(2018) Overwatch (PC/PS4/XbOne, 2016) - Mei is Bae

 NOTE: This review was originally posted to Tumblr on February 28, 2018, and has been reposted here for archival purposes. It may not reflect recent events or my current opinions.

For a more up-to-date review of Overwatch, click here. Alternatively, also check out my review of Overwatch 2 here.

This review is one that quite frankly has been a long time coming. Overwatch is definitely a game that I have been meaning to review for quite a while, ever since I first played it during a free weekend in November 2016.

I first heard about Overwatch before the game released, around late 2015 or so. My first experiences with it were through a thread that was posted on an obscure and now deleted forum site I went on, and after it got released, pretty much all of my friends as well as my brother were becoming hooked on it and I had heard pretty much nothing but glowing praise for the game and… admittedly, I did not really know what to expect. I wasn’t sure if it would become a game I would be able to get into since before then I wasn’t really into multiplayer games outside of all the time I spent in ROBLOX. I played a bit of Team Fortress 2 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, and while I did have fun with them they never really held my attention for very long when compared to all my other friends who spent hundreds and hundreds of hours playing them. But then, somewhere along the way, I managed to find out about Paladins and while looking back it’s… not that great in my opinion, I do have to admit that I sunk a lot of time into it compared to any other Steam game I played and it essentially introduced me to Overwatch. And after hearing that Overwatch was basically that but more polished and balanced, I figured why not ask for it for Christmas that year. And with my good luck, it turns out that Blizzard had a free weekend coming up in November 2016, and it gave me my first glimpse of the game and… I managed to have a lot of fun in that free weekend. My original plans was to ask for the NES Classic for my most wanted item for Christmas, but after playing Overwatch and realizing that my parents would never be able to get me and NES Classic, I figured that Overwatch would be my most wanted item, and sure enough I got it. And ever since then, I’ve managed to have tons of fun with it.

The main game I’ve seen Overwatch get compared to since its release is obviously Team Fortress 2, and for good reason - both of which being multiplayer-heavy games with a more cartoony art style and cast of characters compared to most other dark and dreary FPS games that you see today. And while on the surface they may seem like the same type of game, I wouldn’t consider them to quite be same type of game. Overwatch is really more of an FPS crossed with a MOBA and has a greater focus on team-based gameplay and building a meta. There are a few different types of map types - Assault, Escort, Hybrid and Control and a few options for gameplay that consist of Quick Play, Competitive, Arcade and custom game modes that give you different options and can be hosted and joined via a Server Browser. Arcade mode offers a few different game modes, namely Deathmatch, 1v1, Capture the Flag and Mystery Heroes, and other game modes that can change depending on certain events that take place. Above all else, of course, Quick Play and Competitive are essentially the main type of gameplay, only difference between the two is that Competitive contains longer matches and revolves more around a ranking system… and contains even more salty players, but let’s not get into that.

As a multiplayer-focused game, Overwatch doesn’t have a single player campaign or storyline that it follows in-game, although there is a storyline that can be found by looking at the different videos and comics that are uploaded via Overwatch’s official website and Youtube channel. The overall storyline is that in the distant future, AI robots called Omnics were created and at one point both humans and omnics lived in harmony until combat Omnics turned on humanity creating the “Omnic Crisis” and resulted in the creation of the task force “Overwatch,” who put an end to the Omnic crisis, but after a fallout leading to the Overwatch HQ being blown up, Overwatch was dissolved by the United Nations. However, years later in a world full of terrorist organizations and weird entities, resulting in the reformation of Overwatch to save the world.

One of the main selling points of Overwatch, though, are easily it’s cast of characters. Currently, there are 26 playable characters put into four groups - Offense, Defense, Tank and Support… which is self-explanatory, but more characters get added to the game as time goes on. And for an FPS game, I will say that all of these characters have a lot of personality and really stand out for me. It’s not just the dark and grim cast of soldiers but a colorful cast with each character having their own personality. Since going into each character will take a long time, I’ll just go through some of my favorites… and also some of my most hated. In the Offense category, my favorite is easily Tracer, who is more or less the poster girl for the game that you see on the cover and in advertising. Her main abilities is that she can “blink” through space and rewind time for herself so that she can restore any health within the last few seconds. What really drew me to her character particularly was her energetic and peppy personality and the fact that I found her very accessible in terms of how she played and I did find her abilities to be surprisingly useful. Soldier: 76 is also a pretty accessible character that’s pretty much made for the “Call of Duty” player. His mechanics are pretty much of that of any typical modern shooter which makes his character pretty much a gateway hero. In terms of Defense heroes, my favorite is Mei who’s… pretty love it or hate it, you basically think Mei is bae or, well, Satan. To me, she looked cute so I decided to turn her out and immediately got used to her abilities. I mean, quite frankly, there’s nothing more fun than freezing some guy on the other team and shooting an icicle at their head and proceeding to listen to them type in the chat in all caps about how much they wish I would die in real life. I really don’t have much to say for the other characters admittedly, although for some reason this game seriously has some sort of weird fetish for giving me Torbjorn cosmetics. Also, there’s Hanzo, who seems like only just a good Defense character with a crossover, but he apparently doubles as a really good healer considering every time my team needs one the last person always goes Hanzo.

Anyway, let’s move on to the tanks, typically characters with a lot of health and designed to protect and lead the team towards the objective. Originally when I started out, I ended up using Roadhog, mostly because he was similar to a Paladins character I played as called “Makoa” and I found his chain hook to be extremely useful when picking off certain characters. Only problem is that now he has been nerfed to heck, but he is still pretty fun to play as. These days, however, I mostly use D.Va as not just my main tank but also my Overwatch main going between her and Mei. I always found her to have a fun personality, very waifu-material, but I ended up finding her surprisingly fun to play as, mostly due to her ability to go between being in her Mech and being able to jump out when the Mech’s health reaches 0. It’s also fun to swallow up ultimates with her Defense Matrix and the recent addition of giving her Micro Missiles actually made for an even more entertaining experience while in her mech.

Lastly, there’s Support characters with the purpose of, you guessed it, providing support for the team. When I first started, my original main was actually Ana for some reason, I guess just because of her being able to heal using a sniper rifle seemed interesting to me, but since the free weekend I originally played ended, I didn’t really find myself going back to her much. These days, my main Support typically goes between Lucio and Mercy. Mercy because I was a Medic main whenever I played Team Fortress 2 and Mercy is pretty much Medic with the ability to fly and Lucio because I found him to be an all-around good hero that heal members in a small area while also doing some good damage to opponents. Although, if there’s one character I really, really hate, it’s Symmetra. I mean, from the start I found it kind of odd how she was a Support hero that couldn’t actually heal, but god dang it she is OP. Imagine what it would be like if Soldier 76’s ultimate was a character’s main weapon and you pretty much have Symmetra. But that’s not all, next imagine that same character being able to set up Sentry Turrets everywhere, and just when you walk into a room that you think is safe, you get taken down within a matter of seconds by six sentry turrets lining the opening. Seriously though, can Blizzard chill out with nerfing Mercy and Roadhog and give this character a nerf already?

Either way though, I think I can say that within its large, vast, colorful cast of characters, Overwatch definitely has a character for everyone, based on skill level, personality, abilities and so on. This is one thing I actually think makes Overwatch stand out for me, just because I find all the characters to be pretty fun in terms of personality and the added lore that you can see through the videos and comics officially created and published by Blizzard. And most of the characters themselves I do find fun to play as. Given the vast cast of characters, I can easily try out different heroes, including new ones as they come out, and look at their abilities and whatnot to see how much fun I have playing them. I mostly go between Mei, D.Va and Tracer, but sometimes I do enjoy playing as other characters just to try them out and see how well I do with them. The characters are generally well balanced and have their strengths and weaknesses and it is interesting to see how they play off each other.

But let’s go back to the gameplay. Like I said, Overwatch is basically an FPS with MOBA elements and there is a heavy emphasis on team-based gameplay with building a good meta and generally working with your team to either Attack or Defend an objective. On the player selection screen, there’ll be notices on the side telling you if your team’s not balanced enough in the sense that there’s no healers, not enough team damage and so on, as to make the player think about their decision. This type of FPS gameplay isn’t for everyone, and if you’d prefer to be able to pretty much choose your own character and don’t want to worry too much about team composition, you’re definitely better off either sticking to Team Fortress 2 or buying Quake Champions, but I actually found myself really enjoying this type of gameplay. With all the characters in mind, it actually did give me an incentive to try out all the characters and I do find myself having fun thinking about my team meta and having a more straightforward, clear objective. A common complaint I’ve seen with Overwatch is that it doesn’t have a very high skill ceiling, and while there are characters that take more skill than others, I would say that if you’re looking a more skill based game… again, look at Team Fortress 2 or Quake Champions, but honestly I think not having a high skill ceiling is really what keeps me going back to the game. It might sound odd, but it makes Overwatch feel a lot more “accessible” to me. I can easily jump into Overwatch at any given time and be able to just sit and have fun with it whereas I could never really do that with any of the other multiplayer FPS games that I have played. There is of course still emphasis on skill with team building and cooperation here and there, but overall I think it strikes a good enough balance for it to be still accessible and allowing me to easily sit down and enjoy it at any time. I feel like this type of gameplay and accessibility is really what makes Overwatch my go-to multiplayer FPS game, and the large cast of characters is pretty much the cherry on top of everything else.

Although, I will admit that the game does have a few flaws. You know how over the last few months people have been constantly complaining about loot boxes and how they’re pretty much gambling? Well, I kind of have to blame Overwatch for at least popularizing that trend. Granted, it is one of the “better” cases of loot boxes out there, since everything in the game is cosmetic stuff that doesn’t affect how each character plays, and for what it is they are pretty generous with loot boxes - you get one after each level and by playing the Arcade game modes you are able to get three each week. So, I can’t really bash this game too much, but their system of getting cosmetics is something I’ve always found to be quite frankly a pain in the ass. If you want to try and buy cosmetics individually without grinding for loot boxes, you’re pretty much out of luck because you aren’t able to buy in-game currency. You can buy loot boxes, but it’s pretty much gambling and no guarantee that you’ll get the cosmetics you’re looking for. And now that Blizzard slowed down the ratio of duplicates, getting in-game currency is a lot harder. And trust me, you don’t know how frustrating it is to spend hours getting to another level or finally winning three games in an Arcade game mode only to get a loot box full of Torbjorn crap.

Also, this isn’t really a fault with the game itself, but if you’ve heard a lot of people complain about the community being toxic… well, you’re not wrong. Moreso in Competitive, but even in Quick Play you’ll come across the occasional person taking the game way too seriously and complaining how no one’s going healer even though he’s over there playing as Genji. Fortunately, there is a way to get over this flaw and that’s the feature of being able to mute players so you don’t have to deal with their constant whining.

And as per usual, I’m going to conclude this by talking about the presentation. And, quite frankly, I will say that this game is really good looking graphically. I’m obviously playing this on PC, and this game is generally very well optimized. Since I got it, I have played with multiple CPUs and graphics cards, and it has managed to run well on a Core 2 Quad with a 750 Ti and a FX 6300 with a 750 Ti, 670 and 970 at decent settings. And even when I was playing it on low on a Core 2 Quad, it still looked pretty good. The good looking characters are all translated over to the actual game really well and the environments of the different maps really “pop” with all the colors and setpieces that go into them. In terms of music, there really isn’t too much to talk about. Aside for the main menu and “Play of the Game” theme, there really isn’t much in terms of music aside for little ditties that play at the beginning of each round, but nonetheless I do think the music is generally catchy for what is there.

Conclusion:

Ever since I’ve gotten into this game, I have logged over 200 hours and have continuously gone back to it as my main multiplayer FPS of choice. While it may not be everyone’s cup of tea, the accessibility of the gameplay and the cast of characters really make this game really enjoyable for me. Right now, it’s easily one of my favorite games of all time, pretty much competing with Super Mario World for the #1 spot, and after one and a half years of owning it, I am happy to say that I still enjoy going back to it. It’s an easy game for me to pick up and play and have a lot of fun doing so, and I can definitely see why it won all those Game of the Year awards in 2016 and is still winning different awards even a year and a half later.