Why You Should Play: Overwatch

Welcome to a series on this site where we shine a spotlight on games you should be playing and why. First up, Blizzard Entertainment's new Multiplayer FPS Team Based Shooter: Overwatch.

Title: Overwatch

Platform: Xbox One, PS4, PC

Developer: Blizzard Entertainment

People that know me know that I’m not usually a big fan of multiplayer first person shooters and, to be honest, am not very good at them. Usually I’d rather spend my gaming time delving into the deep single player worlds of games like Zelda or the Witcher series. However, Blizzard’s name often means quality and seeing Overwatch’s phenomenal character designs my interest was heavily peaked. That interest soon plummeted when I realized it was a multiplayer only shooter with no campaign. At that point I’d dismissed it out of hand and had no other interaction with it. Then I got my hands on it this past weekend and my entire perspective on it changed drastically.

I’m here to tell those of you that might have missed the beta why, even if you don’t usually enjoy your typical online shooter, you might adore Overwatch.

There are a few things that instantly set aside Overwatch from the pack, but let us talk of the most obvious thing: that extra polish that Blizzard brings to the table. This game, even in late beta, absolutely shined with polish. Load times were nearly non-existent, menus were fluid and understandable, graphics were gorgeous and the game runs incredibly smooth. All of this makes for an incredibly attractive package from the instant you lay your hands on it, which instantly reassures you that this game is a cut above your average shooter. Everything from the rewards system to the tutorial is laid out neatly and is extremely easy to understand making the barrier of entrance nearly non-existent.

“That all sounds great Daniel, but it doesn’t have a campaign” you, dear reader, might say. I know these words as I once, like you, was lost in the idea that no story equals no go for my purchase. You would be right, Overwatch indeed includes no campaign, but the character and the stages of the game are soinherently filled with story that it isn’t really a bad thing. Their moves, their attitude, their taunts: everything about them tells a story about who that person is. Tropes they might be, but they are good tropes, and the characters tend to be extremely likable with catchphrases that after a few games you’ll find yourself saying with a smile along with them. Of course if you want to go deeper you could also read the backstories of the characters on the official website as they are quite detailed, read one of the free digital comics, or watch any of the fantastic shorts currently on YouTube to brush up on the world these characters inhabit. Blizzard has laid the foundation for a fantastic and memorable world full of intriguing characters and that is more than you can say for a lot of long single player campaigns.

Seriously, go watch Winston's fantastic story here.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the absolute gorgeous art direction and the look of characters that seemed to have stepped straight out of an awesome Saturday morning cartoon, but with a solidness to them reminiscent of Blizzard’s other works. All of the character design is top notch: bold and colorful and Iwouldn’t mind having a figure of every single one of them on my desktop. The environments are varied and have a real sense of place to them with great layout that has plenty of chokepoints and verticality as well as hidey holes and of course arenas for epic shootouts. It helps that each one is stylistically different and memorable with the same love and care applied to the art direction of the stage that was doled out to the characters.

Of course none of this would mean much without rock solid gameplay, which Overwatch excels at. This comes in the form of team based gameplay ala Team Fortress 2 style: you’ll be asked each round to do a variety of objectives between defending a point, attacking a point, escorting a vehicle etc. As you do so you’ll pick one of 21 characters that have set abilities that do not level up or change and guns that do not run out of ammo. This is good for two reasons: unlike MOBA games you don’t have that high entry level of trying to figure out the one super viable upgrade path for your character, and second because you have set weapons and no ammo it doesn’t become a game about memorizing a map and finding the most powerful weapons. This makes the game instantly accessible and the abilities are easily explained and mapped to key buttons for most every character. If you ever forget these abilities (as you will when swapping characters) just hold left on the D-Pad and a snazzy menu appears to explain all of them to you.This is presented with a very high level of polish and iseasy to read and understand even with a quick check in the middle of battle.

Look at this gorgeous stage. LOOK AT IT!

We haven’t even talked about the best part of Overwatch yet though. What might that be you say?The player is able to swap to any of the 21 characters at any time in the match by heading to his or her base or whenever they die. What this does is never stick you in a match where you are getting owned without anything you can do about it. There are so many characters with such varying and interesting playstyles that you always feel like you could do better if you just tried another character. At the very least you’ll end up being more successful or at least having fun learning a new character, but this also creates a flow to the map that is constantly changing depending upon the situation. Stuck at a choke point and your team is getting massacred? Pull out the handy tank like character Reinhart and use his massive shield to protect your team. Notice no healers on your team? Swap to Mercy and be the savior of your ailing team.

Another key to Overwatch being a success when compared to other multiplayer shooters is that you are actually encouraged to work as a team. At the end of the match there is no kill/death screen telling you just how much you did or didn’t suck compared to your teammates. Instead there is a video showing the play of the game, a move that might have saved an objective or took out a number of competitors, and then people are asked to vote on 4 people who did the best at what their character typically does. For instance, if you are the aforementioned Reinhart, you might show up for blocking the most damage to your team or Mercy might get noticed for providing the highest amount of healing. This means people that can’t spend all day playing the game can still feel like they are accomplishing something and working towards a common goal. I’m not an extraordinary player, so the few times I’ve seen my name pop up with a video of play of the game and knew that everyone else was watching my moment, well, it was quite a fantastic feeling.

Because sometimes you just want to blow things up.

Your TLDR for all of this is simply that Overwatch leverages fantastic character driven team gameplay, beautiful art direction, cool reward unlocks on leveling, and that patented Blizzard polish to make one of the most accessible shooters I’ve ever played and even though there isn’t a campaign in sight I plan on putting a lot of time into this one. If you are like me and have dismissed the game due to no single player, I think you just might find something to like here. Who knows, maybe I’ll see you on the battlefield at some point also.

Did you play the beta as well? Did you love it? Hate it? Despise Bastion? Want to wait until you see our final review? Let us know in the comments below.