Valorant Review – The Old Is New Again

Publisher: Riot Games

Developer: Riot Games

Reviewed on: PC

Valorant builds on what has made Counter-Strike a destination for decades. It adds hero-shooter nuance to a familiar arsenal of weapons. Valorant is a methodical, strategic affair; a stealthy and careful approach takes priority over going in guns-blazing. It’s a game of cat and mouse in which players are constantly attempting to glean information for an advantage. When the time comes to pull the trigger, speed and twitch reflexes are still paramount, but everything that happens before the confrontation is important. A combination of splashy and significant side abilities make a difference, but the core is all about corners, communication, and careful positioning.

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Valorant’s hero roster takes the “agents from many nations” route that was successful in injecting flavor into Overwatch’s cast of characters. It falls flat here, though, with a variety of uninteresting designs and repetitive quips. The cast is forgettable and bland, feeling more like off-brand action figures than cool characters. The last thing I want to hear before a match is Raze, ostensibly getting ready to punch holes in people with a revolver, chirping, "You sure I can't listen to music? You're really bringing me down here man!" or Phoenix zinging a "stay out of fire" because you know, he's the fire character. Personality across the board feels forced and flimsy. Luckily, their hero kits and abilities are far more interesting, and these aspects set Valorant apart from its inspirations. 

Many of these talents involve either providing or denying information. Cypher’s camera and trip-wires can detect threats long before they come into your sight lines, Sova’s drone can locate enemy movements while you hide safely behind cover, and numerous other skills obscure opponents’ vision to allow you to position safely. Information and communication, not spray-and-pray, is how games are won. Peeking corners carefully and tiptoeing around maps is a pleasant change of pace from many other shooters, but if you’re looking for frenzied assaults and fast respawns, this isn’t the game for you.

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The star of Valorant is the weapons. Regardless of your timing and usage of skills, eventually things come down to your guns. Each packs a precise and impactful punch, and they feel great to use. You need to stop moving to gain accuracy (which in turn makes you a target), but coming out of a 2v1 or 3v1 with intelligent reloading, cover usage, and judicious ability use gives you an amazing rush. 

Valorant has two modes, Standard and Spike Rush. Standard games can take quite a while to play and involve an economy element from round to round, where saving your money to buy better guns, armor, and skills can be a strategy. Mastering a weapon is good fun, and finding your favorite positions to play on each map is satisfying. For example, knowing where to take your Marshal sniper rifle for a long-range face-off is important. Spike Rush is essentially a fast take on the default mode, with greatly reduced number of rounds, randomized weapons each round, and everyone on the offensive team has a bomb to plant. Because Spike Rush is basically just a pared-down version of Standard, it feels like Valorant only has one game type at the end of day. The core experience is solid, but it doesn’t have enough variety.

Valorant doesn’t reinvent aspects of core tactical shooters, but it differentiates itself in meaningful ways by giving players new ways to glean information, protect areas, and obscure enemy perception. While Valorant’s characters may be mundane and its modes limited, I had plenty of fun with its precision shooting, careful planning, and soft footsteps.

Score: 8.5

Summary: Riot's free-to-play shooter turns up the tactics.

Concept: Participate in team-based tactical shooting, utilizing special skills alongside traditional weaponry

Graphics: Designed to be compatible with many PC specs, the graphics don’t stand out as anything special

Sound: Auditory cues play an essential role and are handled well, though character quips are more annoying than entertaining. As is the case for so many team-oriented games that benefit from communication, bring your own friends instead of random people

Playability: With demanding tactical decisions and fast-paced play, a Counter-Strike background is incredibly useful here

Entertainment: Valorant takes a traditional template and adds some flash and flair to the competitive formula

Replay: High

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Disintegration Review – A Strategic Misstep

Publisher: Private Division

Developer: V1 Interactive

Release: 2020

Reviewed on: PC

Also on: PlayStation 4, Xbox One

Halo was first conceived as a real-time strategy game, but it evolved into a first-person shooter over the course of development. I've often wondered what might have happened if Bungie had stuck to those strategy roots. Developer V1 Interactive – which is helmed by one of Halo's co-creators – has given us a window into a possible alternate reality with Disintegration, a sci-fi shooter that blends first-person combat with real-time strategy. But, if Disintegration is any indication of what might have been, then I’m glad the original Halo switched genres in development. 

Conceptually, I like Disintegration. You spend the entire game aboard a gravcycle, which is basically a floating tank that gives you a birds-eye view of the action, allowing you to issue orders to a small squad of grunts while engaging in combat yourself. That idea is solid, and I appreciate how your combat hovercar adds a vertical element to first-person combat. However, Disintegration's gravcycle also makes you feel removed from the action, because you are literally floating above it. 

Spending the entire game in the sky has a few unexpected consequences, like hampering your sense of speed. The gravcycle has a decent base speed for a ground vehicle, but since you hover overhead, you feel like you’re puttering across the battlefield in a golf cart. What’s more, since you float a story or two over your enemies’ heads, you often don’t have options for taking cover when things heat up. The action rarely gets that chaotic, and when you’re removed from the center of the battle, it feels like you’re shooting tiny fish in a big barrel. 

 

Another problem is the lack of evolution in Disintegration’s moment-to-moment action. Your gravcycle's loadout for each mission is predetermined, which limits your options in combat; you’re typically outfitted with one offensive gun and one defensive tool, like something to heal the squad. This fixed loadout means that you spend long stretches going through the same motions, which makes encounters blend together. 

Issuing orders to your squad offers a fun twist to combat, but doesn't fix Disintegration's larger issues. At any point, you can direct your team across the field, highlight targets for them to focus on, or deploy their special moves, which are set to cooldowns. These abilities range from simple grenades to disruption fields that briefly incapacitate enemies, but they’re almost always useful. I had fun firing abilities off each other for combos, like when I dropped a slow field on a group of enemies before hitting them with a mortar barrage. While Disintegration’s strategic elements are a highlight, they don’t feel important enough to turn the tides. Your squad members do a fine job of taking care of themselves, and they don’t hang around where you direct them for long, so you have little reason to micromanage their movements. 

Some of the biggest flaws in Disintegration’s action are curtailed in multiplayer, where you encounter foes that maneuver around the environment like you, which provides a more engaging challenge. Disintegration’s multiplayer maps are smaller than the single-player campaign levels, which reduces the illusion of sluggish movement. These maps also offer places to hide and make use of your verticality. I got a thrill out of hiding in some overlooked corner of a map and then descending on a foe from above. Even so, Disintegrations first-person shooting remains barebones given your limited loadout. I also had a harder time corralling my troops in multiplayer; they often seemed eager to run into the fray and instantly die in larger firefights. 

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At release, multiplayer only features three modes: team deathmatch, king of the hill, and capture the flag. That sparse offering hurts Disintegration’s staying power, and I quickly felt like I had seen everything multiplayer had to offer. At the beginning of a match, you can choose from one of several teams, such as the shotgun-wielding Militia or the clown-themed Sideshows who fire sticky bombs, but these are just variations on the single-player loadouts, so the only real difference is the weapon you're using. Even Disintegration's progression system is lacking. You earn coins as you play, but the only thing to spend them on are new cosmetic options. These aren't even new costumes – they are simple color variants of the existing character models. 

Disintegration’s core idea of blending a first-person shooter with a strategy game is neat, but it takes so many missteps that the promising concept gets lost. The action is repetitive, and the basic mission design is tired – you can’t even save the game mid-mission, which is particularly baffling. Amid the tedium, I had an occasional moments of fun in Disintegration, but those moments were fleeting.

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Score: 6

Summary: Jump aboard a gravcycle and issue commands to a small number of units in this mashup of the FPS and RTS genres.

Concept: Jump aboard a gravcycle and issue commands to a small number of units in this mashup of the FPS and RTS genres

Graphics: Some of the environmental textures take a while to load, but the framerate usually stays steady

Sound: The voice cast does a solid job with a forgettable script, but the musical score is largely mediocre

Playability: Controlling the gravcycle is easy and intuitive, and the first-person shooter controls are fairly standard

Entertainment: Issuing orders to your team is fun, but your movements are sluggish and the combat encounters are uninspired 

Replay: Moderately Low

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Golf With Your Friends Review – Shoot Your Shot

Publisher: Team17

Developer: Blacklight Interactive

Reviewed on: Xbox One

Also on: PlayStation 4, Switch, PC

I’m on the 11th hole and the pressure is on. Getting a par here is going to take good judgment, skill, and a little luck. Besides the normal golf stuff, gravity-bending black holes also stand between me and the cup, but I just have to take them in stride; I know I can do it. Golf With Your Friends is an enjoyable minigolf adventure because it balances the absurd, the expected, and the unknown.

Combining a ball, a putter, angles, obstacles, and physics isn’t what makes this game stand out. What does is that on any given hole I was rewarded for my patience, planning (look around for different paths), and skill nailing the power gauge, but could also be surprised, both pleasantly and unpleasantly. However, I usually came away feeling that I could do it with more practice at the hole. The fine aim function gives you minute control when you need it, the underlying ball physics are reliable (both in how the ball bounces and the importance of angles), and holes’ pars are mostly realistic. Of course, it wouldn’t be minigolf if you could easily chart your way past every axe-wielding ghost, Indiana Jones boulder, pachinko-style tumbler; sometimes you just have to hit the ball and suffer the consequences, good or bad. 

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Golf With Your Friends

Platform: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, PC Release Date: January 29, 2016 (PC), May 19, 2020 (PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch) Purchase

The game can work against the carefree feeling of blasting into the unknown, especially when holes’ level designs are predominately reliant on luck. Sometimes you have to rely on chance straight away with your first shot. Other times even when you know what you have to do, and you select the right power and path for your ball, your chances at par are still down to luck.

The PC version of the game includes a course editor and user creations, which are absent from the home consoles. However, the default 11 courses offer plenty of challenges, and if corkscrew ramps, tilting floors, and jetpacks of the levels aren’t enough, Golf With Your Friends adds extra spice with optional power ups (some help you, others hurt your opponents), mode variants (such as hockey with a moving goal/goalie over the hole), odd-shaped balls, and even alterations like sliders for gravity that can be mixed and matched for custom online or offline sessions. 

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Some of the variables are fun additions to a regular round, and they help spice up a game that doesn’t otherwise have a career mode/progression arc. Customization objects are awarded randomly based on a timer.  In the end, however, I was more interested in the aids such as being able to add  ball spin or more time to how much you can use the freecam to scout out holes. Things like changing the ball shape are fun when it’s against your friends in multiplayer, but are overpowered because they render shooting straight useless.

Golf With Your Friends captures the spirit of minigolf – you’re going to have some laughs, frustrations, and at the end of the day, not take it all too seriously.

Score: 7.5

Summary: The ball might not always go exactly where you want it to, but it’s a fun time getting there.

Concept: Combine inventive and challenge minigolf courses with a hearty selection of custom modifiers

Graphics: Golf With Your Friends is colorful, but the whole package looks pretty basic

Sound: Each level’s looping soundtrack is simultaneously forgettable and catchy, which is to say it’s perfect for a minigolf game

Playability: The camera can get frustratingly locked close to the ball when it’s pinned against rails

Entertainment: The ball might not always go exactly where you want it to, but it’s a fun time getting there

Replay: Moderate

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