This week, I was one of the lucky few granted access Overwatch’s closed beta. The game is more than a big deal for Blizzard. It’s their first attempt at a shooter since the cancelled Starcraft: Ghost. It’s their first new IP in close to 20 years. And it’s salvaged from the wreckage of Project Titan, their failed attempt at a new MMO where now they’re trying to spin ash into gold.
And from what I can see, it’s working.
Going into the Overwatch beta, I was as big a skeptic as anyone. I was disappointed that after Heroes of the Storm, Blizzard was diving into the arena shooter genre with what appeared to be a relatively small game, rather than something with a big, enormous world we’ve come to expect from them. Early footage looked…fine, but nothing exactly to get your pulse racing. But I have to report that all that changes once you get your hands on it.
The plan was to play enough Overwatch the past two days to write a beta impressions post. Instead, I did that and kept playing. Not because my hours weren’t sufficient, or I was Skinner Box grinding for unlocks (there are none, yet), but because I was having fun.
Overwatch still needs work and I wish the experience was a bit deeper, but my view of the game is much more positive than I anticipated. Here’s the good, bad, and the in-between of the Overwatch beta.
THE GOOD
Blizzard isn’t exactly trying to be terribly original these days. At one point in time, Blizzard alone practically defined the MMO, RTS and ARPG genres with their three tentpole series, but lately? It seems like they’ve been chasing their competitors. Heroes of the Storm is taking aim directly at DOTA and League of Legends, and Overwatch is building on what Team Fortress 2 has been doing for years, and it will soon be up against practically indistinguishable games from Gearbox (Battleborn) and Cliff Bleszinski (LawBreakers).
But as ever, Blizzard’s strength is in their execution. Overwatch is simply a blast to play. The shooting feels amazing, the sound design is incredible, and gameplay is polished to practically a mirror shine. It’s a true arena shooter, with no aiming down sights and only a scarce handful of extra abilities. Combat is simply a joy, and though it can seem like total mayhem at first, there’s definitely a method to the madness.
overwatch heroes
Nearly Every Character Can Be Fun
Probably the best thing I’ve discovered about Overwatch is how deep the character roster feels. I’ve played at least one game with almost every member of the cast list, and half a dozen games with a few of my favorites. In that time, I’ve had enjoyable games with almost every character I’ve played with. I don’t know what other game I can say that about.
My favorites are Reaper, the close-range DPS machine that is the closest thing the game has to a completely overpowered hero, Bastion, a “builder” who can transform himself into a stationary turret, Roadhog, a tank with a grappling hook melee and a close range shotgun to follow-up, and finally my support of choice is Zenyatta, a levitating robot monk(!) that applies healing buffs to allies and super useful debuffs to enemies.
But though I’ve skewed my play heavily toward those four, nearly every character feels entirely unique, and like their own brand of fun. In many games, tanks and supports can feel boring, as everyone wants to be a damage dealer, but that just isn’t the case with most heroes I’ve played. The most negative experience I’ve had was with the tank Zarya, whose abilities I found a bit dull, but even she might be someone I just need to give more of a chance. These are quite simply some of the best designed MOBA/arena-type champions I’ve ever gotten my hands on.
A Pleasant Skill Curve
I am not an arena shooter person. I’m not really even a PC FPS person, heavily favoring shooters on my consoles instead. And yet after a very well-structured tutorial, I was able to slide right into games and within three or four, I felt like I had more than a handle on the game. A few more after that, and I was being featured in the final “Play of the Game” for sick multikills (with my support, no less), and being voted as MVP by both teams on occasion.
But that’s not every game, of course, and I’ve suffered plenty of defeats and bad runs. But Overwatch manages to encourage you even when you’re losing. Players who may not get the final hit to kill a bad guy, but still contribute damage are awarded “eliminations” which pretty much everyone views as kills, even if it’s really a combination of assists and kills. It’s a small thing, but one that helps players not feel discouraged because they’ll rarely look at the score board and see they’re 0-12 during a bad game.
At the end, I love the MVP voting which considers other factors that simply “most kills” like damage prevented for tanks, or achievements regarding use of specific hero abilities. It creates a sense of community even after games as both teams vote for the all-star, and I saw plenty of games where players voted for someone on the other team after a particularly jaw-dropping performance. It makes you feel a little fuzzy inside to win or even be nominated.
This seems like a game that will be easy to jump in and play for anyone, but there’s obviously a pretty high skill cap as well. But because of the roster of champions, even normal players can still play “hard” heroes and not feel lost while doing so. It’s a great system.
reaper
Amazing Animation
There have been some complaints about the cartoony animation style of Overwatch, but it’s like Pixar going PG-13, and frankly, I love it. The maps are fantastic and well designed, and I’m absolutely in love with the character models for well, pretty much everyone. I can’t wait to see how nuts Blizzard goes when they introduce more characters and craft skins for existing heroes.
THE BAD
The Slow March to Death
If the game has one enormous, glaring flaw I can pick out, it’s this one. As many have noticed from game footage, a lot of the time Overwatch feels quite sluggish compared to its fast-paced arena brethren. This isn’t really apparent in combat. I have no problem with the pace of firefights at all. But getting to those firefights after dying and respawning? Hoo boy.
Obviously, this depends on your hero. Someone like Tracer has a kit based entirely around speed, with quick zip dashes forward. The “starter” hero, Solder: 47 has a basic sprint mapped to Shift. I thought all characters would have that same sprint, or at least a movement ability mapped to Shift, but that isn’t the case. Tanks are painfully slow, making getting back to combat a chore. The Shift binding itself can be problematic as my friend Roadhog has his hook mapped to Shift which has nothing to do with movement and it just feels plain weird. Other heroes like builders have turret building mapped to Shift, even if they have upgraded base movement speed to compensate for a lack of mobility.
It just takes too long for I’d say 80% of heroes to get back into the action since you spawn way far away and many are slow to begin with and don’t have effective movement boosts as secondary moves. Additionally, I’m a little disappointed with an almost complete lack of verticality in the game. Most characters only have a tiny hop mapped to spacebar, and have to reach higher areas by literally memorizing the map and hauling themselves up the proper staircases. Only a very select few have Shift-mapped jump abilities, boosts/grappling hooks, but of course that replaces ground mobility as a result.
Mobility is a problem in general, and it’s the only thing that breaks up the normally seamless flow of games. I get that characters need to spawn away from zones to be captured or points to be defended in order for the other team to seize an advantage, but there has to be a happy medium here, and the game has certainly not found it.
spectator
Not a Spectator Sport
I think one of the reasons that there has been a somewhat noticeable lack of hype for Overwatch, even after the beta has gone live, is because it is not a terribly fun game to watch. Ahead of playing myself, I tuned into a bunch of Twitch streamers and found myself confused and bored rather quickly.
Turning Overwatch into an eSport, as Blizzard surely intends, is going to pose a challenge. Games like Halo, COD or CS:GO can jump around between players who are roughly all controlling the same types of characters. But hopping around from the POV of all these different heroes and having spectators know everything about them and all their abilities in seconds just from the HUD is going to make watching a competitive match a headache.
Games like League of Legends have a zoomed out, top down view where the entirety of the action can be consumed with a few simple camera pans, but Overwatch doesn’t play like that, nor does it have the spectator tools to produce something like that (yet). I think Blizzard could try a few things to make Overwatch more bearable to watch, but it will likely take some combination of time (for players to learn the characters and process what’s happening onscreen) and adding casting/spectator features to make that happen.
THE IN-BETWEEN
Lore, Anyone?
The debut trailer for Overwatch was an absolutely amazing animated short that introduced us to the world of the game. But in the game itself? So far there’s not even a hint of lore, and I wonder how that will affect the long term world-building abilities of the game, if there’s even any planned.
You can say Overwatch isn’t about that, but what Blizzard franchise exists without a hell of a lot lore behind it? I absolutely love all the characters this game introduces, both aesthetically and gameplay-wise, but from what I’ve seen, the game doesn’t even attempt to tell you any more about them. No cutscenes, no detailed in-game bios, and of course, no campaign.
Granted this is the beta and perhaps anything like that has been stripped out or not produced yet, but I really hope we see more Overwatch lore and more personality from the characters other than their little combat quips. Right now, the game just makes me sad that Project Titan and its wide world that contained these characters was killed.
The (Lack of) Progression System
Though I said in the intro Overwatch has hooked me enough to keep playing for the joy of playing, that probably will not last forever, and in this day and age, it seems almost impossible to have a game like this without any sort of progression system to keep players working toward something other than winning the next match.
There’s nothing like this in the beta. I’m not listing it as a negative, because I’m guessing that will change, but I’m wondering exactly what the progression system will be like. Overwatch does not seem like Heroes of the Storm which locks away heroes to be purchased, or have characters that are levelled up to unlock new skills. But if all characters are available for anyone to play with (which is great) and there are no “nodes” to unlock within each character, what kind of progression can there be, really? Just a ranked ladder to climb? This remains unclear.
pharah
What on Earth is the Model Going to Be?
Blizzard has yet to announce what the model for Overwatch is going to be, and I’ll be damned if I can pinpoint it myself. The most common theory is that Overwatch will be free-to-play and supported by cosmetic microtransactions. But again, without any kind of progression system as of yet, it seems like it will be tough to sell typical things like currency or XP boosts, since currency and XP don’t yet exist in the game.
The obvious product line to sell would be character skins, the staple of any god-fearing F2P game, but I think that’s somewhat of a less attractive prospect in an FPS game like this. After all, the only time you’re actually observing your character from the outside is during the character selection screen or on an enemy killcam. It’s not like a MOBA where you constantly are looking at your character (and their $5-20 skin) for the entire duration of the game, which can make the purchase feel more warranted. And I don’t think Overwatch will be able to quickly assemble the kind of cult-like community that shells out hundreds of dollars for a chance at earning hats in Team Fortress.
Honestly, and this will sound crazy, my idea is that Blizzard take some time and build a single-player campaign into Overwatch. One that explains the lore of the game, lets you play with a bunch of different characters to get to know them (both their playstyle and their motivations) and is something else to do besides endless multiplayer runs. That would be something that would be worth a full $60 asking price. Trust me, with how solid PvP is and how cool a campaign would be, there are far worse games that cost the same amount, and I have no doubt it would be worth the money. And on top of that, I don’t think many would complain if they still sold cosmetics like skins. Think about it, Blizzard.
Console Conversion
I’m having fun playing this on PC, but Blizzard would be out of their minds not to get this on consoles as quickly as possible. With each hero having only 3-4 real moves, button mapping would be a breeze, and Blizzard has recently learned the benefit of taking games that work well on PC and making them just as great on consoles, a-la-Diablo 3. The MOBA model hasn’t really proven it can make the leap from PC to consoles, but I could easily see Overwatch becoming a massive smash hit released for PS4 and Xbox One alongside the PC version. That may come later, but man, does it ever need to happen.
That was a pretty lengthy write-up after just two days, but trust me, I’ve been playing this a lot. I really am shocked how much I’m enjoying Overwatch, and it has me incredibly curious to see the final product and see everything Blizzard has in store for the game. When the beta opens up, give it a try yourself even if you’re skeptical. Perhaps my enthusiasm will wane in time, but for now, I’m having a blast.
Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertc...d-the-in-between-of-blizzards-overwatch-beta/