50 Years of Video Games: Overwatch (PS4)

While there is a lot of variance within the first-person shooter, the weapon sets you find are often fairly standard. Pistols, machine guns, shotguns, sniper rifles, grenades… even games that can feel wildly different will lean back on the weapons you find in real life and thus feel somewhat similar even to games with unique settings or enemies. However, the guns you wield don’t have to be the end of how a player participates in a firefight, and this is where the hero shooter comes in. Characters with unique skills and capabilities wielding weapons and equipment no other character in the game can utilize leads to a battlefield with many more interesting variables than which gun people happen to be holding, and while there were many hero shooters before 2016’s Overwatch, its incredible polish and creativity lead to such popularity that a brief surge of hero shooters hit the market. With development seemingly done on it beyond new character costumes and developer attention turned towards a future sequel it feels like a look back at the original Overwatch now can better encapsulate what the game became after many balancing patches, new heroes, and additional maps.

 

With an almost pure focus on multiplayer competition, Overwatch doesn’t do much to explain its world or characters beyond an opening scene featuring some exposition. As humanity’s push into more and more advanced technologies continued, robots with intelligence similar to humans were developed and dubbed Omnics. Soon though dangerous Omnics united and attacked humankind, and to combat this Omnic Crisis the nations of the world banded together to create Overwatch, an organization of talented soldiers who would help quell this violent uprising. For a while Overwatch was the protector of humanity, but once the lethal Omnics were quashed, people lost faith in their protectors and the group disbanded. The world was hardly safe afterwards though, and so Winston, a hyper-intelligent but amicable gorilla who was once a member of Overwatch, sends out a call to bring them back together again. From that point though there isn’t much story to the actions of the game, since even in the game’s 6 versus 6 standard format you will have Overwatch members fighting on both sides. To learn more about the world and characters one must instead seek out supplementary details like online animations, comics, and short stories, but there are some limited time events in-game that give a small picture of the past like one where you experience a battle during the Omnic Crisis.

 

Many of the playable heroes in Overwatch do have elements of their personality and history integrated into their many costumes, voice lines, and other cosmetics or aesthetic touches. Even if you might not know the deeper story behind certain characters without seeking it out, you can still often assume quite a bit based on strong and distinct character designs and the way they carry themselves or speak during a fight. It’s not hard to realize the manic Australian bomber Junkrat is unhinged when he’s twitching, laughing at explosions, and generally excited for the chaos of combat, and someone like the unique healer Lúcio uses music to speed up or heal his allies and so the game makes sure to make his love of music part of his identity. Even more off the wall concepts like the Korean gamer girl D.Va who uses her gaming skills to pilot a mech in battle manages to convey a lot about herself just with what she says, and while some characters like Mercy are perhaps more simple in concept, her angelic theming still gives the player an idea to latch onto even if it’s mostly just a costume. Some characters do get a bit of a short straw when it comes to concepts though, it is difficult to describe characters like Baptise and Brigitte beyond their in-game abilities unless you know information from outside materials, but then Overwatch has some wonderful little concepts like Zenyatta, an Omnic monk seeking spiritual enlightenment. There is a little overlap conceptually with two characters going for a Wild West aesthetic, but for the most part each cast member feels distinct in concept and appearance, and while some character skins will disrupt this as the iconography of a character is tossed aside in favor of something flashier or off-the-wall to encourage players to purchase the lootboxes with their randomized contents, in the heat of a battle you’ll usually be able to know what you’re up against with just a glance.

In a typical match of Overwatch two teams of players in teams of six compete in objective-focused skirmishes. With one team on Attack and the other on Defense, the attacking team will often need to first maintain control of an area for a period of time before a payload becomes active and must now be escorted as it travels across the map, only moving when the attacking team is near to it. Defensive players can stymie this effort by being on the point or near the payload to prevent the capture, the defense’s goal being to prevent all objectives from being completed before the time runs out. Some maps will begin immediately with the payload active or focus instead on only control points, but outside of special Arcade modes where the rules are deliberately bent and less balanced play modes like deathmatches and elimination battles are available just for fun, the focus remains squarely on completing the map’s goals rather than trying to eliminate other players. Killing characters on the other team will remove them from the fight for a bit though so it is still important towards your task, but the objectives give good consistent areas for the action to centralize so even if a team member is more preoccupied with earning kills than completing goals they will still be drawn towards contributing simply by the format. Maps are smartly designed to provide different advantages to both the attacking and defending team, the large open central spaces for objective claiming containing many side paths and flanking routes so that heroes with different abilities can take more strategies approaches and play to their strengths. Control mode does ditch the attack/defense format for maps where both teams compete to take a point in symmetrical locations that still provide many additional vantage points at different elevations, even characters like Pharah who can fly high still able to rain rockets down from above in interior levels while the available perches for snipers like Widowmaker shift in safety. Global theming also makes these areas visually interesting, the Grecian town of Ilios gorgeous but still functional for combat and places like King’s Row in England, Hanamura in Japan, and Hollywood able to work in a lot of the expected iconography of their location without compromising their importance as a host to the action.

 

Naturally though, a hero shooter’s stars will be the playable characters, the 32 playable characters all playing quite differently from each other while still fitting under the same first-person shooter framework. There are three major classifications the characters are sorted in: Tank, Damage, and Support. Tanks are durable characters meant to fight at the front of the pack to soak up damage either with their increased health or with special abilities that allow them to mitigate some of that incoming fire. Reinhardt for example is an enormous German knight with a shield that expands into a mobile barrier, other players on his team able to hide behind it and fire for as long as its durability lasts. Tanks are often large to draw attention to them for both sides as they often lead charges towards the objective, but over time Overwatch’s post-release heroes did lead to a bit of a barrier problem where most Tanks were given some sort of energy barrier to soak up damage. Winston can place a barrier dome as well, the robotic centaur Orisa slaps a curved energy shield on the ground, and the floating scientist Sigma can project a barrier wall forward as well. The main battle format of Overwatch uses a 2-2-2 format where you can only have 2 of each classification which prevents there being too many barriers in play, the barriers sound defensive strategies but when too many are present it can feel like more time is spent breaking them down than directly firing on other players. This issue can arrive in the more loosey-goosey rules of Arcade where players can be freed up to pick whatever hero they like, even repeating the hero picks of their allies, but more competitive modes limit each team to one version of a hero as well to prevent things from devolving into piles of barriers with a few healers for safety. Tanks do diversify in other ways though, attack methods being quite variable. The buff Russian Zarya has an energy beam that can also fire an explosive blast while Reinhardt is limited to swinging his hammer when it is time to fight, and while Orisa shares her automatic arm cannons with the mech Wrecking Ball that is piloted by an intelligent hamster, Wrecking Ball can also curl up into a ball and latch onto the environment to swing around like the devastating construction equipment it is named for.

 

Damage is certainly the most numerous and widely varied class of the group because their importance to the team is the simplest: they deal damage. How this damage manifests can be quite different, the Japanese archer Hanzo more about landing well shot arrows with his slower draw speed while the cyborg Soldier 76 has an assault rifle to deal consistent quick damage. Torbjörn focuses on building turrets to dish out damage for him, Mei can freeze opponents in place if she lands enough hits, and the hacker Sombra slinks around invisibly and can disable enemy abilities before she moves in with her rapid fire machine pistol. Tracer can zip around the map with her time-displacement powers, not only bursting ahead so she’s hard to pin down but able to reverse time for herself to escape trouble and heal damage while the grim reaper inspired Reaper holds two powerful shotguns that make him deadly if he can slink in behind you and land a good shot, so Damage heroes cover a wide range of possible attacking styles and can provide different types of utility compared to the more straightforward Tank’s role as the head of the pack. Team composition can be incredibly important in a fight as having someone who can’t land shots with a sniper well will essentially mean the team is missing out on huge damage opportunities, and while every hero can be played well, some like the transforming robot Bastion who can shift into a turret with high damage output need to understand placement and when to transform between forms in order to avoid becoming dead weight. Luckily players can shift to another character if one isn’t working out which not only allows people to swap off heroes who might not be panning out in their hands but different situations can lead to a tactical shift in which hero you have out in the battle.

Support heroes all have a major focus on healing up teammates to keep them in the fight but all of them can provide assistance in other ways. Overwatch manages to make many of its healers incredibly fun to play because they are still active participants in the fight, only Mercy standing out as a more passive character since her pistol is weak and situational while her healing beam and revive ability are going to be her main focus. Meanwhile, Zenyatta can be more exciting to play than even some Damage heroes, the Omnic monk not only able to deal strong damage with the spheres he hurls at enemies but also able to apply a healing sphere to an ally and a weakening sphere to an enemy. Staying active in the fight thus becomes more than just managing your team’s health as you’re considering who to debuff and who to outright attack, and many other Support heroes hit on something similar. The elderly Egyptian sniper Ana can deal damage to foes from afar but also shoot her allies to instead provide a surge of health, giving her better healing range than most other Support options. Brigitte’s flail lets her be in the middle of combat smacking foes as each hit also heals allies near to her, and Moira can maintain a beam of damaging energy on a foe and then quickly shift to a spray of life to help nearby allies. Admittedly Moira along with heroes in other classes like Symmetra have attacks where you can hold the button and you’ll latch onto an enemy with little aiming required, thus making them a bit too capable when in close range fights compared to characters who need to aim, but they are at least usually more fragile or slower than the characters they’re up against to compensate.

 

In fact, movement plays a big role in Overwatch’s game design. On top of abilities relevant to their class roles many characters have a unique advantage when it comes to map traversal. Some like Pharah’s earlier mentioned flight are obvious and drastic, but others like the cybernetic ninja Genji can double jump to make them harder to hit in the air, Mei can build an ice wall that not only blocks off paths but can be placed underneath her to boost her up a level, and Junkrat’s explosive mine not only can hurt enemies but can launch him far away without hurting him. Widowmaker can more easily reach sniper perches with her grappling hook, Reaper can teleport behind foes, and Lúcio’s skates allow him to ride along walls to avoid danger while still trying to keep his allies in his musical sphere of influence. Having 6 unique characters to a side means you have a lot of potential approaches to combat to consider in a fight but a similarly wide bag of tricks on your side, the game able to stay incredibly fresh because so few overlaps exist across the cast. If someone does use a similar gun they have movement options or extra abilities to set them apart, or they might even play an entirely different role in the approach to team composition. The potential of a character can be enhanced by how they relate to the choice of Support or Tank, some Damage characters thriving on their own while others fare better when sticking close to the team. A wide range of map types and the small differences in how the objectives are chosen for them also keep adding to the potential for novel situations and unique combinations of characters, and things only get more intense and diverse when the ultimates are thrown in.

 

Each character in the game has an ultimate ability that charges during play. While regular skills and abilities will have cool downs so that you need to plan properly on when to use them, you’ll likely only get a charge or two of an ultimate per match and the potential for these powers is so strong it can change the entire dynamic of a fight. With Soldier 76’s ultimate he is able to have perfect aim on any enemy in sight, making his damage output incredibly powerful. D.Va will sacrifice her mech and fight on foot while it launches forward to explode in a blast strong enough to kill most anyone too close to it. Zenyatta can activate a healing aura while moving around at increased speed to make his team incredibly likely to survive most incoming fire, but at the same time a counter to an ultimate activation is someone else activating their ultimate. Doomfist, a hero with a giant metal arm, leaps up into the air for a Meteor Strike that can travel quickly and devastate people in the impact zone, and if Zarya uses her Graviton Surge to suck enemies up into a single space he can possibly wipe an entire team with this rare but powerful combo. If the other team’s Sombra is quick enough she can EMP Blast to disable an ability to prevent an ultimate pileup though, and if someone like Mei can toss hers out even as she’s dying, the freezing drone can still manage to temporarily incapacitate the other team for the living allies to capitalize. Not every ultimate ability is quite as dramatic, Tracer tosses a sticky bomb but her speed means she can often place it in a situation where it can possibly kill more than one enemy. Some characters like Baptiste require coordination with theirs as he places an energy screen up where your team’s bullets and healing double in power when they pass through it, and Widowmaker enabling her team to detect enemies even through walls isn’t going to make a team fight where people are popping more explosive powers turn in your favor. They have their use cases though and sometimes the strength of other abilities might make up for the weakness of an ultimate, but these ultimates also give big dramatic climaxes to the battle for victory, one of which will likely be selected as the Play of the Game for a post-battle highlight.

 

Even the cosmetic side of the game, despite its potential disruption to easily readable character silhouettes, manages to provide some decent progression if you aren’t interested in buying your way to new costumes or playing the competitive mode with its rankings to climb. Lootboxes will be rewarded at each time the player levels up, matches earning points towards it whether you win or lose. While the costumes inside the packs are the biggest prize since they change how you look to others, you can also earn emotes, sprays, voice lines, and profile icons. Admittedly the impact of the extra rewards is heavily dampened by the fact they are clutter meant to prevent you from getting the better items from these random boxes of loot, but you can earn coins from duplicates or on their own in a box that can eventually go towards buying cosmetics you like without spending real world money. It is a slow process certainly if you don’t want to add real cash into the mix beyond the initial game purchase, but they can prove to be nice rewards earned gradually albeit randomly, the game already exceptionally enjoyable to play with its wild twists to first-person shooting play and the extra goodies earned during play just icing on a delectable cake.

THE VERDICT: The 32 playable heroes of Overwatch come together to provide what feels like a multitude of different shooter game concepts all under one umbrella. With healers who are actually exciting to play as and can participate in the main fight as well, heroes who can traverse the map in wildly different ways, and attack options unique to each character that are enhanced by maps designed to draw out the potential of such powers, Overwatch constructs an incredibly replayable title where the variables in play are so distinct and varied that the play experience can take exceptionally different courses each match. Ultimates add explosive game changers while the basic abilities encourage different approaches and ones that aren’t just minor twists to an archetype, so while you might see a fair few barrier placing Tank characters, the range of play is remarkably wide and conducive to a type of play where you both know what you need to succeed but never quite know how the next match will unfold.

 

And so, I give Overwatch for PlayStation 4…

A FANTASTIC rating. While certainly imbalanced in the Arcade modes that deliberately embrace that skew and leaning towards a few similar ideas with its post-release heroes like Sigma and Orisa, Overwatch manages to exude character and personality with very little story presented and provides a remarkably complex battle format even though that personality helps keep the player from being overwhelmed by it. Each character’s small selection of skills provides a tool kit for unique play with the effective tactics for each hero feeling distinct even if they nominally perform some similar actions, the exact combination of abilities providing something special amidst a cast packed with creative ideas. The team size and objective concepts encourage cooperative play since even people with lone wolf tendencies like a pure desire for earning kills will be drawn towards the action hubs and will see the benefits of sticking close to a Tank or healer but levels also ensure there are special paths and angles for different tactics to take root when it suits a hero’s skills. Things could be more diversified in some areas to remove the auto-aim functions of things like Moira’s beam and a few less barriers in play would keep things more consistently and directly interactive, but already the mix of powers in play can lead to so many unique and exciting outcomes that the small areas of overlap don’t at all lead to a feeling of stagnation. Different abilities contribute new potential twists to a fight that keep the player responsive and involved without being so off the wall that you can’t keep track of them all.

 

Pretty much any multiplayer shooter can do with a few tweaks, but Overwatch’s wide range of remarkable concepts provides not only the ever-shifting landscape of how a fight unfolds but provides players with many ways to experience the game personally. Quick and zippy shooters, methodical snipers, defensive juggernauts, combat healers, ambush predators, rocketeers, area denial experts, and many more make a game where your capabilities go far beyond the specific gun your character holds in their hand. It is a shame some areas are locked to limited events and the fate of all online multiplayer games is to die out eventually, but Overwatch is an energetic assemblage of a wide range of combat ideas that hold together exceptionally within a game design that hosts it all incredibly well. A normal game can struggle with even making basic shooting satisfying, but Overwatch crafts an experience where 32 heroes all bring something enjoyable the table, all while being able to interact with the creative concepts of the other heroes they’re up against.