Join a team of heroes in a tactical five versus five shooter. Your team either attacks or defends the site on any given round. Use abilities, weapons and teamwork to eliminate the enemy team and win the round.

Valorant is a very fun game to play either alone or with friends. I enjoy playing the game a lot and learning new strategies or just improving my aim or my ability to predict my enemies’ strategies. However, the only criticism I have is that because of the very nature of the game, of playing with random teammates and enemies, you occasionally get a very rude or just annoying person. Despite this, I still enjoy Valorant as you can mute these people or just ignore them.

I greatly appreciate the work Riot Games puts into their game with constant updates balancing the agent’s abilities and weapons. Riot Games’ success is not only with Valorant as they also made the incredibly famous game League of Legends. League of Legends came out in 2009 and has since received awards for The Game Awards’ Esports Game of the Year 2019, and 2020, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Best Consistent Game Award of 2015, and has been nominated for many more. Additionally, Valorant in its short lifespan since its release of June 2, 2020, has been nominated for The Game Awards’ Best Community Support, Best Multiplayer Game, and Esports Game of the Year of 2020. 

The game does have some level of story and lore between different agents, and the reason for their mission, however, due to Valorant being a fairly new game, the lore has not been fully developed. The game is set on a futuristic Earth around the year of 2050. Many agents have received their supernatural powers from exposure to a mysterious substance called Radianite; however, some agents have manmade abilities and have not been exposed to Radianite. The mission of the attacking team is to plant and wait out the timer of the ‘spike’ in order for it to explode and steal radianite from the defenders. On the other hand, the defender’s mission is to either eliminate all the attackers before they plant the spike or to defuse the spike before it explodes.

These agents gained their abilities during an event known as First Light. Two agents with the most fleshed out backstories are Omen and Viper. They seem to have a past where they were at least acquaintances and possibly friends as shown in this in-game dialogue from Omen: “Sabine, to think you used to heal with your powers.” Viper was called Sabine, and she was a chemist before receiving her abilities to envelop and kill people within her poison. 

I incredibly enjoy playing Valorant, and learning the story is an added bonus. Games like these focus more on gameplay rather than story elements, which I don’t mind as the gameplay is incredibly fun, enjoyable, and engaging. 

Overall, I love Valorant. It not only is fun as is, but the developers are constantly updating the game fixing glitches and adding new things which I really appreciate. I also enjoy how you can play either casually in the “unrated” gamemode, or a more competitive style in “ranked” games where you play for a ranking. I would recommend this game to anyone as it requires not only mechanical skill such as aiming, but also the ability to figure out how the enemy plays and how to counter them and play around their strengths and weaknesses. I would give Valorant a 10/10.