Gaming is all about having quick reactions. You need to be able to react within milliseconds to shoot your opponent in an FPS game or dodge an incoming shot. It’s often what separates the pros from the nobodies – so how do you improve your reactions while gaming?
Effectively, you have to treat it like any activity or sport, which means practice makes perfect. Train and teach yourself to gradually improve your reactions and hand-eye coordination using the following tactics:
Try An Aim Training Routine
Use things like Aim Labs or KovaaK’s to develop your aim and improve your reactions for FPS games. These aim training applications have specific routines for you to follow every single day. Many of them revolve around getting you to react to targets on a screen. You’re literally training your body to see things and point your mouse in the right direction or move with your directional keys. It’s a tried and tested method – both of these options also come with integrations or features for a lot of popular FPS games. In other words, you can formulate routines that test your reactions in more game-specific scenarios – or on certain maps you’ll find in the game you’re playing.
Play Other Games That Test Your Reactions
As well as aim training, look for any other games that seriously test your reactions and force you to focus on lots of things at once. One surprising game that springs to mind is pinball – it’s a fantastically brilliant way of getting you to react to things with barely a moment to spare. You can play it for free, and pinball is all about hitting a ball a different targets using your two little flappy paddles. However, you need to time your hits – and you always run into scenarios where the ball bounces weirdly, and you must react quickly enough to hit it again before it falls down the hole. Look for any other games like this to test your reactions and develop this skill outside of FPS games.
Watch The Pros
You want to improve your reactions to get better at the game, so why won’t you watch how the professionals do it? Maybe you’re playing Valorant and want to either go pro or fly up the rankings. In this case, watch pro Valorant matches – or look for videos with professional players talking about their training routines. Look at how the professionals set themselves up for fights to almost improve their chances of reacting to things on the screen. It’s all about learning how to position yourself or where to place your crosshair on the screen when taking fights. Watch as much pro gameplay as you can, and it immediately makes you better and helps you improve your reaction time.
Of course, reaction times are one of many skills to develop if you want to get good at FPS games. Having said that, if you’ve got amazing reactions, you can almost always find your way out of a tricky situation. It should be the first thing you think on before developing more skills in your FPS arsenal.
