Overwatch is one of the most important games i have ever played in my life. it's also one of the absolute worst games i have had to play as it was getting updates before it's demise as of October 2nd 2022. I should preface this review with a fair warning, i stopped playing around 2017 or so, just before Moira was added, as a result my observations are a bit outdated if not inaccurate.
I had the pleasure to play this game during it's beta. I was intrigued by it's artstyle and various cast of characters with various types of playstyles. It reminded me of Team Fortress 2, a game many would say is it's direct rival, so i was naturally drawn to it. Playing with people who had varied experience with the different game modes was a blast. But once everyone got acclimated i started to notice something. How character balance was handled.
Not all characters are created equal. And that became a bit of an issue especially later on in the game when power creep made some characters feel borderline useless or a necessary part of any given team. Examples of characters that were usually used at all times in early overwatch were Reinhart, Mercy, D.va, Genji, Ana, and Mei. These characters all have something in common, powerful passive abilities and ultimates.
This leads me to my biggest personal gripe with overwatch. How absolutely devastating it felt to lose. The culture the game managed to gather was one not of self improvement, but one of blaming others. now of course this isn't entirely inaccurate to reality. ultimate abilities adds more impact to a singular player's presence on the team and sometimes to the point of necessity to use your ultimate correctly or else you and your team will lose a skirmish and potentially the whole game. Unfortunately this leads to defeat feeling like something that you can't blame yourself on entirely, when you could point fingers at another teammate who had a very important ability also. This lead to a form of toxicity within games where i would rather not engage with my teammates for fear of them calling me a new slur that i wasn't aware of at the time. That said, i believe my dislike for how Overwatch's gameplay revolves around these ultimate abilities and your other teammates more so than other team shooters is due to another genre entirely: MOBAs.
This leads me to a realization i made while playing. Overwatch is less of a team shooter. it's a first persona moba with shooter elements. I personally cannot stand MOBAs, despite my many many many attempts at trying. This may have soured my outlook of Overwatch but not as much as how character balance was resembling MOBAs as well. It was one thing to nerf a character i enjoyed playing as, but it's another to remove unique and cool options that players discover and treat it as a bug, such as Genji's super air dash using ledges or Roadhog's hook pull being made consistent for the whole cast by doing a 180 motion. this lack of input from the community led to generally tonedeaf updates and changes that would force the devs to change it again.
All of these changes made me think that overwatch was not heading in a good direction. so i dropped it and went back to team fortress 2 and other shooters. as time progressed i only recieved news of the game through hearsay and occasional youtube videos in my recommended. One of the most outrageous inclusions that made me never want to open the game ever again was the news of Baptiste. A hero who had a literal immortality field. Jesus H Christ.
Since then, Activision Blizzard has been the target of many many many controversies since. And with Overwatch 2 being out and free to play with extra incentives for returning players, i don't think i'll ever pick it up ever again. I am burying this game forever and i refuse to ever talk of it beyond a few sentences again.
Thanks for reading this far. Just know that most of what i said was what i Felt, this may not be accurate to how the game really was or played at times. also on a personal note, fuck D.va, fuck genji, fuck hanzo, fuck sombra's shitty ARG only to release as a unplayable shitty character, FUCK STUN MECHANICS, AND FUCK BLIZZARD FOR MAKING WINSTON AND NOT ANY OTHER GOOD GAME COMPANY!!!!!!!!!!!
I had the pleasure to play this game during it's beta. I was intrigued by it's artstyle and various cast of characters with various types of playstyles. It reminded me of Team Fortress 2, a game many would say is it's direct rival, so i was naturally drawn to it. Playing with people who had varied experience with the different game modes was a blast. But once everyone got acclimated i started to notice something. How character balance was handled.
Not all characters are created equal. And that became a bit of an issue especially later on in the game when power creep made some characters feel borderline useless or a necessary part of any given team. Examples of characters that were usually used at all times in early overwatch were Reinhart, Mercy, D.va, Genji, Ana, and Mei. These characters all have something in common, powerful passive abilities and ultimates.
This leads me to my biggest personal gripe with overwatch. How absolutely devastating it felt to lose. The culture the game managed to gather was one not of self improvement, but one of blaming others. now of course this isn't entirely inaccurate to reality. ultimate abilities adds more impact to a singular player's presence on the team and sometimes to the point of necessity to use your ultimate correctly or else you and your team will lose a skirmish and potentially the whole game. Unfortunately this leads to defeat feeling like something that you can't blame yourself on entirely, when you could point fingers at another teammate who had a very important ability also. This lead to a form of toxicity within games where i would rather not engage with my teammates for fear of them calling me a new slur that i wasn't aware of at the time. That said, i believe my dislike for how Overwatch's gameplay revolves around these ultimate abilities and your other teammates more so than other team shooters is due to another genre entirely: MOBAs.
This leads me to a realization i made while playing. Overwatch is less of a team shooter. it's a first persona moba with shooter elements. I personally cannot stand MOBAs, despite my many many many attempts at trying. This may have soured my outlook of Overwatch but not as much as how character balance was resembling MOBAs as well. It was one thing to nerf a character i enjoyed playing as, but it's another to remove unique and cool options that players discover and treat it as a bug, such as Genji's super air dash using ledges or Roadhog's hook pull being made consistent for the whole cast by doing a 180 motion. this lack of input from the community led to generally tonedeaf updates and changes that would force the devs to change it again.
All of these changes made me think that overwatch was not heading in a good direction. so i dropped it and went back to team fortress 2 and other shooters. as time progressed i only recieved news of the game through hearsay and occasional youtube videos in my recommended. One of the most outrageous inclusions that made me never want to open the game ever again was the news of Baptiste. A hero who had a literal immortality field. Jesus H Christ.
Since then, Activision Blizzard has been the target of many many many controversies since. And with Overwatch 2 being out and free to play with extra incentives for returning players, i don't think i'll ever pick it up ever again. I am burying this game forever and i refuse to ever talk of it beyond a few sentences again.
Thanks for reading this far. Just know that most of what i said was what i Felt, this may not be accurate to how the game really was or played at times. also on a personal note, fuck D.va, fuck genji, fuck hanzo, fuck sombra's shitty ARG only to release as a unplayable shitty character, FUCK STUN MECHANICS, AND FUCK BLIZZARD FOR MAKING WINSTON AND NOT ANY OTHER GOOD GAME COMPANY!!!!!!!!!!!
Reviewed on Nov 15, 2022