Overwatch (PS4): A Competent Confusion.

Sometimes hype gets so big that you can't ignore it. Even I heard the words Call of Duty so much that even I had to break down and try one of them to see what all the fuss was about. Now, I've never been a huge follower of Blizzard properties, so I only heard so much about this title during its coming release. Heard the name mentioned a few times, heard it was shooter. Didn't grab me.

But closer to release, Blizzard started putting out these amazing Pixar-esq cinematics to promote the game and I watched one of them. And holy shit, from that point I slowly started to become obsessed with this game. Learning about the characters, the lore. It had me genuinely interested, but as a game I worried because it's not the usual type of game I play. But the hype machine was so strong I had to ask a friend to borrow it just so I can see what the fuss was all about...

OVERWATCH:(PS4)

The story to Overwatch is both plentiful and nonexistent. The main crux of the story is that it takes place in a fictionalized future version of earth. Human society has evolved technologically and produced a golden age of advanced robotics with artificial intelligence. But as all robotic AI stories go, the machines begin to question their creators and robot uprising begins to battle humans. Enter the Overwatch team, a unit of people with specialized abilities who were able to quell the robot uprising.

But there was a schism between the Overwatch's frontline and black op teams. Reports of wrong doings started getting placed on Overwatch and an explosion leveled the Overwatch HQ allegedly killing the two leading members of the squad. Ultimately this caused the world governments to investigate the situation and eventually passed an act that basically made the actions of the team illegal forcing the team to disband to spare themselves of any criminal repercussion. 

But years after this act has been placed corporations have taken control, acts of terrorism are happening throughout the world, and the possibility of another robotic uprising is starting to stir. Unable to continue to sit back and watch this happen one of  Overwatch's members, Winston, initiates the call to reassemble the team despite the ban to try to do something to stem this wave of terror sweeping the world.

I seriously love these trailers. If they made this an animated series or movie I would totally watch it.

Honestly though, the game doesn't even tell you that much when you first fire it up. They released a a couple of cinematics that feature a number of the characters that give a little bit of the story surrounding the world its creating, but as far as the game play goes you only will get little snippets of conversation between characters that fill in the blanks a little bit. Which is surprising considering how deep and interested the lore of this game actually goes. I will touch on this more later in the review.

Overwatch as a game can best be akin to a team based objective style first person shooter that borrows heavily from MOBA elements. When someone asks what kind of game Overwatch is, the first thing almost everybody says in response is: "It's kind of like Team Fortress 2". I personally didn't play a lot of TF2 but I feel that is probably the most fair comparison to make when discussing this game.

Essentially at its core, Overwatch is a 6v6 FPS. How your game typically starts is you press a button to start where you immediately have to wait to connect to Blizzard server (because god forbid having any offline capability). Then once you are into the game decide if you want to jump into quick play or training. When you select, the game offers you a tiny little counter with how long you have waited and how long they think it will take for you to be connected to a game. If the wait is too long it will drop you into a tiny skirmish where you can run around a shoot while you wait. It's a nice little distraction.

Once you are in a room, you are taken back to your character selection screen. Characters are broken up into four major archetypes. Your offensive characters who are meant to push the pace, your defensive characters who are meant to create choke points to slow the opposing team, the Tanks who are meant to soak up damage for your offensive users, and your supports who are meant to die immediately (or if you are good at the game buff your team and weaken the opposing, I guess.).

One of Overwatch's biggest selling points is that the boasts a diverse set 21 different playable characters. Each character is unique in their design and have their own specific skill sets about them. For example there are 4 or 5 different support characters, but none of them play the same way: Mercy is a full blown healer, but she is nimble, fast, can buff strength on top of heal, and has a suprisingly damaging pistol. Symmetra however is also a support, but she doesn't heal. She is able to create turrets to shoot enemies that you can hide on walls and in cover, and make shields to keep people alive.

Because of the diverse nature of all the of the characters even within their roles, team composition will be an important factor when assembling your team. Depending on the game type, your go to player might not be available or necessary for the mission at hand. So if you are the 3rd fucking Hanzo on your team, it might be wise to try somebody else because a bad composition will doom your team from the start. Seriously, a team should never have 3 fucking snipers.

It's easy to see why Tracer is the unofficial mascot of the game. She's so cheery and cute
that it's just impossible not to love her. I don't even play Tracer and I love the character.

Speaking of the characters, I have to say that I absolutely love the character design and art direction of this game. I keep using the term "Pixar-esq" when describing it and if you've watched any of the animations you know that's an apt comparison. Each of the characters have a unique and interesting design about them, all the characters hail for different nationalities so they all have different quirks and accents. The design of the world around them is bright and colorful in all its different locations which severely goes against the grain of the Grey/Brown shooters we see these days. It is just an incredibly appealing looking game.

A big point of contention in this game for me is somewhat lack of options. When you jump into quick play the games will always be 6v6 but the objective isn't always the same. Sometimes you need to take and hold an area. sometimes it will be a 2 out of 3 king of the hill style game. Sometimes you will need to capture a payload and escort it to the finish. While you can argue that there are multiple game "types" it essentially boils down to the same game in my eyes. Six people shooting at Six other people. Only thing that changes is where you do it.

A feature that I love about this game though is that you are not locked into the character you selected at the start of the game. Let's say for example I start the game by picking D.Va, the mech riding tank character with close range damage, and we have a mission where we are pushing forward. On this mission I am getting blown up and put down one almost every surge, and so are some of our allies.

While respawing I can see that say our team has a lack of support characters, so on the fly as long as I am in the home base or respawning I can switch my character without interrupting the flow of the game. So now I can switch to Mercy to provide healing to another tank or offensive character to keep our pushes sustained. That's one of the games biggest perks that if you are playing a match and this team or your character isn't working then you aren't stuck with it. It forces you to be more versatile for the benefit of your team. (or you can keep taking unnecessary snipers like an asshole.)

Something else that I liked, is that the thing to remember is this is an objective focused game. So this means all you shitdicks who are still overly concerned about your Kill/Death ratio means you are playing the game fucking wrong. Since the main objective of each game is never "Kill as many as you can", it somewhat tries to steer you into playing your role on the team. It doesn't stop everyone from running off and trying to do their own thing, but most of the time the team knows exactly what their job is when the game starts.

Mei is fantastic for blocking paths and is devastating when used properly.
So naturally, I don't use Mei.

Although, there is a new bit of dick waving when a match finishes. It's a small little highlight at the end of a match that is deemed the "Play of the Game." As it sounds, a player is highlighted for having a spectacular play during the game, typically if they landed multiple kills in one move, a very well sustained assault, or if you're Torbjorn standing next to a turret doing fucking nothing {those infuriate me}. In a rare instance, you can do it with a support, but that is incredibly hard to pull off. Since people seem obsessed with getting this, too often actual objectives fall to the wayside.

They do balance it a little bit at the end of the match by nominating up to 4 players for commendations. Basically if a support healed a lot, a tank really stuck with an objective and soaked up a lot of damage, or someone really was just a one man killing machine all match, things like that. The players then basically can like which of the ones they thought deserved it like a facebook post. Typically, this is the best that I hope for and you usually see the other players give credit where its due to the less sexy grunt work characters.

It's hard to do, but not impossible. I was super proud of myself for this performance even though we lost.
Wish I had waited the few more seconds to get all 4 revived on that play though. That would have been clutch.

Once you complete a game you are awarded experience for completing the match and you also receive bonuses for the highest medal you achieved for specific match actions like healing, tanking, or objective, a bonus if you win, and bonus for not quitting the game. Once you gain a level you are awarded a loot crate which gives you up to 4 various unlockables from costumes, colors, sprays, and dialog. This is essentially all you can earn from playing the game (or just micropay for it if you are lazy, which you shouldn't do).

At the time of writing, I returned the game to my friend just as the competitive mode was released. Essentially a mode for level 25 and above where you go through 10 "qualifier" games to determine your skill level. Then you can player longer games for better cosmetic rewards. Personally, I dislike the idea of a competitive mode because it immediately places a divide between the hyper competitive high level player, and the casual player who likes the game just wants to have fun. (See: Any fucking Moba).

There really isn't much else to the game. There is a small little training area with random bots around where you can test out characters and get a feel for their moves, but strangely if you stay in that game mode too long the game will punt you back to the main menu. There is a small little bit of tutorial to learn the game, a VS. AI mode for someone looking to practice without the tense nature of being against other players, and Match of the week kinda thing with goofy rules. It really is all the elements of a Moba.

Here is my biggest beef with the game, and honestly something Blizzard does in general: they have the ability to make these incredibly fantastic looking cinematics for their games and most specifically this one. There are pages upon pages of character backstory and design that go into carefully crafting these unique and interesting characters. And once you fire the game up you get less than .0075% of it. It's a complete and utter travesty.

Look Blizzard, I'm going to level with you here. You are are sitting on a fucking transmedia empire here and doing dick all with it. Inside of one single video you turned a guy who doesn't play Blizzard games, first person shooters, or online multiplayer games into somebody who is completely entranced by the property you've brought to the table. I said right out the gate before I even tried the game that if you didn't make this game and made Overwatch an animated series, graphic novel, or a 2 hour Pixar style movie I would be first in line to consume the shit out of this.

You built this fantastic world filled with interesting characters and backstory. It is practically a travesty that there isn't even some kind of meager campaign to go with it. I'm not asking for a lot since I know this was always intended to be a multiplayer game. But god if you could give me some small 2-6 hour campaign to get even more engrossed in this universe, it would completely justify a 60 dollar price tag.

True Fact: This review took forever to post because I couldn't stop watching these awesome videos.

They are just too fucking cool. Make this a goddamn show or movie already!

Which brings me to my 2nd issue: Full price for this game just is not worth it in my opinion. Yes, I discussed that there are variants to what the match objective is every time you play but ultimately to the unseasoned shooter player such as myself, every single match feels like the match before it. Either run to the location and shoot all the players, follow the location and shoot all the players, or shoot all the players to stop them from getting to your location. Call them whatever you want, but its all essentially one game mode. You just get to decide if you want bots or humans to play against.

Now some people will throw out "Neeehhh! But its only 40 on PC!" This is true, it is 40 if you lose out on some DLC skins and such. Which sadly is still more than I would be willing to pay for a single game mode. Now apparently all updates aren't going to be charged as DLC from what I understand which I appreciate, but then we sort of fall into the Street Fighter V scenario where I feel you basically have put out an incomplete product under the guise of giving it all to you later when you have time to complete it. Eff you, you still charged the full price for an unfinished product.

I would bitch about how I hate playing games with other people online, but I've gone on that rant a billion times and thankfully I have the option to mute all the mics. So I can party up and chat with friends if I want to, but have blissful silence while I play the game with randoms. They have quick emotes in the game to use for basic commands and as a Smite player I appreciate that, and are more than sufficient. Call out a "Need Healing" and I know where to be.

One of these pictures caused a huge problem for some people. One is the picture that replaced it.
Can you guess which? Hint: If you can, get over yourself.

Also, I am not going to comment on the whole "butt controversy" because that was the biggest non-issue I've ever heard in a video game. I don't like using the term Social Justice Warrior because I feel its whole purpose is to invalidate anyone who might have a legitimate complaint or criticism {that's what it does, and if you don't think so you are totally full of shit.}. But people getting mad because Tracer has a pose that showed her butt was literally people getting mad at something for the sake of getting mad at something. Blizzard changed the pose to a new butt showing pose and inside a week nobody fucking cared anymore. Look it up if you want more detail on that.

When I returned the game, my initial review of it was "I don't know if it I like it or not". But now that I have had a few weeks to stew on it, I am coming to realize that I did enjoy my time with the game and honestly still have to urge to play it a little bit. More than likely, I will end up caving and purchasing the game because it works perfectly well to pop in an out of a game or two real quick without having to devote too much time to it. More importantly, its an FPS game that doesn't require me to actually be a good shot to pick a character and play well.

Which is pretty fucking unprecedented considering who is doing the review here. It is not often that I buy into the hype surrounding a game, especially if its a genre or style that I generally don't play. But in Overwatch's case they pretty much nailed exactly what it was they were trying to do. Many of my gripes are things that are becoming the norm in the gaming industry despite my older video game sensibilities.

Most importantly to this whole review and much to the credit of Blizzard, they thoroughly deconstructed a previous game in production to produce a brand new game. They meticulously took their time to make sure everything was interestingly designed, through out, and built to play well with minimal issue. Yes there were a number of things about the game that I had to complain about, but despite most of them, there isn't a whole lot on a technical or a mechanic standpoint that this game did wrong. Perhaps a little balancing issues on some character but those will be worked in patches no doubt.

So I am left confused. By my usual standards this should be a game I don't care for. But somehow its managed to defy the odds and ended up being a game than I actually kinda liked. If I can get it at more fair price then I think I would absolutely do that. Overwatch has the possibility to really become the new standard for the team based FPS genre and if they continue to develop their baby it could really be something. Overwatch has earned my recommendation.

You "Mei is Bae" folk are idiots. Mercy will always be my love.