Sad death of a fun game
Overwatch is a squad based first person shooter with some moba qualities like different heroes and classes with unique abilities. Most game modes involve attacking or defending a point or objective and all of the story and lore takes place outside the gameplay while all the game modes themselves aren't exactly canon except for certain special events. A lot of people consider this game to be a spiritual successor to team fortress 2 and well I can absolutely see that here. There is so much to say about overwatch that is good and bad, so I'll try my best to keep it short. (it won’t be)
Gameplay: Originally there were just a few game modes but by the end of OW1s cycle it had multiple game modes and seasonal events with different playstyles. In this game you pick a hero in one of 4 different classes. There were healers, tank heroes, defense heroes and attack heroes. In the beginning this was a simple game with quick play and weekly or daily changing arcade modes. Quick play is the standard, and a seasonal competitive mode returns though out the year. In quick play and competitive you find games with 6 players and are sent into matches where you either attack or defend points, payloads or locations. The objective is to take them strategically with your team and finding the right balance of heroes to use and counter the other team’s heroes. Most of the arcade modes are things like the standard CTF, TDM or FFA. They started doing seasonal events, so you had exclusive game modes, story modes and skins to unlock for a season of the year. You would level up your account and gain loot boxes to get random skins for your heroes. Each hero is incredibly unique with their size, hit box, movement, play style, ultimate abilities and even the sound of their footsteps. For a long time, this game was a massive success and everyone and anyone was playing it for hours and hours. It was funny, memorable, immersive and competitive. There were so many ways you could play and combo things with other heroes. I'll be honest I miss the launch version of this game. Every character was overpowered in their own way and people didn't understand a lot of the ultimates yet and it was just goofy fun or frustration where a whole team would pick a cheap hero like bastion, and it was hilarious... then came the changes. Changes like only being able to have 1 of each hero, changes to maps, changes to heroes like buffs and nerfs and in the beginning a lot of it made sense and I wanna say they eventually found a balance somewhere in the middle but then it started to get crazy where they changed hero’s kits and what heroes did. Some of them made sense but others felt unforgivable. Like for me personally I started to get frustrated with blizzard when they changed mercy's Ultimate ability and I feel like somewhere after that it all went downhill. This is probably problem 1# with OW1 is the number of changes that were constantly happening. It got sickening playing the same game every day for years and then all of a sudden, the character you like playing isn't the same anymore and there is no classic way to play them again. The reason they changed things a lot was because every time a new free hero or map was added it changed the meta and usually this would clash with what pro and casual players wanted. I personally feel like 90% of the changes were what pro players wanted but I've heard people argue the reason these changes happened so often was to appeal to both old and new players and it's probably true. You can't please everyone, my only issue with these changes is usually it felt like they hurt the game more than they helped it. A few other big problems this game had were its loot box system and the growing toxicity that came with new heroes and meta changes. Let's start with the loot box system. Loot boxes are completely random and often if an event came out there was probably no way in hell you were getting everything without buying loot boxes and of course my friends and I did the stupid and gave into this (something I’ll never do again). It got a lot of criticism and after the whole loot box lawsuit game companies had for "promoting gambling" they removed this in OW2. The toxicity has honestly only gotten worse, especially in OW2 but we will get to that when I review 2. OW1 though always had a level of toxic problems and most of it came from meta changes and cheap gameplay techniques with heroes especially in competitive mode which is why we hardly touched competitive play.
Graphics, music and voice acting: Graphically OW looked amazing and I'll always love the unique art style it had. The music for OW was always pretty decent with the main theme being fairly memorable. Voice acting wise this game was on another level. The voice actors for this game absolutely crushed their roles and always seemed to love their characters. They would participate in a lot of fun videos online and at comic cons with fans, even the staff (before we knew they were sh*t bags that would sexually harass their employees) were fun and meme able with videos to the fans on their projects and passions. I remember seeing videos all the time from "Jeff from the overwatch team" about changes that were coming to OW and all the memes that would follow.
Story/ no spoilers: Overwatch has a super deep hours long lore to look up, so I suggest looking it up if you want to know that and at first it was honestly my favorite part of the game. Basically, it takes place in the far future after a robot war and a special team that was ensembled to stop it. Every hero feels like an alternate universe version of avengers or something with their unique and in depth back stories. The game takes place after the team has disbanded and new threats are rising. They would constantly make animated shorts for each hero and the seasonal archives event would push the story forwards each year. Honestly this game could be a movie series because of how interesting it is, and I have to give them that but unfortunately the story, writing, gameplay, updates, company all turn to shit fast towards the end of the games cycle and especially since OW2 has launched. I remember seeing so many people turn their backs on this game and company for all the shenanigans and it’s really sad because for me personally I loved this game at its prime but the game that exists today really isn't anything like the original Overwatch (even though it kinda is the exact same game) it's the same but different and it's hard to explain how without someone experiencing the changes first hand. I almost wish I could review different phases of overwatch's life cycle because it absolutely has changed and when I review OW2 I'll treat that as a part 2 to this review.
Overall prime OW1 was probably close to an 8/10.
Overwatch is a squad based first person shooter with some moba qualities like different heroes and classes with unique abilities. Most game modes involve attacking or defending a point or objective and all of the story and lore takes place outside the gameplay while all the game modes themselves aren't exactly canon except for certain special events. A lot of people consider this game to be a spiritual successor to team fortress 2 and well I can absolutely see that here. There is so much to say about overwatch that is good and bad, so I'll try my best to keep it short. (it won’t be)
Gameplay: Originally there were just a few game modes but by the end of OW1s cycle it had multiple game modes and seasonal events with different playstyles. In this game you pick a hero in one of 4 different classes. There were healers, tank heroes, defense heroes and attack heroes. In the beginning this was a simple game with quick play and weekly or daily changing arcade modes. Quick play is the standard, and a seasonal competitive mode returns though out the year. In quick play and competitive you find games with 6 players and are sent into matches where you either attack or defend points, payloads or locations. The objective is to take them strategically with your team and finding the right balance of heroes to use and counter the other team’s heroes. Most of the arcade modes are things like the standard CTF, TDM or FFA. They started doing seasonal events, so you had exclusive game modes, story modes and skins to unlock for a season of the year. You would level up your account and gain loot boxes to get random skins for your heroes. Each hero is incredibly unique with their size, hit box, movement, play style, ultimate abilities and even the sound of their footsteps. For a long time, this game was a massive success and everyone and anyone was playing it for hours and hours. It was funny, memorable, immersive and competitive. There were so many ways you could play and combo things with other heroes. I'll be honest I miss the launch version of this game. Every character was overpowered in their own way and people didn't understand a lot of the ultimates yet and it was just goofy fun or frustration where a whole team would pick a cheap hero like bastion, and it was hilarious... then came the changes. Changes like only being able to have 1 of each hero, changes to maps, changes to heroes like buffs and nerfs and in the beginning a lot of it made sense and I wanna say they eventually found a balance somewhere in the middle but then it started to get crazy where they changed hero’s kits and what heroes did. Some of them made sense but others felt unforgivable. Like for me personally I started to get frustrated with blizzard when they changed mercy's Ultimate ability and I feel like somewhere after that it all went downhill. This is probably problem 1# with OW1 is the number of changes that were constantly happening. It got sickening playing the same game every day for years and then all of a sudden, the character you like playing isn't the same anymore and there is no classic way to play them again. The reason they changed things a lot was because every time a new free hero or map was added it changed the meta and usually this would clash with what pro and casual players wanted. I personally feel like 90% of the changes were what pro players wanted but I've heard people argue the reason these changes happened so often was to appeal to both old and new players and it's probably true. You can't please everyone, my only issue with these changes is usually it felt like they hurt the game more than they helped it. A few other big problems this game had were its loot box system and the growing toxicity that came with new heroes and meta changes. Let's start with the loot box system. Loot boxes are completely random and often if an event came out there was probably no way in hell you were getting everything without buying loot boxes and of course my friends and I did the stupid and gave into this (something I’ll never do again). It got a lot of criticism and after the whole loot box lawsuit game companies had for "promoting gambling" they removed this in OW2. The toxicity has honestly only gotten worse, especially in OW2 but we will get to that when I review 2. OW1 though always had a level of toxic problems and most of it came from meta changes and cheap gameplay techniques with heroes especially in competitive mode which is why we hardly touched competitive play.
Graphics, music and voice acting: Graphically OW looked amazing and I'll always love the unique art style it had. The music for OW was always pretty decent with the main theme being fairly memorable. Voice acting wise this game was on another level. The voice actors for this game absolutely crushed their roles and always seemed to love their characters. They would participate in a lot of fun videos online and at comic cons with fans, even the staff (before we knew they were sh*t bags that would sexually harass their employees) were fun and meme able with videos to the fans on their projects and passions. I remember seeing videos all the time from "Jeff from the overwatch team" about changes that were coming to OW and all the memes that would follow.
Story/ no spoilers: Overwatch has a super deep hours long lore to look up, so I suggest looking it up if you want to know that and at first it was honestly my favorite part of the game. Basically, it takes place in the far future after a robot war and a special team that was ensembled to stop it. Every hero feels like an alternate universe version of avengers or something with their unique and in depth back stories. The game takes place after the team has disbanded and new threats are rising. They would constantly make animated shorts for each hero and the seasonal archives event would push the story forwards each year. Honestly this game could be a movie series because of how interesting it is, and I have to give them that but unfortunately the story, writing, gameplay, updates, company all turn to shit fast towards the end of the games cycle and especially since OW2 has launched. I remember seeing so many people turn their backs on this game and company for all the shenanigans and it’s really sad because for me personally I loved this game at its prime but the game that exists today really isn't anything like the original Overwatch (even though it kinda is the exact same game) it's the same but different and it's hard to explain how without someone experiencing the changes first hand. I almost wish I could review different phases of overwatch's life cycle because it absolutely has changed and when I review OW2 I'll treat that as a part 2 to this review.
Overall prime OW1 was probably close to an 8/10.