Ever since Overwatch was announced at Blizzcon back in 2014 I’ve been subject to a surreal levels of excitement. As a result I was shivering at excitement when we got invited down to a preview event a while back. I’ve had extensive and detailed diatribes ever since with various gamers, doing my best to convince them that this isn’t your regular shoot ‘em up, first-person-shooter game out there. More often than not, I’m left anguished as I explain to people that this game isn’t about racking up the most kills. It isn’t about having a positive Kill/Death ratio. It isn’t about assists. It’s about the objective and working together, something most AAA FPS games (looking at you COD) fail to emphasise.
Overwatch is a multiplayer, objective-based first-person-shooter (FPS) that is only PvP and features a wide variety of “heroes” to play as. Each hero has a different set of abilities and weapons and are divided between 4 subcategories: Offense, Defense, Tank and Support. In this regard it is very similar to Valve’s Team Fortress 2, which has similar “hero” mechanics. Furthermore, like Team Fortress 2, it can only be played in online matches against other players or bots. While some people would describe it as having some MOBA elements, this isn’t accurate. There’s no creep killing, no lane pushing, item shopping or a plethora of swear words clogging up the chat window. The presence of an “Ultimate ability”, coupled with unique characters has unfortunately led to this confusion.
First let’s start with the gameplay. Overwatch has 4 basic game modes for players to hop into: “Quick Play, Play vs. AI, Custom Game and Arcade. A competitive mode is also expected to release. Play vs. AI let’s you and five other players hop into a game against six bots, whose difficulty levels are selected by you beforehand. Think of it as practice mode. Custom Game lets you fine tune the settings of a match, which can be played with and against either humans or bots. The Arcade gamemode changes every week, and introduces a different set of rules that offer up incredibly fun and diverse matches. For instance in during one weekly brawl, players could only choose to play as the female characters the game has, in another week all abilities had near instantaneous cooldowns leading to mayhem. Last but not least is the Quick Play game mode which pits you against players of a similar skill level. So from the get go players are given the opportunity to decide what type of game they want to play, which can depend on the time they have available. For instance if I wanted to sneak in a quick game I could choose to play against some bots or whereas if I wanted to relax after a long day, I would choose to hop into Arcade for some mayhem. However. there is no story mode available in Overwatch as the lore of the game is expanded upon via movie shorts and comics, which are available outside the game, and can be discerned from the various character interactions that happen during a match or by exploring the maps themselves, something I did a lot off to the detriment of my team’s success.
Each of these gamemodes is played on a variety of maps that are further divided into three main game modes: Payload, King of the Hill and Assault (Capture the Points). These are fairly traditional gamemodes that play out similarly to similar gamemodes in other games. There is also a hybrid gamemode which requires the attacking team to capture a point which unlocks the payload that then has to be pushed to the end of the map. The hybrid mode is especially interesting as it required me and my team mates to adapt to the change of objective by switching heroes and play styles to suit a now moving objective.
Currently there are 3 Assault maps, 3 Payload maps, 3 King of the Hill maps and 3 Hybrid maps. Each of these maps are stunningly detailed, huge and offer multiple routes which can be used to circumvent and ambush enemy players. Furthermore, the fantastic map design also plays home to a range of chokepoints, corridors and open areas, giving each of the heroes areas where they can perform well. The developers have done a superb job of ensuring the map layout leads players to the objectives without ever making the maps themselves feel constrained. The amount of detail placed into the map is astonishing, with references to other Blizzard games often sneaking in, in the form of arcade games or posters; I spent my first few games chuckling whenever I found a laptop that had Hearthstone running on it. When I played the game during the beta I spent as much time trying to find hard to reach spots and gazing at the minutest of details. I wall rode across most of King’s Row as Lucio annoying my enemies and used Hanzo to climb to spots where I could safely ping enemies with arrows as most other characters couldn’t get me. A few maps have an edge or some form of “death by falling zone” and it was in these maps where I took joy in using Lucio to push people off the edge and to their deaths. Often at times as Torbjorn I would try and find new spots to place my sentry and while I was limited at first, I soon found that a Mei could boost you up to previously unreachable locations, letting you place a sentry in spot that was sure to cause migraines.
A recent movie short featuring Hanzo and Genji in the map Hanamura has its effects seen in game as we see arrows and shurikens embedded in the walls from their fight in the movie short. As is aforementioned, it’s easy to pick up on some nuances of the game’s lore, merely by traversing the maps, which could be a picturesque monastery in Nepal or a deactivated Overwatch Base, and by listening to the dialogue of the various heroes. A match would start and playing as Tracer, my hero would often interact with and talk with other heroes in the setup time, lending tid bits of information about themselves. And speaking of detail, I have yet to be matched up in a team that refuses to trash the spawn room, as it’s filled with a wide variety of objects that each have their own sets of dynamics. Unfortunately, in the end there are only 12 maps and this is an online multiplayer game which is played on those maps. As a result while matches never play out the same, it does get repetitive after a while. Blizzard has stated that more maps will be released for free but currently 12 maps seems quite a small number when compared to other Multiplayer FPS games out there.
Overwatch has 21 heroes (Blizzard have publicly stated that new heroes will be free), each which are unique both in their abilities, movement and weapons. As a result it’s very hard to not find a hero to suit your specific playstyle. Like sniping? You can choose from either Hanzo or Widowmaker both of whom are the games snipers but both of whom are unique in the way they traverse the map, the weapons they use and their abilities. How about support? You can either be a Mercy who pockets another player or Lucio who skates around passively healing everyone around you. Perhaps you just like dishing out a lot of damage; you can pick any one of the five Offense heroes and when you’re trying to to push a point, it’s always easiest to do so with a Tank. Some heroes have two weapons and nearly all players with a single weapon have an alternate fire option with said weapon such as McRee’s “Fan the hammer” which unloads his pistol near instantaneously, at the cost of accuracy. Torbjorn is another example of a character with an alternate fire. If a enemy was quite a distance away I could ping at him with a tap of my mouse’s left click button, whereas if someone got up close and personal with me I could alt-fire, spraying a shotgun-like blast of molten metal. I found some characters more difficult to master than others, due to complex abilities that often needed minute precision and timely execution. However, in the end I only needed to play a couple of games as a certain hero to get a grip on them.
[mks_col]
[mks_one_half]Furthermore, the health pool for heroes is incredibly diverse with offensive, small heroes like Tracer only having a healthy pool of a hundred or so hit points and larger tanks such as Roadhog having 600 hit points to their name. This disparity in health pools is made up for in terms of damage dealt, with Tanks not outputting a ton of damage compared to smaller offensive heroes. Learning to play as each of the 21 heroes may take a while and prove to be infuriating but will ultimately prove to be a boon as you learn the ins and outs of each hero, from their strengths to their weaknesses. This diverse set of heroes results in exciting and symbiotic gameplay as I learned to coordinate and play with my teammates to perform astonishing and glorious teamplays. Unfortunately, it’s far too common to see players refuse to switch heroes and adapt to the situation; I once played alongside a Widowmaker who refused to try out other heroes as it required learning the different play styles not seen in other FPS games. This isn’t the fault of Overwatch but underlines the problem that is prevalent in the FPS genre.[/mks_one_half]
[mks_one_half]
[/mks_one_half]
[/mks_col]
I found ultimates themselves to be an absolute joy, even when used against me. The fact that they were so over powering to the point of game breaking is mitigated by the fact that every single hero has an ultimate and that while ultimates can turn the tide of a battle, they can also be negated and even countered by the right hero. As a result I found myself more often than not holding my ultimate and using it when I deemed would utilise it most. Furthermore, the sweet joy you get when someone combos their ultimate with yours, leading to a team wipe is addictive as it is ecstatic.
However, while Overwatch prompts you to play from a wide variety of heroes, it shoots itself in the foot by favouring some heroes when it comes to the “Play of the Game”. The POTG is a video that plays at the end of every game and showcases what the Overwatch server thinks was the best moment in the game. Unfortunately, “best moment” is often computed into “this person killed a lot of people” or “this person stunned someone and then killed a lot of people”. It’s hard to see a support character get a Play of the Game, mostly because they aren’t dishing out damage and killing people. As a result, Mercy’s “Resurrect” that brought back 4 people to life and clinched a victory isn’t deemed worthy and neither is a Lucio “Sound Barrier” that gives everyone a ton of armor, saving them for a barrage of rockets that would have otherwise killed them all. While I’m quite depressed at the fact that my Zenyatta ultimate that healed my team didn’t get a POTG, I could still view it in the Highlights section of the main menu.
While Overwatch is set in a fairly utopian future, with hovering cars and sentient robots (known as omnics), this is still a Blizzard game and that’s reflected in both the visuals and sound. Each of the 21 heroes are unique in the way they look, from small and diminutive Torbjorn to the hulkingly, big Reinhardt. The heroes themselves are relatable and aren’t your run-of-the-mill heroes, with colourful and flashy musical celebrity Lucio to nimble and powerful E-Sports gamer D.Va. The diverseness often leads to situations that upon reflection are quite comical. After all, who would have expected that you’d be fighting an apologetic gorilla, a cyborg assassin, a hard to see British pilot and a teenage pro Starcraft player? As a result combat itself is an exhilarating experience due to the visuals and sound effects. Sound is especially important in Overwatch; enemies can be pinpointed by the sound of their footsteps and most abilities (especially the ultimate abilities) have a very loud accompanying phrase or noise from the hero who unleashes it. Blizzard has also ensured that it’s easy to differentiate the sounds your enemies and teammates make. When a friendly Hanzo unleashes his ultimate he yells “Let the Dragon consume my foes” whereas an enemy Hanzo would say the line in Japanese. Both are accompanied by a loud dragon roar which is an instant signal for you to get the hell out of there. Furthermore, a Hanzo wearing the “Lone Wolf” skin will see his dragons replaced by wolves with a wolf howling accompanying it instead of a dragon roar. It’s the details and changes like this that leave me in awe of the game.
The game itself runs fantastically; I haven’t dipped below 60 frames-per-second while playing on Ultra settings and the only performance issues I’ve seen were unexpected server closures in the first few days of the release, all of which have since been ironed out.
When Overwatch was announced, Blizzard were keeping mum about their plans for post release monetary plans for the game. With the release we now know how they plan to monetise it further; you can buy loot boxes with money in an effort to further accentuate your heroes’ visual appearances. It’s a fair trade as some players would rather instantly try and get the aesthetic options for their favourite heroes, as opposed to slowly unlocking loot boxes by leveling up. So long as it’s all visual and not gameplay related this is fine by me.
What you have to understand about Overwatch is that the game we see now isn’t the end product. More maps and heroes will be added over time, as well as a competitive ranked mode. However, the Overwatch we have right now is an excellent beginning and rabbit hole for me too pour endless hours into.
