Back in 2014, Blizzard officially cancelled their highly anticipated and secretive project Titan. Unsurprisingly, many fans were left wondering, “What next?”. Well, we can now safely say that Overwatch is their next starry-eyed inspiration (which actually made it past the digital finish line). With twenty-one seductively unique characters to choose from, and many more to be introduced down the road, Overwatch provides players with an incredibly versatile roster to choose from. That’s not all, however. In this First-Person multiplayer shooter, players must choose their characters with a measure of care and foresight, given that each match is played out on one of twelve unique maps. Adding to the pre-game strategy is the objective rotation which focus on a variety of objectives: Assault, Escort, Hybrid, and Control. Ultimately, Overwatch is a game that comes down to utilizing effective teamwork and strategy, as well as appropriate character selection based on the map, objective, and whether or not your team is defending, attacking, or escorting an objective.
With a paltry 13 hours committed to my watch, I have to say I am more than impressed with the overall game structure. The starting character pool has more than enough depth and uniqueness to discourage boredom from being forced to play the same characters over and over. The variety between all of the characters is fantastic, with each character bringing their own unique arsenal of abilities to the playing field. While I haven’t played every character extensively as of yet, I thankfully haven’t gotten the feeling that any of them seem notably underwhelming, and similarly, none of them seem so overpowered to where they are breaking matches, and destroying player’s motivation to continue playing.
As with any highly anticipated online multiplayer game, there come pros and cons…
Pros
The versatile and unique character pool enables players to frequently try new characters (even switching them during the match) as well as team comps depending on their map/objective. Additionally, and quite surprisingly to be honest, the community for Overwatch seems pretty great for a few reasons, namely the noticeably minute presence of online trolls. While there is no game truly immune to such churlish behavior, I am pleasantly surprised with the Overwatch community overall, flamers being the exception. Additionally, the extremely low match queue times are a major plus for any player. Nobody enjoys spending ridiculous amounts of time waiting in queue for a match that usually takes less than ten minutes to finish. Quick matches, and even quicker queue times, what’s not to love? Another major perk that may indeed be overlooked, is the map diversity, size, and amount of player-to-map interaction. Many of these maps are incredibly well-colored, spacious, (although not overly so), and if your character permits, very, very scalable.
Cons
As far as cons are concerned, there are a few, albeit minor ones that come to mind, specifically players picking characters they like to play, as opposed to characters that suit the map/objective better. At times, more experienced players can be left scratching their heads and wondering why so many people pick characters based on how much they like them, as opposed to how useful that character will actually be for their map/objective. That’s really it for cons, nothing too serious that seems to threaten or undermine the games overall intent.
All in all, Overwatch seems to have been well-received within the gaming community, and seems quite promising for the future. Now, we just need ranked play to go live. From The Game Haus, I’m David. Thanks for tuning in. Feel free to leave any questions or comments below, and as always: Good Luck, Have Fun!
*Photo courtesy of Blizzard Entertainment*
