Riot Games is looking to expand the number of games it supports in 2020 quite dramatically, with new single player and multiplayer experiences within the League of Legends universe. But it's also looking to pull away players from classic competitive games, like CS:GO, with a brand new game called Valorant.
This competitive FPS will be immediately familiar to anyone who's played much Counter Strike over the years. It's a round based, objective-focused game that charges teams with killing each other or planting an explosive on the bomb site. So far so samey. But what Valorant does is introduce hero abilities, including ultimates which can require multiple rounds to charge up, making for dramatic turn arounds and upsets depending on when they're triggered.
There's definitely some inspiration, at least artistically, from games like Overwatch, but this is predominantly a classic, competitive shooter, with a few modern twists. It might be enough to modernize the Counter Strike experience, whilst making it more accessible to newer gamers.
On top of the gameplay itself, Riot is also promising an extremely robust anti cheat system, as well as low ping servers, and plenty of space for everyone to play. That alone could draw some CS:GO faithfuls to the new kid on the block. Valorant will launch this summer, with a beta coming sooner.