by Drew Howerton, section editor
I spend a significant chunk of my time playing video games. Since the age of five, when I played Super Mario Bros. on my dad’s Nintendo Entertainment System, I have been an avid gamer. Franchises like The Legend of Zelda, Halo, and Mega Man have been big parts of my life, with hundreds of hours spent in front of my computer and my Wii. ‘
However, there has always been one obstacle to my love of video games: money. While most of my friends always had the latest Xbox or Playstation and could play the newest titles, until recently I didn’t have disposable income to spend on video games. If I wanted to play video games, I was either scouring eBay for games that I could play on my outdated consoles, or replaying games I already had. I was always behind, reading reviews of games that I couldn’t ever realistically play. When I built my computer, I still didn’t have money to buy new games, so I was stuck with last generation games like Fallout 3 and Skyrim (both of which are fantastic games, but get kind of old after a while).
But now that I have a job, I thought I would treat myself to a game that everyone I know has been raving about. That game is Overwatch.
Overwatch is Blizzard Entertainment’s newest title, which came out in May 2016, making it a pretty new game that’s regularly updated. Having a new video game to play is pretty awesome, and I’ve sunk almost a month of my free time into Overwatch. I was initially resistant to spending my hard earned money on a game that I wasn’t sure I would enjoy, but when the special edition went on sale for only $35, I couldn’t pass it up, and I was not disappointed.
Overwatch is a stylized team-based multiplayer shooter, in which players take control of a “hero” and go head to head with other teams in various objective based game modes. Heroes are divided into four roles: Offensive characters who deal damage, defense characters who protect objectives and teammates, tanks who have a lot of health in order to take damage from the other team, and support characters who heal the rest of the team or weaken the other team. Teams fight in three main game modes: Assault, in which the attacking team must capture two points on a map while the other team defends, Escort, where the attacking team escorts a payload to a delivery point while the defending team tries to stop them, and Control, where each team must try to hold onto an area until their counter reaches 100% in a best of three format.
The character roster is easily the best part of Overwatch, with each hero having their own unique abilities and playstyles, making them viable in different scenarios. For example: Reinhardt is a tank character who uses his hammer to smash enemies, as well as a shield to protect teammates and a ramming ability to push enemies away. This makes him viable in game modes like Payload, where the team has to move a payload to a designated location while the other team has to try and stop their progress. Having a character like Reinhardt makes it easy to push and protect the team at the same time. Some characters dominate in certain maps and game modes, while others are ill-suited, making Overwatch a unique experience with every game I play. Not only are heroes unique in their abilities, but also in gender, race, and culture. Every character has their own developed backstory with motivations and goals, and come from a diverse set of backgrounds. Pharah, a jetpack-equipped offense character, is a young Egyptian woman who wishes to bring justice to the world, and Sombra, a hacker support type, is a Mexican hacker who was orphaned at a young age. All the characters have backstories that tie into the overall narrative of Overwatch, which I’ll get to in a minute. But this makes the game more interesting because I’m not just playing as a generic super soldier dude; I can play as strong, well developed characters from very different cultures who aren’t just stereotypes of their ethnicity. Yes, there is Genji Shimada, a Japanese cybernetic ninja who roams the world in search of inner peace after a feud with his brother, or Zarya, the strongest woman in Russia who is devoted to rebuilding her country. But these characters backgrounds make sense and are well written, not just generic stereotypes of their respective regions.
One of the more interesting aspects of Overwatch is the narrative that comes with it. While most online games have some sort of story to them, they’re often an ill-written attempt to show why these characters are shooting each other. Games like League Of Legends are fun games, but have a weak overall narrative that doesn’t quite connect the characters in them, and any lore that is present is only there for hardcore players. However, Overwatch brings a well developed story to the arena shooter genre.
Set in the near future, humanity lived in an era of prosperity, with life relatively at ease thanks to Omnics, robots with artificial intelligence produced as a labor force in giant automated factories called “omniums”. However, the world’s omniums began produced hostile Omnics that attacked humans, thus beginning the Omnic Crisis. The United Nations formed the titular Overwatch, an international task force designed to restore order to the world. Overwatch eventually did just that, and for decades peace reigned again. However, infighting broke out amongst the leaders of Overwatch, causing an explosion that supposedly killed the two leaders, Jack Morrison and Gabriel Reyes, as well as destroying Overwatch headquarters. The United Nations had Overwatch disbanded and declared any actions related to the organization illegal. The game then picks up some years later when former members of Overwatch come out of hiding to combat terrorism across the globe.
The most unique thing about Overwatch’s story is that while the overarching narrative itself is stated in the trailer, the rest of the story is told largely through cinematic shorts released by Blizzard, and through in game items and character dialogue. The interactions between characters on the same team are meant to fill in the holes in the story. Each character has a role to play in the narrative, like Soldier: 76, who is heavily implied to former Overwatch leader Jack Morrison. Nowhere in the game does it state this, but a cosmetic skin for Soldier: 76 is called “Strike Commander Morrison”, implying that he is indeed Jack Morrison. Characters backstories, as well as other stories, are told through skins, voice lines, and other unlockables, leaving it up to the player to infer things as they unlock more items. This is my favorite thing about the game: in order to learn more about the world of Overwatch, I have to play the game. The play-to-learn style of the game gives it a replayability aspect that I always look for in new games, because the more I play, the more I am rewarded with not just cool items, but lore as well.
And the world of Overwatch is yet another draw. Everything about the game is like a graphic novel, from superhero-esque characters to cheesy one-liners down to the style of the game, which is stylized like a comic book with pale colors and wild character designs. Overwatch‘s influence ranges from classic team-based shooters like Team Fortress Classic and Quake as well as futuristic games like newer Call of Duty titles, and it clearly shows in the fast paced and silly gameplay, and the futuristic grappling hooks and rocket jumping mechanics of some heroes. In a way, Overwatch is an homage to all of these games, and a love letter to Saturday morning cartoons with it’s larger -than-life heroes and the timeless battle between good and evil.
Game-wise, it’s a standard PC arena shooter, using QWERTY and left-clicking for abilities. All of the heroes are well balanced, and unlike some games, new characters aren’t horribly unbalanced and broken when they are released. It’s clear that Blizzard has put a significant amount of time making sure that newer players can have fun, while veteran players are still afforded a challenge. The game has a nice and casual community, and I even find myself playing Competitive, where losing and winning decides your skill rating and overall rank (I’m not great, I’m only Silver ranking). In a lot of online games, competitive games are places where playing poorly leads to me getting shouted at by guys who take things a bit too seriously, which makes me not enjoy the game. In Overwatch, there’s still a ton of this, but it’s made more bearable by a community that is largely forgiving and kind to newer players, which is a refreshing change from the status quo.
Some of my minimal complaints with Overwatch is a lack of more game modes. While Assault and Escort are fun, after having played five matches in a row they can become boring and stale. Even with the addition of Arcade mode, which hosts carefree modes like 1v1 Random Duels and 3v3 Elimination, I find myself wishing for a capture the flag type mode or a straight up deathmatch style mode. However, being a new game with a large player base, updates will continually be rolled out, so there is some hope for new game modes. Other complaints is the frequency of lootbox drops, which are only acquired during level up, and although Arcade mode gives a lootbox every for every three games won, sometimes I wish their was an easier way than just buying them, which I’m not going to do.
Despite these very small complaints, Overwatch is an awesome way to get back into current video games. With deep and well written lore and a diverse cast of characters, Overwatch sets itself apart from other online games. Not only is Overwatch a refreshing addition to the arena shooter franchise, but it’s a generally upbeat game in a time when a lot of modern video games can be dark and kind of depressing. There’s finally an online game that has both tons of replayability and quenches my thirst for well written lore that forces me to make conclusions on my own, and it’s awesome.
If you have $40 and are looking for an awesome casual and competitive experience, Overwatch is the way to go.
Overwatch is out for Playstation 4, Xbox One, and Windows PCs.
