2316: Overwatch is Out, and It’s Awesome

Well, it’s here: the only multiplayer-only first-person shooter I think I’ve ever actually been genuinely excited to play and be on board with from day one: Blizzard’s Overwatch.

The servers went live at a little after midnight my time, and aside from one incident where I lost connection from a game, everything seems to be running extremely smoothly. I am happy about this.

Here is a list of reasons why I like Overwatch when I typically haven’t got into other competitive first-person shooters:

• It has characters. Call of Duty is boring to me because soldiers are boring. Overwatch has a wide variety of characters that includes cute girls. So that’s a win.
• There’s no complicated metagame. No challenges to unlock weapons, no perks to worry about, no loadouts, no higher-level people dominating you through use of higher-level unlocks: everyone is on an equal playing field.
• The “you must be this skillful to play” barrier is lower than a lot of other shooters. The thing that puts me off a lot of competitive shooters is the fact that it’s extremely difficult to learn how to play them effectively when some 10-year old can snipe you from halfway across the map before you’ve even got anywhere near the objective. Overwatch’s characters cater to a wide variety of skill and confidence levels, and most don’t require pinpoint accuracy to have a good time with.
• The objectives are simple to understand but challenging to complete. The game modes may be straight out of Team Fortress, but they work. The Overtime mechanic makes for some genuinely exciting last-second turnarounds, too.
• The weapons are satisfying. Each character only has one or two weapons at most, and they’re all great fun to use. They make good noises and feel powerful.
• The game gives excellent feedback. Through the use of sound and HUD elements, Overwatch keeps you nicely informed on what’s going on. If you’re getting shot in the back, a nearby character will tell you. If you’re successfully hitting an enemy from a distance but can’t see it very well, a sound effect lets you know that your shots are on target. And most characters’ HUDs are designed so that you don’t have to take your eyes off the action to know important information.
• The abilities give characters unique identities. Not only that, but you need to know the best ways to avoid and/or counter these abilities. That keeps things interesting.
• The support characters are more than just healbots. Most of them are more than capable of putting out respectable damage, too, and some even have other interesting abilities to support the team.
• D.Va. Say no more.

Now I’d better go to bed before I get tempted to stay up all night blasting fools… doubtless there will be a lot more of this over the next little while, though!

If you’re playing Overwatch on PC, feel free to add AngryJedi#2260 as a friend. If you do so, let me know if it’s on the North American or European servers, because Blizzard inexplicably region-locks its friends lists rather than having one global one.