VALORANT's Deathmatch Mode Just Bought Me Back

As someone that writes about games for a living, there are always new releases to discuss or new seasonal content to bring me back for coverage. When I first started at Gfinity, much of that buzz was coming from Project A, Riot Games' competitive shooter that went on to become VALORANT.

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VALORANT's Deathmatch Mode Just Bought Me Back

I'm not sure I've ever wanted to be good at a game as much as I wanted to be good at VALORANT. Something about the art, the characters, and the mix of weapons and abilities grabbed my attention. The full game launched at a similar time to my first gaming PC purchase, and while I was trying to get to grips with a mouse and keyboard, I tried VALORANT.

It was...uh... not good. The game was great, and a couple of friends of mine began carrying me, but I struggled to grab more than a kill or two in matches. When you're playing up to 25 rounds, it gets a little disheartening, and the in-game chat quickly became a string of insults.

I uninstalled, vowing never to return. I'm sorry Riot, but it's not for me, but I did start playing League of Legends, Legends of Runeterra, and Wild Rift, so we're cool, right?

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Still, in the last week our Slack channels have been abuzz with talk about KAY/O, the new robotic agent, and my trigger finger began to get itchy again. Should I give VAORANT another go?

Readers, I did, and a relatively simple addition vastly improved the game for me: Deathmatch mode.

VALORANT's early days may have been all about playing the objective, but Deathmatch lets me just have fun.

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I'm sure some people in my lobby were racking up kills like it's no one's business, but with fourteen players on the game's relatively small maps, all spawning in random locations, it's chaos.

Riot bills the mode as a warm-up, but for me it feels like the next step from the in-game shooting range, allowing me to tackle moving targets, free from 'letting the team down'. I can experiment with different weapons, learn the maps, and begin to account for VALORANT's recoil-heavy gunplay.

Sure, I'd like to try using abilities too, but as a chance to lay a foundation, Deathmatch may have just bought me back into the fold.