So here’s the thing, I didn’t plan on getting Overwatch. Mainly because I was concerned about the price vs the amount of time I would spend playing it. The base version for PC costs $40 (US) and the Origins edition with all the bonus goodies costs $60 (US). I subscribe to a $1/hour belief that if a game costs me $40 then I should get a minimum of 40 hours out of it. While Overwatch is described more along the lines of cooperative team based shooter, it is still a first person shooter. Those types of games have typically run their course for me within a few hours.
Now that isn’t to say that I won’t get bored with Overwatch before I get 60 hours out of it (I did get the Origins edition). I just think that if it is like Hearthstone where you can play it every once and a while then I’ll still eventually get my money’s worth.
The thing that I’ve been enjoying so far is that I don’t really have to put up with jerks in chat. That isn’t to say they aren’t there, and I’ve had one already but it isn’t as toxic (yet) as other FPS communities. That is really one of the bigger put offs for me in any type of online game that has a chat feature. Blizzard so far has been the best about handling this, giving the option to opt out of chat if it is available at all. They also have an easy to use interface that allows you to keep toxic people from being in your group. I don’t know how that works in other games such as Heroes of the Storm, in Overwatch all you have to do is click their name and you have the options.
Now as to the actual game, one of the concerns I had was figuring out what the point of playing is. Sure you can just play it as a FPS and if that’s all you care about that’s cool. I typically enjoy the story mode for those games more then the online components, so without a single player aspect I wasn’t sure what there was to keep you going. Now, I should have known better because this is Blizzard, so there are achievements and unlockable items like victory poses and skins. Whenever you gain a level you get a loot box that contains some items. There is obviously also a cash shop if you feel like throwing money at them.
What I really enjoy is that the controls are very easy to pick up and not super complicated like other FPS’. You only have one weapon so you don’t have to worry about cycling through to find the best option. You have a couple special actions depending on the character, so at most you use two mouse buttons and two keyboard keys (not counting movement here). Matches themselves are on a timer, so there aren’t 30 minute matches. You have simple objectives and that’s it. There is no score counter so you people can’t give you crap about having a poor kill/death ratio.
They make it easy to pick your character based on which role you prefer as well, easily identifying which characters fall in to which categories. You have your offence, defense, tank and support groups each with 5 characters (give or take one since there are 21 characters). There is still a common problem of lack of people wanting to play support or tanks but they’re still easy enough to pick up that anyone can really manage. Personally I prefer to play offence or defense with my go to characters being McCree or Bastion.
The graphics on the game are also really nice, and I’m glad that I got a new PC before picking it up. It has allowed me to play this on Ultra High setting, though knowing Blizzard even the lower settings would still look amazing.
So far I haven’t found any issue with the game. I am finding matches quickly and I haven’t noticed any lag or gameplay bugs, which unfortunately is not the standard in games today. So while I can’t say I’m going to play every day, or for long stretches of time I think it will be a game that will scratch an itch.