The FPS genre has been stale for quite some time now. Over the past decade, we’ve experienced some shooters that have turned into cult classics, but most shooters of recent memory always revolve around the same old concepts. Shooters with military invasion or something-or-other, some time in the past or the not too distant future, blood and gore abound. Shooters that love the grey, dystopian atmospheres and storylines that provide an easy understanding of the commonly thin narrative the genre usually has.
Overwatch isn’t like any of those shooters. Overwatch is different.
It’s a team-based shooter. It’s got a great art style that isn’t set in realism. It’s non-toxic. While it lacks a single player mode to bolster meaning to the multiplayer-only game, its animated shorts, rich lore, and character interactions tell you all the back-story you need to know.
Overwatch features 21 different heroes categorised in 4 roles – Offence, Defence, Tank and Support. Each one of the heroes has a different play style, from Mei freezing opponents and making ice walls, Reinhardt and his rocket-powered hammer which also happens to be a shield, to a more standard-style Solider 76, assault rifle and grenade at the ready. Every single hero in Overwatch plays unlike the next.
Being a team-based shooter, the keys to success and winning your game relies on the composition of your team in the 6v6 match. Too many offence character types and you’ll find yourselves getting steamrolled due to the overall low health pool your team will have. Not enough offence heroes? That probably means you won’t deal enough damage as a team. Overwatch is about balance, and although it’s great to start at a baseline composition of 2 supports, 2 tanks and 2 damage dealers, not every map, objective, or team style supports it. Change is encouraged.
It’s this level of game-mastery in hero knowledge, map knowledge, composition and team chemistry that make the omission of the typical progression system of modern shooters seem jarring at first. There’s no COD-style ‘loadouts’, skills, points or otherwise to customise your play style. There are ‘levels’, but those levels don’t unlock anything but cosmetic loot boxes as you progress through them. Your progression in this game is mostly achieved in tandem by your level of mastery in the game. Eventually, you learn that a Bastion (defence unit, turns into a turret) is countered by the snipes of a Widowmaker or Hanzo, and even dealt with swiftly by the likes of Junkrat, Roadhog and Genji. You learn that when you see a particular hero used by the opposing team mid game, that switching characters to counter it if they’re doing well is probably a great idea. In fact, Overwatch has been designed in this way.
Taking cues from shooters of old in the likes of Team fortress, Doom, Unreal tournament, Half life and more, Blizzard has created a FPS that focuses in being dynamic. Fluid movement and traversal – both vertically and horizontally, moving and co-operating as a team, understanding map dynamics, combined with a hero dynamic with counters and ultimates, makes Overwatch the melting pot of all your favourite shooters from the last decade.
Typical of shooters, Overwatch features ‘modes’ to play in, but you’ll find no ‘team deathmatch’ here. No, that would break the spirit of the team-based design. Instead, you have control (king of the hill-type game mode), escort (a payload to a destination), assault (two choke points, alternating sides after each round), and hybrid (assault + escort). Experimented in the Beta, not shipped with the game but coming soon is the ‘Ranked play’ competitive section, where after reaching level 25 in quick play, you’re able to compete in best of 3 ranked matches, where you progress up a series of divisions and tiers on a monthly basis. That should keep things interesting.
It’s a great starting point for the higher-skill level players the game will eventually create. Those higher skilled players may help Blizzard bolster the eSports buzz the game already has. Blizzard is backing eSport in a big way for Overwatch, giving full control over customisation of game types, rules, however, banning specific maps/heroes has not yet been implemented, although I’m sure it’s something they’ll add in the future.
It may seem like paying full price for what seems to be half a game might be foolish. So far, I’ve only talked about what you’re able to do in the multiplayer. What about the single player? Well, there isn’t any. That isn’t to say that there isn’t any backstory to the characters you’re playing with. The lore for Overwatch runs deep, and Blizzard is doing something really different where they’re releasing videos, teasers, comics and more through several channels and mediums to give back-story to these characters. What’s more, they’re revealing and playing with this idea progressively. It’s a strong idea from a marketing perspective, creating so many potential entry points for new players to enter the game, however, the thing about Overwatch is that you don’t require that deep of a backstory for each character, and the way Blizzard is telling their stories is short, but emotional and binding. It’s different, and I love it.
To me, it’s a full game, so I have absolutely no qualms with paying full price for it (I bought the digital edition on PSN, so I paid even more than everyone else at a brick and mortar store). Much like other games with a deep level of mastery and a potentially bright eSports future, I’m sure I’ll get more value out of this game than all the other games I play this year combined. Overwatch is just so deep, so well polished and refined, so balanced and so charming. But most importantly, it’s just so damn fun. Go out and get it. You won’t regret it.
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