Overwatch, quite simply, is a miracle.
From the extremely expensive wreckage of Project Titan, Blizzard’s failed MMO that collapsed in on itself after seven years in development, the team managed to salvage something rather fantastic. At first Overwatch looked like an FPS MOBA, full of colorful characters with different move sets, but soon it became clear it was an arena shooter, trying to merge old school off-the-walls fun with new-school animation and design.
Overwatch succeeds brilliantly at everything it sets out to do, and then some. Overwatch isn’t just a great game, it’s a great world. Blizzard’s first new IP in nearly two decades feels fresh, fun and like you simply can’t get enough. If Overwatch has a major flaw, it’s that you want more of it. More characters, more maps, more lore, more (any) story missions. Maybe we wanted Project Titan after all.
This is a game for everyone. Even as someone who thought their competitive FPS shooter days were behind them, Overwatch has managed to hook me like I never thought it would. I’m lucky if I play more than a handful of Call of Duty matches per year, and getting me to play Destiny’s Crucible is like pulling teeth. But Overwatch? I’m happy to leap in again and again. I’m happy to win. I’m happy to lose. I’m just happy to be playing.
Overwatch works as an arena shooter for every type of player because of the different playstyles of its 21 heroes. There’s something for all strengths and skill levels, something to make people feel like they’re contributing, free from the tyranny of a K/D ratio. For your traditional Call of Duty player, they can feel at home with Soldier: 76. Destiny snipers may like Widowmaker. Old-school Quake players will like the rocket-launching Pharah. Team Fortress Engineers have Torbjorn. But for those who might not play shooters at all? Try Reinhardt, the shield-wielding, hammer swinging tank. Or Lucio, the support who can turn the tide of a game simply by staying near his team for much-needed health regeneration.
At first, Overwatch lets you stay in your comfort zone by having a few characters that may “feel right” for you. But soon you will branch outside of that little box, and want to give all of them a try, because so much of the roster is a blast to play with.
Combat in Overwatch, across nearly all its champions, looks, feels and sounds amazing. The characters are gorgeously animated, as are subtle things like their reload animations or particle effects. Instead of a mini-map or radar, you use sound to figure out where enemies are, from the light footsteps of Tracer to the wheezing breaths of Roadhog, and what’s going on around you from ult catchphrases (“Rocket barrage incoming!”) to simple callouts (“Turret destroyed!”). Most the character kits have been developed so each hero can shine in different ways, and create “holy crap!” moments players won’t forget. You can blow characters off the map with a well-timed Lucio sound blast, you can hook an ult-ing Pharah out of the air with Roadhog, you can Genji deflect to kill a McCree with his own High Noon shot, you can freeze an entire team solid with Mei, and laugh as you execute their iced bodies with headshots.
The game modes are limited to only a few types, capturing points, defending points, escorting payloads, or some mix of all of them. The elimination of a deathmatch archetype means that teams are forced to work together toward the common goal of an external objective, rather than simply rack up kills. Some players in these first few days have yet to get that memo (especially on console), but overall, it seems like the right decision for the health of the game. Also on the accessibility front, kills are now “eliminations” which count even on an assist, and no one on your team can see your total deaths but you. Changes like these may seem small, but for the morale of a not-pro shooter player, they’re a godsend, and allow you to stay motivated even if you’re performing poorly. Overwatch tries its best not to break your spirit at every turn, where most games are content to let “bad” players feel like useless cannon fodder.
Overwatch shines because it breaks the traditional rules of champion-based games, not just allowing but encouraging players to swap heroes on the fly. This solves so many problems you see crop up in MOBA-type games, where matches are over before they’ve begun because a team auto-locked a horrible composition they can’t change. In Overwatch, you have to adapt to the map, the objective and the other team. That can mean running your strongest hero all game, or that can mean switching three times based on what’s needed. And because of this ability to switch, that also allows Overwatch to auto-fill, so quitters or disconnecters will not ruin entire games by making them lopsided. And if you do find yourself in a blow-out? It will be over quickly, as the average length of an Overwatch match is only seven minutes long.
The game has a progression system that has exactly zero impact on how the game plays. Rather, you rank up and unlock cosmetics, skins, emotes, icons and what have you, and your XP is pooled from all your characters. This system encourages hero switching (you don’t need to get grind your Bastion to level 10 to unlock a specific skin or anything like that) and also it softens the blow of losing. A win gives you an extra 500 XP, but when each game gives you about 2,500 XP regardless, it’s really not all that much of a difference. And all you’re leveling toward anyway is just more chances as cosmetics. If you really care about them that much, well, that’s what the cash store is for.
With 21 heroes in its roster, you might expect Overwatch to have some balance issues. But for now, it doesn’t seem like there are many heroes that are so overpowered that they’re breaking the game. Rather, if anything, maybe a few underused heroes need buffs, like Symmetra and…well, really just Symmetra, from what I can tell. The most controversial hero in the game is Bastion, a champion whose primary objective is to defend a point as a high-damage stationary turret. I think his design is pretty anti-fun playing both as and against him, but he isn’t “broken,” and has more direct counters than most other heroes in the game. All in all, these alpha and beta tests have allowed Overwatch’s roster to feel pretty balanced at launch, but we will see how the metagame develops in time.
What Overwatch is missing the most at launch is a ranked mode. One is in the works, and was briefly tested in one of the closed betas, but it wasn’t great, and is currently being reworked for a June release. That’s all well and good, but until that happens, matchmaking in Quick Play is a little screwy, relying only on MMR to make sure you’re getting matched with “correct” opponents. The more I play, the better this seems to be getting, but it’s fairly obvious when you’re going up against a future-pro pre-made team, and you’re busy yelling at your three Widowmakers and two Tracers to please try and capture the point. This is something that would have been nice to have at launch, but it’s good to know it should be here in probably the game’s first update.
It has been a very long time since I’ve felt this much passion for a game. Overwatch is a perfect storm. It’s a new IP, looks gorgeous, plays phenomenally and singlehandedly rekindled my desire to play a genre of game I thought I’d left behind at this point. I figured I’d be roaming the single player campaigns of games like The Witcher 3 and Fallout 4 forever, putting aside competitive multiplayer altogether, unless I absolutely had to play it. Yet here I am, wanting, no, needing to play Overwatch as much as humanly possible. Not to rank up. Not to grind for unlocks. But just because it’s fun. It’s a world I want to be in, and a game I don’t want to stop playing. I think we’re witnessing the birth of something truly massive here, and even if Titan had to die to make this happen, it was worth it. Overwatch is the future for Blizzard, and for its fans.
Overwatch
Platform: PC/PS4/Xbox One
Developer: Blizzard Entertainment
Publisher: Blizzard Entertainment
Released: May 24th, 2016
Price: $39.99-$59.99
Score: 10/10
A review code was provided for the purposes of this review.
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