I had made the decision to go into video game development when this game was being hyped. I was studying for the college entrance exam knowing Overwatch would release just slightly before I would be done with that. I don't think I have anticipated anything as strongly as this game. I reserved the collectors edition, I tried playing TF2 to quench the crave for the game (which failed miserably). And when it came out, it delivered. It was exactly as they had painted it, it was better actually, because I don't think I had the imagination necessary. It was such a strong experience to me that there are a bunch of songs I listened to around the time the game came out, and to this day 8 years later, if I listen to any of them I am completely transported.

I loved Zenyatta, Tracer and Hanzo, and enjoyed a little bit of D.VA, Widowmaker, Lucio and Junkrat. Later I would become an Ana main healing miles away, throwing support grenades defensively and offensively with a precision I took pride in, and wiping around in a fraction of a second to sleep the Genji that just pulled out the ult.

I watched everything from the Overwatch League at some points, other times at least the semifinals and finals. I myself played in competitive mode sometimes, but just looking for a specific approach to the game. In competitive it made sense to try your best to win being surrounded by others doing the same, but it felt like you had to perform for others, or even conform to what they thought was the best hero to play and how. So most times I played casual to be able to play in some ways that were frowned upon on competitive. But at some point they established the mystery hero mode as a fixed one, and by the gods I burned through that mode. I loved it, the feeling of being on equal grounds with the randomness, the challenge of being good with absolutely every hero, the lack of salt directed towards the members of your own team. It wasn't perfect, it gave an advantage to the defending team when the mode was zone capture like Hanamura, because they didn't have their ult counter reset as often. But that was far from a deal breaker for me, I just had that fact in mind when playing, and that let me enjoy it even when the odds were against me.

And the story was not heavily pushed forwards, but every short, every comic, and every bit of worldbuilding was a huge event for me. Many times I just played because I wanted to be in the world of Overwatch. I felt I was part of a great piece of art, and Jeff Kaplan came with his YouTube videos to update us about how nicely everything was going, and how much cooler it was going to keep getting. Him and the team that developed the game truly showed they loved it.

I loved this game with my whole being, all the universe it was set in, the community around it, the (early) safety of the team chat, the polish of the mechanics, the art, the unique gameplay.

Then, people started leaving, Blizzard started to squeeze, scandals, forcing the game to the point of breaking, bad management of the lootboxes, more developers of the game leaving. The game wouldn't stop sinking more and more. At first I decided to stop playing for a short while every time they made changes. Then, even with the effort to avoid hot spots, good moments to play stopped existing. Overwatch 2 was going to be the revival, good moderation, fixing the frustrating points, nice new art, revival of the competitive sphere, and more. I played 3 matches when it came out, I never played again and never will. They brought it back to life but it came back wrong.

At first I didn't like picking this game up. It wasn't until I understood how Mario's movement worked that it clicked for me. When that happened all the game fell into place, just running and jumping felt enjoyable. I ended up getting 100% in the game to keep playing as much as possible.

I found so many things to love in this game. Exploring every corner of the game was so gratifying, everything was intentionally placed and polished. Its music is the one that started my love for videogame jazz. And well, the platforming is the main Mario thing so it may be a little obvious, but it was immaculate, any frustrating part was clearly caused by me and not by the game in any way, so I ended up loving those stages too.

In this game the simple act of being around the map is something I already enjoyed so much.

At first I was a little overwhelmed by all the paths I could take and all the things to do, but I decided to turn the shrine detector off, and just pick the path that felt more interesting at any given time. That made it for me, I ended up manually checking every corner, talking to every character and doing every shrine and side quest. The only thing I didn't complete was the koroks.

It's such an incredible game, all the music is art, the colors and textures and animations simply make me happy to witness. The world is full and the things to do fun, entertaining and varied.

I ended up knowing the map completely, I could orient myself in seconds, and I happily journeyed through the same place time after time because I was doing the things as my interest peaked, instead of doing the things that were closer by.

This is one of the few games I have played with my partner backseating me, and it is a fond memory for both of us.

This is the third game I played on my laptop after a friend explained to me what Steam was when I was 18 years old. I fell in love with videogames all over again. I used to play videogames when I was little, but once in high school and following that, I progressively detached from them, understanding them as a bad vice, as a childish undesirable activity, or at best a fun little thing to do with friends every once in a while.

The game is mostly just dialog and puzzles, and they are all genius. The whole experience was a trip through the platonic idea of beauty. This just threw me over the cliff and into the sea of art that is the medium of videogames. I would end up 6 months later spending all the money I had saved on a PC tower, and less than two years later I would try to go into videogame development.