Riot Games’ VALORANT, or Respawn Entertainment’s Apex Legends? Which, of the two, is the better online multiplayer shooter?
Two, relatively new, online multiplayer shooter titles have taken the gaming industry by a storm of late. Riot’s VALORANT and Respawn’s Apex Legends are the two popular contemporary action shooters. The debate has begun to spring up in online forums, as to which may be the better game. We checked it out!
Apex Legends
Apex Legends is an online multiplayer battle royale gaming title coming from the same people who brought us the Titan Fall series of games. Developed by Respawn Entertainment, the game pits players against one another in a 3-on-3 deathmatch where teams must outlast opposing squads to win.
Based on TitanFall, though it is a different game, Apex legends has players go up against each other in control of any of 18 (currently) precast characters. Players have access to purchasable skins and weapons which will differentiate their character from another, but that’s beside the point.
Players take part in the action as one of 30 2-person, or 20 3-person teams. Teams are airdropped onto a map where the team leader chooses where the team lands. Once teams are on the ground, they search for supplies, weapons, ammo, and armor. Then they search for teams to battle.
The play area gets smaller as the game progresses, forcing teams into combat situations. Any player who remains outside of the play area long enough takes damage to the point where they can die. The team with the most players alive at the end of play are crowned match winners.
VALORANT
VALORANT on the other hand is an online multiplayer first-person hero shooter that, though having a futuristic theme, is very similar, in gameplay, to counter-Strike or Overwatch. The Riot Games title challenges players to fight more strategically than its fast-paced counterpart.
Pitting players against each other in 5-against-5 battles. Using weapons and special abilities, users strategically navigate through maps to complete objectives. Similar to Counter-Strike, VALORANT features a bomb planting mission, where an attacking team must duke it out against a defending team, to plant and detonate an explosive device known as a Spike.
Players get a wider assortment of weapons (along with customizable skins) on VALORANT, from submachine guns to pistols, to machine guns, to shotguns, they will find that they are spoiled for choice, in terms of which weapons and strategies to go with.
Like other tactical shooters, matches consist of Rounds, and the team with the most rounds won, at the end of the play, gets the overall victory. There are different modes of play, in which different challenges are set out for opposing teams. Spike Rush mode – for instance, is a bomb-planting challenge such as one might find on Counter-Strike.
The game features an Unrated gaming mode, Spike Rush (aforementioned,) a Competitive mode which ranks players on performance, A Deathmatch (free-for-all) mode, and a mode called escalation, which is similar to the Gun Game mode available in Counter-Strike, and Call of Duty: Black Ops.
A lot of competitive players seek help from Valorant coaching to quickly climb through the ranks especially when compared to a fast-paced game like Apex Legends where a more tactical mind is required.
So is Apex Legends or VALORANT the best?
Well, that depends entirely on what the gamer is after. If one has an appetite for a fast-paced survival action, then Apex Legends would be the game to go for. If one is after a more tactical gaming experience, where the wrong step could jeopardize the whole team, then VALORANT is the better game.
Either way, both games are brilliant and deliver enough of their own unique appeal to have players alternating between the two of them, depending on the mood, without ever having to pick a favourite. Apex’s Legend’s shrinking battleground mechanism offers hair-raising moments, while VALORANT has one in perpetual suspense in anticipation of the next enemy encounter.
