an even bigger official release on the 2nd of June.
Valorant is available on which platform and how to get it?
Though there have been discussions on Valorant coming to console, and getting its very own mobile version, the shooter is still firmly “PC only”.
To download the shooter on any system, players must first head over to the Valorant website and click 'Play Now'. Now there will be a “sign-in” and a “create a new Riot Games account” option.
League of Legends or Legends of Runeterra players can just sign in with their existing accounts, and for others creating a new one will be mandatory.
After signing into their account players can just click on “Download” on the landing page and run the 'Install VALORANT .exe' file to start the process.
It’s important to keep in mind here that along with the game the anticheat Vanguard will also get installed, and players will not be able to run Valorant without it.
Vanguard is a very intrusive and aggressive anti-cheat software that dishes out permanent HWID bans to hackers.
Learn more about Valorant’s incredibly sophisticated anti-cheat system.
Valorant System requirements
Minimum requirements
- OS: Windows 7-10 64-bit
- RAM: 4GB
- Video Memory: 1GB
Minimum system specs ~ 30 fps
- CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E8400
- GPU: Intel HD 4000
Recommended system specs ~ 60 fps
- CPU: Intel i3-4150
- GPU: GeForce GT 730
High-end system specs – 144+ fps
- CPU: Intel Core i5-4460
- GPU: GeForce GTX 1050 Ti
Valorant Gameplay
Much like CS: GO, Valorants base gameplay revolves around the Search and Destroy formula where matches are 25 rounds long, with each round lasting 100 seconds.
The team who reaches 13 wins first with a two-round lead wins, otherwise, a 12-12 score will lead to overtime.
Each round will allow players 30 seconds to buy weapons and defensive gear for that round, however, unlike CS: GO the twist in Valorant is that it comes with Agents. And instead of investing in utilities like Smoke grenades and Molotovs, players will need to purchase Agent abilities.
Rounds in Valorant are won when one team wipes out the other before the clocks run down, or if the attackers secure a successful plant and a blast out of the Spike, or if the defenders can protect the plant sites long enough for the timer to run out, or defuse the Spike post-plant.
Agents in Valorant
The Agents in Valorant play a major role in making the gameplay in this tactical shooter incredibly unique.
Riot has talked about growing their roster pool by one every Act (which 2 months) and currently the line-up boasts the following:
- Brimstone - Controller
- Jett - Duelist
- Phoenix - Duelist
- Sage - Sentinel
- Omen - Controller
- Breach - Initiator
- Raze - Duelist
- Cypher - Sentinel
- Sova - Initiator
- Viper - Controller
- Reyna - Duelist
- Killjoy - Sentinel
- Skye - Initiator
- Yoru - Duelist
More Agents will be added to the list as the Valorant Acts and Episodes progress.
Valorant Maps
With the latest addition of Icebox, Valorant now has 5 maps in its rotation.
- Haven
- Split
- Ascent
- Bind
- Icebox
Much like with Agents, Riot will be looking to expand the total number of maps in the game as well.
Valorant Game Modes
Valorant has 5 game modes at the moment:
- Unrated: Standard Search and Destroy matchmaking.
- Competitive: Ranked Search and Destroy matchmaking
- Spike Rush: Fun mode which generates random power orbs and assigns random guns each round.
- Deathmatch: A free for all mode with a kill and time limit.
- Snowball Fight: Temporary game mode based on the holiday season. Guns are replaced by snow shooters.
Valorant Esports
Valoran is still a very new game, and its esports scene has not kicked off as of yet. However, the shooter did see a lot of Ignition Series tournaments across the world, along with its first official tournament called First Strike.
Further information will be added as Riot hosts more official leagues and tournaments.