Overwatch: How's it Looking?

Four years after its release and Overwatch is, by all metric assessments, going strong. Hop on to most fan forums though and they will, paradoxically, have you believe it is a dying game. One that is on the way out and being shown up by its competition. Two key milestones lie on the horizon of Overwatch’s near future which look pivotal to deciding whether it continues to enjoy the success and prominence it does now. The first of these being the release of a big new competitor in Riot's Valorant which looks like a hybrid between Overwatch and the ever present CS: GO. The second is the release of Overwatch 2, a sequel which promises to overhaul the graphics, introduce a new PvP mode and provide a "endlessly repayable" PvE mode. In the context of these, it seems a good time to check in on Overwatch and really assess how well it delivers on it's premise of colourful, frantic and varied fun.

Character

One accusation that can never be made against Overwatch is that it lacks character. It has it in absolute abundance and it’s this character that will most likely ensure that it survives even against increased competition from other games imitating its hero based gameplay. Overwatch simply oozes character and charm even before you get to the main menu. Its loving design, voice acting and detailed maps all serve to put this at the forefront of the game and instil a love for all 32 of its heroes in its players hearts. The depth and diversity in its roster means there is a hero and role that will click with everyone and, if you get bored of the your favourites, you can pick up another one and immediately begin playing what will feel like an entirely different game. The semi regular addition of new heroes is a great boon and cause for excitement and the developers always seem able to come up with something fresh and exciting.

This amount of very different characters who, mostly, have skills and abilities that you would expect to see in a MOBA as oppose to an FPS, can be very daunting for new players and there is a large skill curve for those starting out. There is not really any way around that at this point other than the promise that once that hump has been scaled, the game really opens up and is able to offer a player so much that other FPS games simply can not.

Balance

One aspect of the game that Overwatch has probably always struggled on in comparison to its fellow competitive shooters is balance. It has always felt that this is an area of the game that has consistently come second in developers priorities to the sheer vibrancy and wackiness of it all. Nevertheless, the game has come a long way from its release date when you could run a team full of Torbjorns and laugh maniacally as your legion of turrets cut your enemy team to bits. That era of the game was quickly replaced with another which, sensibly, allowed only one of each hero on a team. This was a period dominated by entering in to a game and praying that you’d been put in with teammates who were willing to play the more vital but far less flashy roles of tank or support; about eighty per cent of the time, you would not be so lucky. During this period, Overwatch games, designed to be strategic team-based duels around a designated objective commonly descended into glorified team death matches.

Mid last year however, this was brought to an end with the long awaited introduction of role lock which now sees all teams be comprised of two tanks, two damage and two supports. The quality of games and toxicity of teammates shouting at each other to “switch to Mercy” have been greatly improved and Overwatch is a much greater experience for it. Even in lower ranks, games feel far closer to the gameplay experience promised.

There are still issues with certain characters (*cough* Mei *cough*) being somewhat overpowered or just oppressive to play against but these issues are minimal and can be negated with good teamwork and coordination. Furthermore, the developers are getting a lot more aggressive with balance changes which is providing a much more fluid game that never feels like it is stagnating for too long.

Moving Forward

Any continuing game that wants to maintain enthusiastic player base needs to be able to listen to its player base and really take on what they are saying. Fortunately, Blizzard do seem to know this and are really taking steps to improve just how openly they communicate and address player concerns. For example, the move to the role lock format has meant that players now have to queue depending on what role they want to play. Predictably, this has seen the queue for the damage role become consistently and excessively longer than either of the other two roles; it can take upwards of twenty minutes to find a game if you’re only queueing for damage and that is far too long to be acceptable. The developers have tried a variety of systems to address this and have settled on an answer which seems promising. In the next month or so they will be releasing open role competitive as a new game mode which will see a return of the old format as a separate game mode in the hopes of drawing some of the damage players over to that queue instead. This level of responsiveness and out of the box problem solving is really encouraging to see in a development team and gives a player great confidence in Overwatch’s future.

Verdict

Overwatch really is a unique experience in todays very bloated competitive shooter market. It’s tendency to prioritise character and colour over anything else certainly goes against most other games it is competing against but is what makes it so brilliant to play and enables it to attract an audience that would normally stay away from games like CS:GO or Call of Duty. It does have a steep learning curve but after that it really gives the player a lot of scope to engage with it on their own terms. If you just want to jump on and have a quick laugh as you click some heads then Overwatch can be that. If you want an evening full of intense tactical battles as you combine hero abilities in new and inventive ways than Overwatch also does that better than anything else out there. If you want to play as a hamster in a large ball and send people plummeting to their demise as you knock them into the well of a idyllic greek island then Overwatch is almost certainly the only game that lets you do that.