I’m finally turning into a Valorant fan thanks to its Xbox port

Although I’ve followed and played a bit of Valorant over the years as I’ve covered it, I’ve never fully taken the plunge and gotten into Riot Games’ intense hero shooter competitively. I simply don’t like playing first-person shooters on PC. I understand that’s a somewhat odd take because using a mouse and keyboard gives players such precise control, but I grew up playing Call of Duty games on a console rather than a PC. I could take the time to really learn and get used to mouse-and-keyboard controls for a game like Valorant, but it’s so competitive, and proper teamwork is such a critical factor that it is too intimidating of a game to practice my PC skills in.

That’s why I was grateful when I learned Riot Games was finally bringing Valorant to consoles with some major adjustments. Announced at Summer Game Fest, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S versions of Valorant are on the way and in closed beta testing right now. Riot granted me access to the Xbox beta, and after playing some more Valorant on Xbox Series X, I can tell I’m starting to get hooked. Valorant is a tightly designed competitive shooter, and the control tweaks Riot made to make it work on a controller feel great. I don’t have to worry about competing with PC players using a mouse and keyboard either, just players who are already really good at the game with a controller.

If you’ve never played Valorant before, it’s a multiplayer shooter that finds the middle ground betweenCounter-Strike: Global Offensive and Overwatch. It features a healthy cast of heroes with unique abilities, but players are also tactically purchasing weapons, ability uses, and health from an in-game shop each round. All of that is great on PC and has not been touched at all on console. If you were worried about getting a watered-down port because it doesn’t have crossplay, that thankfully isn’t the case.

The main difference between Valorant on console and PC is controller