Personally, I’ve never really been much of an online multiplayer kind of guy. I play Halo, the occasional COD and I’ve recently fallen back in love with Rocket League but all-in-all, online multiplayer hasn’t really been my most-loved area of gaming. I usually prefer a strong campaign instead of a game focused on delivering just a multiplayer experience.
When Overwatch started its open beta on Xbox One, however, I got instantly hooked into the game’s fast-paced and frantic gameplay. One match became two matches and then three and then on and on until my game time crossed the twenty-hour mark. As someone who never really plays online multiplayer all that much, I was astonished that I had spent so much time on Overwatch in such a short period of time.
The closest multiplayer experience I could even compare to Overwatch is the long-standing Team Fortress 2, a game that I didn’t enjoy for long, especially on the hack-plagued Xbox 360 version. Overwatch feels like a fresh new multiplayer shooter that undoubtedly borrows from MOBA-style games like League of Legends, DOTA and the like when bringing in a cast of varied heroes to play as. In fact, due to the close release schedule of Overwatch with Gearbox’s FPS-MOBA, Battleborn, the unjustified comparisons between the two have been constant. However, the two do share one big trait, an unavoidable charm thanks to the huge amounts of personality in its cast.
The round-based, team-focused gameplay of Overwatch allows players to choose from a cast of twenty-one playable heroes. Ranging from the support-focused guru, Zenyatta—my personal favourite—to the gigantic hammer-wielding tank, Reinhardt, Overwatch’s cast is not only full varied, colourful and fun but also allows a player of any type, offensive or defensive to have an important and frequent role in the battle.
Most of the battles in Overwatch take place around points, defending or attacking. While there are small skirmishes before the start of some rounds—usually if enough players haven’t been found—none of the game modes follow a different structure other than to keep a certain point on the map, however in the escort game mode, the capture point is a moving payload.
These high-speed and frantic fights take place all over the world as well. The disbanded members of the Overwatch task force travel all over the globe, from the dark London streets of Kings Row, complete with big, red buses, to the beautifully bright, sunny coast of Ilios, Greece. Every map in Overwatch is unique, out of the twelve locations available, not even one started to feel old after nearly a full day of playing. This is due to the game’s fantastic ability to change during the course of gameplay.
At any time in Overwatch, you can switch out your chosen hero for another, at the cost of whatever you have in your ultimate skill meter at the time, and pick another. During the course of a battle, circumstances will change and you have to adapt to suit those changes. At some point, you may even see a team all switch out to play as a full crew of five Reinhardts, which I really wouldn’t advise, which will then require you to swap out too. During my time with the beta, I found a good strategy for attacking to have two friends play as Reinhardt whilst me, as Zenyatta, and another as Mercy healed, buffed and debuffed our way to the attack point.
But sometimes that won’t work. There’s always at least one instance during a round where at least one person on your side will need to swap out their hero for the betterment of the team. If someone on the enemy team has placed down a turret as Torbjörn, it may be best to have someone play as Widowmaker, a sniper, in order to swiftly grapple-hook their way behind the enemy and destroy his turret, which will cause him to scream, “My turret!” in grief. Overwatch isn’t just a game about cutesy, funny characters frolicking through luscious locations around the globe, it’s a game about strategy albeit light strategy. Blizzard understands that the FPS-multiplayer crowd still wants to just kill things but, for the ones who want it, Overwatch has the complexity they’re looking for.
The best teams in Overwatch consist of players who talk with and understand each other and their play styles. When playing a standard public match on my own during the beta; I got completely decimated by the opposing team. After the match, I received an invite to their Xbox Live party, which I haphazardly joined, to hear a group of five already planning a number of strategies for the next round. Although I soon found out I was only invited to be called a “scrub” and then briefly kicked from the party afterwards. However, you can still play Overwatch without talking to anyone and you will have fun! The diverse characters and their huge variations from each other make Overwatch a blast to play with or without your friends desperately trying to come up with strategies that will get you horribly murdered. Although, that last part may only apply to me.
I’m extremely excited for Overwatch to finally release next week. It wasn’t even until I wrote this article that I even understood why exactly I’ve become so invested in this game. Overwatch is both a complex and incredibly simplistic beast at the same time which not only looks fantastic with a stunningly vibrant colour scheme and high-detailed, expressive character models but also plays well with fantastically intuitive controls and a buttery smooth 60 FPS lock. In fact, the only downside that I can see with Overwatch releasing next week is that I’m not sure I can continue to have an actual, real social life once I get the game in my hands. So it’s time for me to say “goodbye” to reality and “hello” to Overwatch.
Lewis is a games journalist, freelance gaming and consumer-tech journalist. They contributed 344 articles to ICXM between 2015–2017, focused on opinion pieces, game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news: has since served as Editor-in-Chief at StealthOptional and Gaming Editor at MSPoweruser, with bylines at Gfinity Esports and FRVR.