Valorant enters Open Beta on Xbox… today! It comes ahead of a full console launch that brings some major bonuses for Game Pass members. Having been lucky enough to have had a chance to play it at Riot’s Los Angeles studio, it’s clear that this is no simple port – the team has meticulously retooled this modern classic team shooter for Xbox.
For those unfamiliar, Valorant follows in the genre footsteps of competitive shooters like the legendary PC title Counter-Strike. Unlike that game’s military-themed setting, however, Valorant is set on a futuristic version of Earth, where players pick from a variety of Agents rooted in a specific culture, location and visual style. Beyond their weaponry, each is equipped with a distinct set of tactical skills that can be used for things like gathering intel, reinforcing areas, scouting enemy positions, breaking through defenses, and dominating territories in various ways.
It offers a deft mix of dynamic action and tactical considerations, driven by kinetic gunplay and the creative use of unique player abilities. All of this adds up to a highly skill-based but also highly strategic shooter, which has kept the Valorant community vibrant – and the game ever-evolving – since its PC debut in 2020.
Riot is sparing no effort in bringing the title to Xbox. Primarily, that comes through reproducing the finely-tuned balance that’s made the PC title such a hit – the team went through many iterations of translating the original mouse-and-keyboard controls to gamepad input. Perhaps the landmark new feature in this regard is what’s being called Focus mode.
On PC, Hip-Fire is the primary shooting mode, and Aim-Down-Sights is a secondary, supporting mode; the team experimented with multiple adaptations and gamepad sensitivities to try to accurately reproduce this on console, but never found a combination they were completely happy with. Hip-Fire didn’t feel the same, and the player didn’t have the same range of possibilities; the result was an overall dampened level of player expressiveness.
Enter Focus, a new shooting mode that functions much like Hip-Fire, but with reduced sensitivity. This lets players shoot from the hip whenever they need speed in moving both their camera and aim (think: peeking around corners and dodging) but with the ability to utilize Focus mode whenever they need to pull off a precise, calibrated headshot. Some of the Agent abilities have been adapted for the new input controls, and various tunings across the board have all contributed to the team’s number one priority: capturing the dynamic pacing and mechanically expressive feel of the original.
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