Overwatch Official Review: "We're all soldiers now."

As I put down Overwatch for the first time all evening to write this review, I found myself struggling to do so because I kept wanting to play just "one more match". Overwatch wonderfully finds a balance between being a competitive game that's difficult to master, but still easy enough for new players to pick up and contribute. The large group of playable characters in Overwatch keeps every match feeling fresh and new, in addition to the number of maps that all have different points of entry, defensive options, choke points, and more. I kept wanting to try each character in Overwatch as they all do a great job of helping out your team in some fashion by having defined roles of either offense, defense, tank, or support.

Post Date: 5/27/16

What I find to be an inherent issue with this style of game is that someone has to play each role to make the team the most effective. Its not an actual problem per se because this is a team-based shooter, but most of the friends I've played with have already fallen into certain roles. Mine was and still is support. When I first started playing Overwatch, I found myself playing this role simply nobody else was and our team needed one. But when it comes to a character in a different role like Hanzo, who is an awesome looking, bow and arrow using, dragon master, he is usually picked by someone before I even know if we're attacking or defending, with the rest of the team filling up shortly after. Thus, I find myself supporting again.

This isn't to say the support role isn't fun. Keeping my team alive as Mercy was some of the most fun I've had in the game so far. However, I think a good option for Blizzard would be to create a separate game mode similar to ARAM in League of Legends, which would assign a team random characters that together, make up a full team with every role fulfilled. This way, everyone can be assigned roles and characters that are outside their normal choices. Then maybe I can finally press Q on Hanzo as well and yell out "Itsi hideki mano su!"...that's what he says right? Moving on...

The game modes in Overwatch are pretty standard with their objectives. The game modes include attacking and capturing a point, defending that point from the attackers, both teams trying to attack and hold the same point - which is my personal favorite, and finally escorting a payload along a fixed track towards a goal at the end. Although these objectives are familiar to people who have played other first person shooters, they are still extremely fun and take place in beautifully designed maps that offer an array of options to both attack and defend. These options also vary based on who you're playing as. Characters can interact with these maps in creative ways with their abilities. Widowmaker can use her grapple-hook to gain a positional advantage for sniping, Genji can hop walls that would otherwise be insurmountable for others, Pharrah can jump buildings, and the list goes on. If you haven't noticed by now, the characters in this game are probably my favorite part of it, which makes me wish I knew more about them.

The game explains its lore in a rather unorthodox way. Every character in each of the maps will have different reactions based on where they are, who they are teamed with, and who they are playing against. Through these reactions, players will learn more about the background of the characters while they play the game. But after a lot of invested hours, I still know next to nothing besides the fact that Genji and Hanzo are brothers, which I really learned from the short video Blizzard released about the two of them. There were a few other "Overwatch Shorts" released as well, like the one featuring Soldier: 76, but I still don't think that the lore of the game should be something found on YouTube or other social media. At least make them accessible to see from the main menu, because they certainly are gorgeous. They sort of look like a "rated T" Pixar movie with great action scenes and acting to boot. Even though they're not exactly in the game, they still look awesome - which brings me to my next point, customization.

The game has a great reward system for leveling up. Each time you level up from playing, you are awarded a loot box. In this box, you can find skins for different characters, victory poses, speech modifiers and more. The loot box is generated through RNG, which leaves some people frustrated, but luckily not me as I've always had good luck with rare drops from Blizzard. By the way, thanks for the legendary Pharrah skin Blizz, it looks great. But if RNG isn't your fancy, than everything can be purchased through an in game currency called "coins". 

These coins are also found through loot boxes. The loot boxes vary in rarity from common (white), to rare (blue), to epic (purple), and to legendary (yellow). Within these boxes are varying forms of possible currency drops that scale based on rarity. Common loot boxes only contain 50 coins while legendary boxes contain 500. I can't speak from experience what else can be found in these loot boxes, as RNG hasn't been that kind to me yet, but I would imagine the rarity of the box would reflect the contents found inside.

I forgot to mention that all of my Overwatch play has been done on PC. While I've been told that it also plays well on console, I can't help but think that the game is just meant for PC. The use of the mouse and keyboard were really easy and intuitive for me, and I am relatively new to playing shooters on PC. But maybe its because I love my new PC that you've heard me "modestly" mention on our podcasts. Lets wrap this thing up...

All in all, I love Overwatch. I think Blizzard has captured a game that is extremely fun to play both with friends and by yourself. I look forward to their upcoming changes that include ranked play, so I can rage and smash my head on the keyboard even harder as that crimson red "DEFEAT" shows up on my monitor. If you're hesitant on whether or not you'll enjoy Overwatch, you will. Its that simple. The game's level of fun and addictive play is only beaten by its aesthetic beauty.

I plan on playing Overwatch until they announce that Mei's Freeze Ray will now be instantaneous, then I'll rage quit. I'm kidding, that's not a real thing. But man it feels that fast when she gets you sometimes am I right? I'm going to go teach her a lesson. Thanks for killing time with me guys!

...Mei's OP.

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