I played a lot of Overwatch. I owned it across all platforms and put in hundreds of hours across a number of years since its original release. I also bought far too many loot boxes thanks to my compulsive personality and skins my brain convinced me I couldn’t live without. With the power of hindsight it was a pretty bad time, and I’m relieved the RNG has been wiped away in favour of a more honest model of purchasing skins. No longer am I toying with a slot machine and pulling myself further into a spiraling gambling obsession.
On the surface, the game is making all the right decisions. Both versions of the battle pass are packed with skins, sprays, charms, and a variety of content that outweighs anything its predecessor had in its first few months. Seasonal events are established, and an existing roster of heroes we’ve already fallen in love with have a generous roster of cosmetics and lore to build upon. I’m already invested, and for Blizzard that is half the battle right now.
Overwatch was the game I played constantly at university, and playing around with its existing roster while delving into each new hero was a big part of its appeal. My flatmates and I would fall in love with specific roles, or gravitate towards certain heroes because their aesthetic called out to us. I’m a filthy weeb and also very gay, so my mains ended up being D.Va, Mercy, and Lucio, with venturing into DPS territory rarely.
Overwatch 2 is free to play, so in theory it’s not too much of an issue that it’s an entirely new game. Splatoon and Call of Duty both charge full price for their updates on what came before, and Overwatch 2 esports|https://overwatch2fans.com/ 2 at least avoids that. But it doesn’t mitigate how dated Overwatch 2’s structure already feels, and how much that contrasts with how the initial game felt at launch. Overwatch is a hero shooter, and part of its popularity has been the affection for its heroes, not to mention how differently each of its roster plays. There are characters with pistols, shotguns, bazookas, ice blasters, revolvers, sniper rifles, mech suits, and bows and arrows, but whatever the weapon is, Blizzard seems dead set on aiming them all directly at its f
But for those not planning to pick up the premium battle pass or aren’t already cemented in the Overwatch ecosystem, some new heroes are locked behind progression in ways that actively discourages the experimentation this game is all about. Kiriko – the new fox girl support hero who I am totally not simping for already – is available immediately to premium battle pass holders or existing players of the original Overwatch, while everyone else must grind to Level 55 in order to unlock her. That’s a big time investment for a hero in a hero shooter.
While the main tank functions in this way, the off-tank is doing every tanky job the main tank doesn’t have time for – protecting support heroes, supplementing damage heroes, and tending to any objective that requires a big, chunky health bar. From Roadhog’s hook to Zarya’s bubbles, each off-tank has some degree of authority over space manipulation, too, which allows them to use the main tank’s anchorage to support more active area control. They’re an essential part of fluid, facile, and fantastic Overwatch – and guess what? They’ll be the first on the chopping block when it moves to
Roadhog’s name implies he’s something of an expert driver, so he had to make the top three. His playstyle is far more close quarters than most Tanks though, which doesn’t seem too suited than tanks themselves. While sure, tanks can roll over and crush anything in their immediate vicinity, they’re used for attacks from a distance, so Roadhog’s name gets him a medal, but his combat preferences see him settle from bro
These days, I’m lucky enough to work in games, and that means even if I don’t get a game code, I know that I’ll be able to write about a game and make money off it. In 2016 when Overwatch released, that wasn’t the case. I’d buy new games, beat them, then flip them at a second hand shop and use that money to buy another game, and so on. That’s a big part of why single player games, with a definitive ending, matter so much to me. The Witcher, The Last of Us, Horizon, Grand Theft Auto 4, Red Dead Redemption 2, and every FIFA from 09 to 19 all entered my life that way. Countless others, too. Despite this, I still have my old Overwatch disc, gathering dust on my shelf as it dwindles in value and my play time trickles up by a few measly minutes every six months or so. There’s just something very compelling about Overwatch’s existence that never quite translates to its gamep
Before I make a case for every number that’s not five, allow me to explain why five is so astronomically stupid. Each of Overwatch’s three roles can be subdivided into two smaller positions within them. For example, supports can be main or secondary support – consider Mercy and Zenyatta’s healing capacities, respectively – whereas DPS is usually separated into hitscan (insta-registration of bullets) and projectile (anything fired has an arc with its own distinct velocity and trajectory). You can also make a case for builders and support DPS as opposed to traditional damage-dealers, but the main distinction has to do with impact registration and how that pertains to team compositions and map layo
