Very Early Thoughts on Overwatch

This has been coming for a while. Really, we should have been bringing you tons of Overwatch articles, watching as the game, a spiritual successor of Team Fortress 2, evolved into whatever it currently is. Small problem, neither aabicus nor I were invited into any of the betas or anything and could only get our hands on it today. So now what you’ve all been waiting for. Medic talking about Overwatch.

Okay, right off the bat, all my footage is ruined. OBS failed to record anything but a still image and sounds in the background. So there’s only going to be a few pictures here. I am SO pissed off, because in my second game, I got a quadruple kill as Pharah. Fucking furious. That’s an hour of footage, gone forever. On the plus side, rounds are pretty short, so it won’t be hard to get more footage, assuming I can get that to work.

Okay. Calm down Medic. Review the damn game.

Overwatch IS a lot of fun. It’s polished, tidy, good-looking. Games are normally short and somewhat sweet, even if it takes forever to capture control points, which are marked by coloured lines on the ground. I won’t deny that Overwatch is a genuinely good game. But it’s not the best game. It’s not mind-blowingly amazing. Actually, on low graphics, the game looks hideous. Everything has blurry edges and the menus just flat out look bad. Overwatch is one of the only games lately to have given me a headache while playing, due to my eyes straining. It definitely was Overwatch that caused it, because playing TF2 and League of Legends didn’t give me a headache again afterwards.

The visual effects are very pretty, but they are very bright and in your face. The HUD is also not too bad, but it’s small at times, things are very far away from one another (an issue TF2 has) and it’s all white and orange and quite faint. Also, since the game shows you most of your abilities on the HUD by your ammo count, there’s a bit of visual clutter, which isn’t even consistent, because of each hero’s abilities.

One thing I noticed was that everyone was going on about how great the characters are. Visually, they are very impressive. They do feel like they are missing two things. The first thing is that their silhouettes, something I’ve always praised in TF2, do not differentiate well from one another. Combined with the fact that the only way to tell apart two opposing players is the colour of their name tags and particle effects, it is very easy to get confused. Throw in a bunch of people using their ultimates at once, and all you can do is run towards the blue stuff and pray you make it out.

Secondly, the VO writing is… kinda meh. They all seem somewhat uninspired and, I don’t know, oddly generic? It’s weird. Pre-game chat is nice, but half the time I can’t hear what they are saying, and their list of voice commands is kinda small.. I won’t go on about Tracer… Actually, yes I will. I played a tiny bit of Tracer (I was shit) but You’ve got to listen to her briefly during the tutorial and bloody hell please make her stop!

Speaking of the tutorial, very condescending and off. I feel like I’m supposed to feel some sort of emotion but I bet it’s the wrong one. It does cover the basics, but only for Soldier: 76. Thankfully I looked before pressing Shift when playing Reinhardt and DIDN’T charge off a cliff. Luckily, there IS an area you can test every character’s abilities, and despite the fact that it kicks you out after 20 minutes of game play (why though?).

The maps though are really nice. They’re lacking in markers telling you where to go or what territory you’re heading into or anything like that, but the maps are genuinely really nice. Layout is hit and miss though, as there are some areas that look like you can access them and you can’t. It’s all very well giving us a high spawn area, but don’t tease me with buildings to rocket jump on if you’re going to block them off with invisible walls.

Points though for having decent colour-blind options though. Well done, Blizzard.

Would I recommend Overwatch yet? I don’t know. If it stops giving me a headache, then yes, but I think it’s worth waiting for now. Let the last few bugs get ironed out before jumping in.