The F-Word: Overwatch Review
Overwatch combines League of Legends and Team Fortress 2 to create a new type of first person shooter. But that’s not what makes it so fun to play.
This review was originally published on June 6, 2016.
When writing a review, I try to never describe a game as “fun” because “fun” is a two-dimensional word that, when used to describe videogames, perpetuates the perception that every game should strive toward banal, middle-of-the-road enjoyment. “But this is a game! It should be fun!” I can hear the imaginary critical voices in my head saying. No. Should every movie be fun? Should every song be fun? No. Games like Papers, Please aren’t “fun,” but they are enjoyable through their profoundness or perspective. Games can be fun, but the don’t need to be.
With that said, Overwatch is really, really fun.
There’s really no other word for it. Overwatch is the kind of game the word “fun” was invented for. It’s so fun it feels like a different kind of fun — Angry Birds is fun, Overwatch is something greater. This game provides a gameplay experience I haven’t had since playing Halo with my high school friends over a LAN connection. And in a sense, that’s what makes Overwatch so interesting: it usually offers a positive, enjoyable experience regardless of who you’re playing with online.
That online element shouldn’t be a surprise as this is, after all, a game from Blizzard, the company that defined “massively multiplayer online” with World of Warcraft. Overwatch’s release marks Blizzard’s first new IP in almost 20 years. The game rose from the ashes of Titan, an MMO that was canceled in late 2014. But, of course, you already know all this because it has been impossible to miss the Overwatch hype train that’s been rolling through the internet since late 2015, if not longer. Players were hungry to play and when they couldn’t play, they found…ways to cope.
Oddly, Overwatch doesn’t appear like a game to get too excited about as it’s not really the first game of its kind. Cynics might simply call it an update of Team Fortress 2, with its heavily role-based 6v6 FPS gameplay that only focuses on objective modes like escort (stand by a vehicle to move it to a certain area), assault (one team captures map points, one defends), and control (two teams battle over one point). However, with 21 characters (12 more than TF2) and potentially more on the way, I initially thought to make a comparison to League of Legends. Each character having their own unique abilities attached to cool down timers supports that theory too.
Overwatch combines those two games in equal measure when it comes to gameplay, but it provides more personality than either through its aesthetic. Overwatch has a joyful feel that I can only really describe as Disney-inspired. Its characters are painted with extra-bright brushstrokes, then injected to the brim with personality. The cast is so diverse it makes the Coke “Hilltop” ad look homogenous. Some heroes explicitly exude one gender or nationality — Widowmaker is obviously a French woman — but some, like Bastion, are void of either distinction, truly one of a kind. The maps, each an international locale denoted with its nation’s flag on the loading screen, also give players a small taste of various cultures. International political conflict isn’t in the picture though; the game portrays the kind of positive globalism you’d experience at Epcot. “Bringing the world together by shooting each other in the face” may not be the tagline Blizzard would promote, but it’s what’s happening.
Intense character diversity is only one example of the insane amounts of polish Overwatch exhibits. This game shines with a reflectivity that can only come from continuously and laboriously refining every single element. The game brims with detail in ways that feel new and unexpected. The maps are beautifully rendered and the gameplay feels perfectly balanced, but the most notable example of the painstaking detail that went into this game is the comments the players will make before and during a match. My jaw dropped when, while waiting for the door to open during an assault game, my character, Lucio, held a conversation with Tracer. In a moment unprompted by the player, Tracer said, “Hey Lucio, I’ll race you!” to which I, as Lucio, without any input, responded, “It’s on!” This doesn’t just happen in waiting areas either, characters will communicate with each other on the battlefield as well. If you’re getting shot in the back, another character will likely shout, “behind you!” if they’re nearby — no player input necessary.
That technique begins to reveal what makes Overwatch so uniquely fun. For years the question facing competitive online multiplayer games has been “how do we make a group of disparate strangers from different corners of the globe work together?” The problem becomes even more challenging when you consider that most players can’t or won’t communicate over voice chat, or with the in-game signaling system. Overwatch has good versions of both, but it also begins to solve that problem by integrating into the game itself the knowledge and support that kind, competent team members would provide.
That unprompted assistance is visible in every facet of Overwatch. In the hero selection screen, a small display predicts any weakness your team might have. The options can read everything from “no support heroes” if you don’t have someone who can help your team regenerate health to “too many snipers” if half your team picked Hanzo or Widowmaker to “low team damage” if everyone picked a combination that doesn’t punch hard enough. (None of these are mandatory though, if everyone wants to play as Tracer, they can.) Other assistive elements include glowing lines on the ground that point players in the direction of the active objective (no need to spend a dozen painful games simply getting acquainted with the basics of the map anymore) and tips that appear on the side of your screen explaining why a character may have killed you and what you can do next time to avoid a similar fate. (Eg: Move erratically to avoid powerful snipers.)
But this strategy isn’t just skin deep, it permeates the way Overwatch plays. This game deemphasizes many of the typical metrics for success in a shooter. If you want proof, just look at the pause screen. Instead of a leaderboard listing of every player on each team, you see a large display highlighting which heroes are on either team, with some other stats in small print below that. Try to find the player’s Kill-to-Death ratio, and you’ll have no luck. It’s not there. It’s difficult to even find the two numbers required to calculate a K/D. There’s “eliminations” and “final blows”…which one is kills? Traditionally, “final blows” would count as kills since kills only count for the player who finishes off an enemy, but a more team-oriented “eliminations” stat gives players credit for any part of defeating an opponent.
Other typically marginalized statistics are also promoted in the end-game screens. Players are rewarded with gold, silver, and bronze medals, not only for most eliminations or fewest deaths, but also for healing and objective time. Those accolades are all secondary though, the flashiest accomplishment promoted to other players (other than perhaps the often humorously unremarkable Play of the Game) is being voted an MVP of sorts by players from both teams in the first post-game screen. Four cards appear in the center of the screen and every player votes on who they think helped (or hurt — you can vote for an opposing player) their team the most.
All of these elements recalibrate what constitutes success in an FPS. Instead of kills serving as the sole metric of success, now you have different options to choose from. “Oh, you killed twenty people and never died?” a player might say, “Well, I healed 10,000 hp!” or “Oh, you healed everyone? Well, I spent five whole minutes on the objective.” The cynical way to view this is to believe that Blizzard wants everyone to feel like a winner so that they’ll keep playing; that this is a reflection of our overindulgent “everyone gets a trophy” culture. But the truth is that winning any team game requires different players to pursue and excel at different things — this is just the first game to acknowledge that dichotomy and incentivize success in those different areas.
If your team does excel in all those different areas, they’ll likely win. But does that matter? In addition to de-emphasizing individual achievement, Overwatch places far less of an emphasis on winning and losing as well. Again, your total win/loss record is hard to find, buried deep in menus. You get nominally more XP for winning, but not so much I’ve ever noticed. This may change as the game’s competitive mode begins and the game perhaps moves to become an e-sport, but, for now, the emphasis is just on the enjoyment of playing the game.
And that, for my money, is what makes Overwatch so special. I mentioned earlier that I hadn’t experienced anything like Overwatch since playing Halo over a LAN with my friends in high school. What made that experience so special wasn’t Halo, it was getting to hang out and play videogames with my friends. Because we were all in the same room we could strategize and share tips. We all became better as we made mistakes (even if that learning was occasionally in the form of anger.) I don’t remember what my K/D was, or how many games I won or lost playing with them, but I do remember the joy. The joy of working as part of a team. The joy of discovering a new strategy and earning a comeback win. The joy of shouting information at each other as a close game teetered on the edge of victory or defeat. The joy of simply playing together. Blizzard identified all those joys and designed a game that gives you them without relying on other players to supply them. Overwatch will be successful because it’s the first product to hit the market that combines MOBA elements with FPS action. But it will be remembered because it figured out how to make playing by yourself feel almost as good as playing with your friends.
And that’s pretty damn fun.
