Since Riot Games' new shooter Valorant has been in its closed beta phase, many gamers have made comparisons between the game and Blizzard's shooter, Overwatch.
With Valorant now being fully released and accessible to anyone with a Riot Games account, many gamers might get confused because of these comparisons. Here are some of the distinct differences between both games to help players figure out which of the two they prefer.
Valorant
Valorant is slow-paced; to win the game, players need to win 13 out of 26 rounds.
Valorant players often walk slowly, to mute the sound of their footsteps. This aids in hiding their positions as they push up into dangerous areas. Players also stand still for long periods to hold key angles and to prevent enemies from pushing. Rarely do players risk death, because in Valorant players respawn at the beginning of a new round. Making the mistake of dying ruins the risk of losing an entire round.
Valorant's main mode of play pits players against each other on either a defending or attacking side. This also impacts what the character abilities do and how they are used. In Valorant, regardless of class, character abilities focus more on breaking lines of sight or revealing enemy positions. There are not many abilities that characters can use to deal significant damage. This prompts players to rely more on their weapons skills. Viper is a great example, as three of her abilities break line of sight.
Valorant also has a lot of variation in each game, because weapons are not unique to the characters. Instead, each character can choose from the same pool of various guns at the beginning of each round. This creates different kinds of play and strategies: A Jett with a shotgun is a different threat than a Jett with a sniper rifle, for example. Every character also has similar sizes and hit boxes, to keep match-ups fair.
Overwatch
Overwatch's primary objective is to eliminate as many enemy players in a match to raise the team score. Players usually respawn after death in Overwatch and after a short wait time, they can immediately get back into the action. This makes Overwatch very fast-paced. Players often have to think fast and perform huge numbers of actions per minute. It can be hard to tell what is happening during a fight, because so many things happen at once.
Very few players are cautious in Overwatch, because dying isn't a huge issue. Plus, dying from one shot isn't likely. Overwatch has a lot of character abilities that revolve around damaging or protecting players -- like Reinhardt's energy barrier, which creates a huge, movable wall to block attacks. This entices players to use their abilities more often as their character abilities are what usually grant them the edge over enemies and aid in completing objectives.
This also makes each character vastly unique from another. In fact, each Overwatch character has different sizes, stats, hit boxes and weapons that can't be changed. Players always know what to expect when facing a particular character in combat. There is not a ton of strategy in Overwatch; it revolves more around the action.