For the past few weeks, I’ve been playing a lot of Valorant with my friends and many people online have been comparing it to CS: GO ever since its development was announced. While playing I’ve noticed both similarities and differences between the two games, and this week I’ll be sharing them.
One difference between the two games is the weapon and combat mechanics. In CS: GO every gun has a set recoil pattern meaning that the bullets will always follow the same path as long as you are standing still. This means that if you practice the pattern for a specific gun, you should be able to get an accurate grouping of bullets. However, in Valorant, weapons will start with a simple pattern for the first few bullets until they begin randomly swaying left or right. This means that in Valorant, you can’t rely only on muscle memory when in an aim duel. Instead, you can look at the barrel of your gun when shooting to see how you should adjust depending on the direction it is in. In Valorant, it is also easy for moving players to hit accurate shots due to less moving inaccuracy.
The biggest difference between CS: GO and Valorant is that the latter allows players to choose unique characters with different abilities each game. This expands possible gameplay situations and in my opinion already makes the game drastically different from CS: GO. Different character’s abilities allow for creative opportunities much like the grenades in CS: GO.
Aside from the different characters and abilities, I find that much of the rest of the gameplay in Valorant is very similar to CS: GO. The objectives of both games are similar, having a 5v5 environment with one team defending sites while the other attempts to plant a timed object on those sites. Each player has money that they receive every round. The amount depends on what happened in the previous round and it can be spent to buy weapons.
Throughout Valorant’s similarities and differences with CS: GO, the only thing that I don’t particularly enjoy about the gameplay is the tag slowing when you get shot. Both games have tag slowing where your movement gets slowed whenever you get hit. The slowing in Valorant is way higher than in CS: GO and you’re pretty much stuck in place when you’re getting shot. This means that if you ever get hit by another player you pretty much have to commit to the engagement. From my understanding, the amount of slow is supposed to be part of the game, but it gets pretty frustrating having to sit down and spray my weapon for every fight.
Overall though, I can say that both games are similar but different at the same time. Both can be enjoyable in their own ways. I know that Valorant is the type of game that caters more towards casual players because its gameplay is more forgiving. For me, I’d probably bounce back and forth between the two games because it gets difficult to adjust to the different weapon mechanics for each game.