Valorant's PS5 Beta Is Impressive and Unlike Anything Else on Console | Push Square

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For years, Valorant has been huge on PC, becoming a streaming hit, hosting massive esports tournaments, and inspiring tons of fan art and cosplay. After many job listings revealed the game could be heading to consoles over the last few years, Riot has finally brought the game to PS5 in beta form, and it's an impressive version of the shooter in its infancy. It's full of quality-of-life features that make this style of shooter more approachable and learnable for the new audience, without losing any of the skill and mastery required to dominate matches.

For starters, Valorant is a high-precision, team-based shooter that requires a lot of teamwork and impressive accuracy from you. The game, much like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO), is a round-based affair with two teams of five facing off in short one-minute and forty-second rounds, either defending a bomb site or being required to plant and detonate a bomb. The first to 13 round wins claims victory.

But we don’t see this style of shooter on consoles very often, and in fact, the last time we can remember something like this on PlayStation was the original CS:GO on PS3 in 2012. That version of the game quickly died because patch releases were slow and the controls just didn't really suit a controller.

Kills in this genre of shooter are extremely quick. Aim well, and you can kill someone with a headshot or two in less than a second. If you fail to tame the wild recoil patterns of weapons, your bullets will start missing their target and hitting everywhere but where your crosshair is pointed.

The accuracy that's required just isn’t easy to master on a controller compared to the high precision a mouse offers. But Riot has made some key changes to the game that help to try and maintain the precision that you get on PC. The first is a 'Focus Mode' which allows you to slow down your aiming sensitivity by holding the left trigger. Doing this allows you to aim at a corner and wait for someone to peak, or tighten your