Valorant, Formerly Known On The Streets As “Project A”, Will Officially Be Taking Over Your Summer This Year
[Editor's Note:This is another guest blog from prospective Gaming blogger, @UnfilteredNerd, who knows his stuff and then some. Go and give him a follow.]
There are two eSports giants that have absolutely dominated the scene for what seems like forever, and no, one of them is not Fortnite. I’m talking about League of Legends and Counter-Strike. If you Google the most watched eSports events of the last 5 years, it’s literally like 50 LoL or CS:GO Championships with a little Dota 2 sprinkled in and the 2019 Fortnite World Cup. That’s it. Globally, those two titles are absolute monsters in the competitive video gaming scene which is even more impressive when you consider that League of Legends has been around for over a decade now and the Counter-Strike series has been around for over two decades. They’re literally the “football” and “baseball” of the eSports world. And before one of you gaming/eSports/fun haters tries to get on me about comparing competitive video gaming to traditional sports, know this: the 2018 Worlds Championship for League of Legends had more viewers than the 2018 Super Bowl. Same for both events in 2019. eSports is a fucking giant that isn’t going to be slowing down anytime soon.
Well now, Riot Games, the team behind League of Legends, has decided to turn the entire gaming world on its head...by making a new Counter-Strike game...
It really is like if Roger Goodell and his clown ass one day announced “The NFL has decided to expand its brand by starting...a baseball league!” It’s insane. I mean don’t get me wrong, video game companies are extremely talented and able to make literally anything they can imagine. That’s why when Riot announced last year that they were working on new card battling, fighting, and tactical shooter games we as the gaming community were just like:
I remember watching that announcement in mid-October last year thinking “this is the game I need in my life and I need it now.” I’ve been over the battle royale craze for well over a year now and I’m ready to jump headfirst into a new arena shooter. I just wanna load into a map, pull out a gun, and click some fucking heads without spending 90% of the “fight” seeing who can build the fastest Eiffel Tower only to lose to a giant muscular kitty doing some stupid TikTok dance.
I was excited as hell, but I also thought that there was probably little chance that it would be coming out anytime soon. My initial thought was no sooner than 2021. That gives the console giants their time in the spotlight with all the next gen shit, and then just when everything settles, *BAM*. Drop Project A in May just like Blizzard did with Overwatch in 2016 and let the gaming world sing your praises all summer long. Well, I was (gladly) wrong in my thinking as this dropped on the official Twitter account this morning. Project A is officially called Valorant and it’s coming this summer.
Along with the release date and title reveal, some alpha gameplay footage of Valorant has been released as well.
There’s been a lot of takes this morning all over the internet talking about how Valorant looks too much like CS:GO, it’s just a CS:GO/Overwatch matchup, it’s going to officially kill the CS franchise, blah blah blah. Here’s what I think: it does look a bit too much like CS:GO but I’m ok with it. I like what Riot Games is trying to do here. Many would view it as a suicide move by investing a ton of money to compete with the #2 eSport in the world right now, but Riot is being pretty smart about it. They’re trying to address issues like that have existed in competitive FPS games for far too long like “peekers advantage” (when your opponent is able to peek a corner and see you before you see them because they have better ping or connection to the servers). It’s so refreshing to see a company try to improve a genre instead of straight up copying it and making their own clone, but that’s kinda what Riot does. They took a cool concept from a Warcraft 3 mod, polished it, perfected it, and made it into the #1 eSport in the world. So who’s to say they can’t do the same thing again?
Look, I’m not gonna be a a-typical gaming hardooo (did I use that right Trysta?). I’m not gonna let the hype convince me that Valornat is suddenly going to be the best game ever. I have my own doubts and concerns like the fact that I really really REALLY suck at CS:GO. Does that mean I’m gonna suck/hate this game as well? I have no idea. But this I do know: add Valorant to the growing list of games that have a decent chance at killing the real enemy of the video game world: Fortnite. (Did I just foreshadow an upcoming blog listing all the games that will finally bury that cartoony fuckfest? Hell yeah I did. Stay tuned).
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