I generally do not play shooters. Yes, I had played some of
them before. I have the first 2 Borderlands; I have Spec Ops: The Line; I had played
some Counter-Strike, but that’s about it. I’m generally a RPG gamer.
However Overwatch isn’t so much a game but an event. Blizzard
had delivered the PR campaign of the year to hype up the game and yes, I had
been sucked into it. I don’t mind. I don’t mind at all. I don’t mind because
Overwatch is a great game. Not just a great first-person shooter, but a great
game period!
On the surface, Overwatch seems pretty much like any other
shooter out there. It has a simple formula of two teams of six each trying to
win a match. Victory conditions change according to the map; escort missions, control
of objective points, or capture of positions. However what make Overwatch
different are the heroes.
Overwatch has 21 characters called heroes and they are the
heart and soul of the game. They are very different from each other. There is
the giant gorilla Winston who has high hit points and can put up a circular
shield to defend an area. There’s the dwarf engineer Torbjörn who can build an upgradeable
defensive turret that shoot any enemy that comes into range. There's Hanzo who is
a sniper and has an ultimate basically kill everyone in its path. There's
Tracer who can blink from place to place and even reverse her actions to
correct mistakes she made seconds earlier.
Now all the 21 heroes are categorized into 4 different areas;
attack, defense, tank and support, the trick Blizzard pulls is this; several of
the heroes overlap into different areas. Mercy is a strict support character, a
healer who can resurrect fallen allies. Zenyatta is also a support character. He
can heal but his main ability is actually a debuff that lowers the defense of
enemies. He also has long range attacks to take advantage of the debuffs he put
on enemies. So you have 2 supports with 2 very different play-styles. Now times
that by 21 and you can imagine the sheer number of combinations this game
supports.
Not only that, the game is also very charming. The world Overwatch
is set in is filled with load of background info and trying to find these
Easter Eggs is part of the fun for a lot of fans. The game's highly detailed
character design is nothing short of superb. No two characters look alike and many
times you can see the intended role of the character just by looking at it.
The gameplay of Overwatch is a hydra that is very impressive.
In fact calling it “very impressive” is an understatement as the way the
characters, maps and gameplay interact with each other is a lot more than that.
No two matches of Overwatch are the same as players can switch characters mid-match
according to the ebb and flow of the match. In fact, switching characters is
almost necessary, especially in Competitive Mode, to be successful. This
actually helps keep the game fresh as players faced situations that can change in
a hurry. Simply put; there’s no one single way to play Overwatch. There are many
ways to play the game, sometimes even in a single match.
Overwatch is also a very fast-paced game. When I first saw
the demo, I was surprised by just how fast it is. I was a little worried at the
pace at first but after playing awhile I think the pace might be a good thing
for the game. Matches can be quite fast and it is a game I can see players
logging in for 30 minutes of fun before logging out. Also Overwatch has been
such a phenomenon there will be no shortage of players in the foreseeable
future so no problems on that front.
Of course, there are some problems with Overwatch. For the
life of me, I can’t understand why there’s no story mode. I can understand no
one play a shooter for the story (look at the lack of success of Spec Ops: The
Line if you disagree), but the characters and world are just begging for a
story mode. The game is literally filled with them, and Blizzard clearly put a
lot of effort in the lore of the world, so why not a story mode? That makes no
sense to me.
Also, how much you enjoy the game will depend a lot on the
players that are on your team. I lost count of the number of matches I lost
because certain players on my team went chasing after the enemy for a kill
instead of playing the objective. Defending a control point is especially bad
when you have such players on your team. They will chase the enemy outnumbered 2vs6,
get killed, and then the enemy will roll over the rest of the team 6 on 4. It
just pissed me off sometimes.
On the whole however, this is one game I have to recommend.
I mean I’m not a shooter guy and I can get into the game so you can just imagine
how fun it is. Buy Overwatch; you own it to yourself to play this game!
