NOTE: These impressions come from the Overwatch Beta’s Stress Test Weekend of the 20th to the 23rd of November on PC, using settings mostly set on low to keep a solid 60 frames per second. This was played with Mouse and Keyboard. Please keep these things in mind, as this will cover the impressions of the game itself, and not how it will run, look or play on the Xbox One when it is released.
I was happy when I saw that my account had been flagged to try out Blizzard’s newest franchise in over a decade, and boy was I in for a treat. For the time that I spent with the game, I enjoyed Overwatch thoroughly. Though in a Beta state of development and not scheduled to come out until Spring of 2016, it shows a lot of polish, balance, and love of the ideas behind the game. Though I’m sure many things will be tweaked, changed and added by the time it releases, I wanted to play it more than I actually had time to.
Let’s talk about the actually game though. Overwatch is a team focused shooter, and I got to play two different Objective modes in the game. One had control points one team had to defend, while the other attacked and captured it by standing in a specific zone. The other mode, similar to Team Fortress 2’s Payload mode, has a vehicle that the Attacking team must push to certain points of the map. Being close to the vehicle moves it, while the other team being close contests, and slows or stops the payload from moving.
Both of these game modes helped show off what Overwatch is, and it’s frantic, fast paced, and so team focused that there’s not even a kill counter that I saw. Every single kill that happens, the team would all get credit for, if they managed to help damage the character that died. It’s an interested way to go about scoring in the game, but it’s perfect to keep players focused on the objectives at hand, rather than upping their score. This is also shown off in the “Play of the Match” replay at the end of games, showing off the person who did the most to help their team at a particular point. While this tends to have a lot of eliminations and damage to the enemy team, it almost always happens when contesting a control point or payload, on either offence of defence.
Once I was in my first game, I decided to just try out heroes I had seen in footage for the game, to see how it plays. Once the game started, I realized early on that Reaper was going to be a favourite of mine. To explain his character, he has two abilities; a Wraith form that allows him to move slightly quicker, while being immune to damage, and a teleport to get to far away and higher points of the map. For weapons, he wields two pistols that act more like shotguns, and during his ultimate ability, he spins in a circle, damaging all of those around him.
I tried out a few other characters as well, as Overwatch encourages you to change your hero throughout the match, to counter any enemy hero picks or just change up the flow of the game when it’s needed. Tracer has automatic weapons and can teleport short distances around the map; Bastion is a robot that can turret up and turn into a tank. All of the Heroes have unique abilities, primary weapons and roles within a game, and it’s fun just to try them out and experiment with what you’re good at, who counters who, and generally what you find suits the role you want to play within the game.
The game is stylized to the point where everyone looks entirely unique, even with 21 different characters, and all the designs, whether it be characters or environments, just looks beautiful. It plays well, and I can’t wait to see what other modes appear in the game. I’m hoping that a longer Beta comes out for the game, and gives a chance to the console players to jump in and see what the fuss is about. It’s a game I’d recommend looking into, because this has the potential to be something a bit different, and big.
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