- The core gameplay of both games is similar.
- VALORANT offers a lot more in terms of movement and utility usage.
- CS:GO hands down the more spectator-friendly game between the two.
With the VALORANT closed beta being released yesterday, everyone got a lot of clarity about the game while watching multiple streamers play it live, tying their luck at a chance of obtaining a key drop. After watching hours of skirmishes, observing things like gameplay, character movements, shooting mechanics, and other such features, this is how the game stands against CS:GO, which is being considered as a direct rival of VALORANT.
Gameplay
The core gameplay of both games is exactly the same. Two teams of five players each will be going up against each other, while one team plants the explosive the other team has to stop them from doing so or defuse the explosive if they are unable to stop them, in order to win the round.
But VALORANT has a little more flavour to it, as it beautifully imbibes the essence of a true first-person shooter with some added features like, different types of characters who have their own interesting abilities.
This makes for some fantastic gameplay, with complicated strategies. Keeping the game well-paced and requiring players to not just be good with their aim, but also sound with the various other mechanics being adopted by VALORANT.
Overall Mechanics
The two games are not that different when it comes to gunplay mechanics, strategising, and utility usage. In both the games information is key, and teams strategize their gameplay either to attain information or deceive the opposition by using various utilities they possess and taking map control.
It is fair to say that CS:GO is easier to understand for a beginner and that they will quickly be able to get a hang of how to play the game, as all the concepts being utilised are basic and self-explanatory in nature. However, with VALORANT having a steeper learning curve, it will take some time to get a complete grasp of the game, the gameplay will require more skill and awareness, with strategy extending to the very start of the game.
Firing
Valorant seems to be heavily inspired by CS:GO under this aspect, with most of its weapons featuring the same recoil pattern as those used in Counter-Strike. In a recent Tweet uploaded by 100 Thieves, it can be seen that a gun called ‘Vandal’ in VALORANT has the same exact recoil pattern as that of the ‘AK-47’ from CS:GO, and that is not the only gun inspired from the veteran first-person shooter.
Movement
In this department VALORANT and CS:GO are quite different from each other. While the former has smoother movements featuring unique abilities like increased movement speed, higher jumps, and the ability to teleport; CS:GO keeps it simple with crouching and jumping being the only two additional movement mechanics alongside walking and running.
Utility Usage
This is another category in which VALORANT trumps CS:GO, which only uses basic utilities like different types of grenades. Dwarfing in comparison to the plethora of utilities available in VALORANT right from grenades to various character-specific abilities, ranging from the basic flashes, smokes, and molotovs, to stuns, slows, and disarm.
Strategy
Two important things that stand out under this category is the economy system and the freeze time before each round being implemented by the two games. VALORANT has adapted a similar economy system like the one utilised by CS:GO, though the buy menu in itself is very different from each other.
It is the freeze time where the difference lies, while in CS:GO players are allowed to buy weapons and even exchange them as deemed fit, they are not allowed to move around until the end of the speculated freeze time, on the other hand, VALORANT allows the players to roam around in a restricted area during this period, purchasing weapons for each other, and setting up their defence or assault strategies in motion.
Spectator Friendliness
Without any arguments CS:GO is the winner when it comes to spectator friendliness, the concept on which the game is based is so real and basic in nature that even if a person is watching the game for the first time, it will hardly take them 15 minutes to get the hang of what is going on.
On the other hand, VALORANT can be pretty intimidating for someone viewing the game for the very first time, with all the character abilities being spammed, and the relatively faster and flashier gameplay.
Servers
In terms of support, all games on VALORANT will be played on a 128-tick server for better performance and smoother gameplay, while the official CS:GO servers are still stuck with the 64-tick version.
Game Settings
With senior VALORANT developers giving an insight as to what players can expect from the game going into the closed beta, it is clear that most of the game settings will be fixed or will have limited flexibility being offered to them. This will ensure that the game on the client-side is not affected much, keeping it fair for all the players across the board.
On the other hand, CS:GO can be modified quite a lot by every user, right from the crosshairs, to the resolution at which the game runs, mouse acceleration, mouse sensitivity, field of view, and other such settings.
The comparison on the esports side of things does not make sense at the moment as there is no structure in place for VALORANT currently, with publishers also not divulging a lot of information on the same.
This is how the two games stack against each other at the moment, both are winners and losers in certain categories and neither of them is better than the other. But one thing which stands out is that VALORANT is indeed a worthy competitor for CS:GO.
