Valorant was recently revealed by Riot Games. It’s their new 5v5 competitive shooter that pits groups of players against one another within a tight map, with lots of corners to back yourself into. The game looks good, like a solid entry to the competitive shooter scene, but it also looks incredibly familiar. To me, it takes a few different elements from other shooters, and layers them together like a shooter lasagne. These are the four games that I believe Valorant borrows from.
CS:GO
This is the easiest comparison to draw between Valorant and another game. The first line you can draw between the game and CS:GO is the map. It looks very similar to the iconic map that players are constantly fighting through in CS:GO, even if there appear to be more routes to take. The map appears to play into each match, forcing teams to have multiple tactics, cover every angle, and ensure that the enemy doesn’t sneak up on them. This is the second point of comparison for CS:GO, because the map itself encourages team play and talking. Some competitive shooters can be played without teams chatting between each player, but from what we’ve seen so far, talking is essential to winning in Valorant.
Overwatch
Valorant has a very specific set of characters for you to play as. Each one has different abilities and might be better suited to certain types of players. They also all have ultimates, abilities that can be used in conjunction with others to make for some extremely tactical moves. This screams Overwatch to me. I’ve never played a game of Overwatch and not thought about what role needs to be filled in my team. Yes, you can always play as whoever you want to, but it’s far more important to play in the role that your team needs. I can see this being as aggravating as it is in Overwatch when Valorant finally launches. It won’t make it any less stress-inducing though.
Rainbow Six Siege
In Rainbow Six Siege, planning is everything. This ties in with the tactics that Valorant borrows from CS:GO, but there’s a definite feel that each character is part of a team that’s never been more clear to me than in Rainbow Six Siege. The way that each Operator works in Siege is ever so slightly different to every other one, but it’s enough that a team’s advantage can be pushed greatly depending on the side of battle they’re on. Valorant also uses what looks like basic weaponry. While the abilities are quirky and have a superhero feel to them, these base weapons level the field in moment-to-moment fights, and that’s what Siege attempts to do as well.
Battleborn
Finally we have Battleborn. This now dead game was filled with interesting characters that each had unique abilities. The biggest difference between Battleborn and Overwatch was the focus on MOBA-style gameplay. Characters levelled up throughout matches, but that isn’t the comparison I’m drawing. The abilities each character could unlock had a significant effect on the battlefield, and that’s also true of Valorant. Characters can create walls of fog that damage enemy players, shoot a dart that reveals the location of enemies, or summon an array of knives to then shoot at enemies. These abilities are more Battleborn than Overwatch, and I’m so glad that they’re being used in what will no doubt become a very serious game.
Those are the elements that I can see borrowed from these four exceptional games in Valorant. If you saw something that I didn’t, let me know about it in the comments.