Overwatch 2 Review
need to know
what is it? Sci-fi 5 on 5 hero shooter set in the near future on Earth.
expect to pay Play for free
release date: October 4
Developer: snowstorm
Publisher: Activision Blizzard
Comment on: RTX 3080, Ryzen 9 3900X, 32GB RAM
multiplayer game? Yes
Association: Official website(opens in a new tab)
Every cell in my brain is trying to determine why Overwatch 2 is a sequel.
As the free-to-play successor to Blizzard’s 2016 hero shooter (which also replaced the original), Overwatch 2 is both exciting and retrograde. It’s an exciting new reason to play a game that’s shaped the modern shooter and see why nothing has beaten it for the past six years. But its biggest changes and intrusive monetization system could drain its fun to nothing.
The biggest advantage of Overwatch 2 is that it is still Overwatch. Behind all the updated menus, battle passes, challenges and redesigned maps is a game that showcases an alternative FPS where various skills are recognized and rewarded. As much as it stacks up, Blizzard isn’t hiding the most daring aspects of the original game.
Overwatch 2 is 1.5x the speed of Overwatch 1. It’s the same game, but compressed. Two teams compete for a goal in beautifully rendered near-future locations around the world. Each side has a tank hero, two damage dealers, and two supports. It’s an FPS format, but the game unfolds a little differently than most other shooters. Both teams battle for space on the map with all their hero powers and ultimates. Charged tanks, backed by their support team and DPS, use this aggression to punish their enemies for mistakes, whether they get into critical strike range or make themselves vulnerable by abusing all their abilities .
The predictable rhythm of the game has distorted, losing detail in the process.
Team fights are a resource exchange, interrupted by powerful ultimates that push them in new directions. Unlike instant firefights or massive sniper duels, Overwatch combat urges you to think of it as chess. Elimination is the result of predicting and punishing the opponent’s next move. And when you can’t, slow kill times (extended by support and tanks) give you room to react.
Overwatch 2 takes the game’s timeline and squeezes it. Its chaotic combat breaks out and ends slightly, but noticeably faster than in the original game. The complexity of teamwork in Overwatch 1 has been reduced through a plethora of changes that allow heroes to solve problems on their own and enhance selfish play. Many heroes of all characters can move around the map faster and deal more damage than ever before. Collaborative strategy still matters — and still replaces individual performance — but the predictable rhythm of the game has distorted, losing detail in the process.
damage control
Overwatch 2 left both teams in a bind. Tanks that were once designed to complement each other have evolved into the boss equivalent of Dark Souls. Orisa used to sit behind the barrier shield, spewing suppressive fire, and using her pause ability to pull people out of position. She was built as the core of a team, with a sub-tank hovering around her to cover the flanks and declination. Now, she’s shieldless, ridiculously resilient, and armed with a spear. Like many Overwatch characters—two of the Japanese heroes are ninjas, the Korean hero is an eSports player, and one of the black heroes Doomfist is a majestic villain—Orisa has become a different kind of Stereotype(Opens in a new tab), which references the young black inventor who created her in Africa, a recent version of the game. She is no longer Numbani’s protector; she is the aggressor. Orisa and most other tanks, if you let them do almost as much damage as DPS heroes, and they can usually turn the tide of battle on their own.
The support changes aren’t as drastic, but new hero Kiriko hints that the character is heading in a similar direction. Many supports are now closer to MOBA designs, where you can debuff enemies and occasionally block or soften incoming attacks more often than heals. Kiriko isn’t a pure healer like Mercy or Moira, she’s a support, she teleports and climbs walls around the map, looking for targets that can swing her Kunai for DPS-level headshot headshot damage. Likewise, when I played Ana, the sniper healer, I found that splitting damage and healing more evenly than in the first game. Just like tanks, if a support is in a good position and capable of shooting, they can pretty much single-handedly complete a teamfight.
The DPS category continues this trend. They are stripped of crowd control and have their gear sharpened for maximum damage output. Cassidy loses the flashbang for countering fast flankers because it’s a sticky and homing magnetic grenade that only deals a ton of damage when fired. Fort can now move in his devastating turret form, which was what made him most unique before. Sombra is a hero who provides her team info while her stealth and timed skills disable hacking, allowing her team to follow up, and now has a 40% personal damage buff to hacked targets, which can be done on its own all of these. Overwatch 2 forgoes friction, as this ability provides a flat increase to a hero’s damage output. As frustrating as being hacked by Sombra in Overwatch 1, it’s a necessary tool for a hero who wasn’t designed to be an assassin. Much of Overwatch 2 is designed to minimize non-lethal abilities while complementing the player’s proficiency in controlling the crosshair. This focus on aiming as the most important and “fair” skill simplifies the game’s combat and filters out the creativity of its DPS heroes.
Diluted
(Image credit: Tyler C. / Activision Blizzard)
As the synergistic but unique characters in Overwatch 2’s roster begin to integrate, the need for teamwork is diminished. Most rosters in games these days are designed to eliminate enemy teams as quickly as possible. The most skilled players of the original Overwatch are already playing this way. The Overwatch League and Top 500 competitions showcase the deadliest heroes in the hands of players who are held back by the way the game uses non-traditional FPS abilities to add friction to every battle. Over the past few years, the balance of Overwatch has started to favor heroes like Cassidy, Echo, and Soldier: 76, who can send opponents back to the respawn chamber in seconds, rather than Junkrat, Order Slow heroes like Light and Genji rely on their teammates to create opportunities. Now, with comprehensive balance changes and powerful passive character bonuses for most heroes, Overwatch 2 has fully standardized playstyles for nearly every skill level.
In the process, the strengths and weaknesses of the most unique heroes are blurred so they are more similar. The Bastion’s mobile turret form mirrors the Soldier: 76’s run-and-gun style, the Doomfist as a super mobile tank is a copy of Winston, and the Angel can now glide in all directions to keep up with other supports with an unstable new metering system . Many heroes have so much high mobility and high lethality that they are already self-sufficient. Tanks and support used to operate on the fringes of Overwatch’s core FPS framework, complicating firefights with lifesaving and destructive capabilities that had to be addressed. Now, tanks and supports fight in the arena just like everyone else, and their unique abilities are just footnotes to the game’s legend.
Overwatch 2 sold the illusion that to win, you had to carry your team.
All of these changes make Overwatch 2 a more approachable game than the first, and more immediately rewarding as a single player. You can join, choose a hero, and get a quick overview of your role on the team. However, with everyone racing against the clock, the importance of counter-attacking is downplayed – you can almost always simply eliminate the enemy team faster. Heroes who used to be controlled by stuns and other crowd control abilities, like Genji, can now cut into a team before they even knew he was in the game. When two teams run out of power and resources to gain an advantage in combat, calls and responses between them often split into one- or two-person skirmishes around the map. Objective mode feels like a deathmatch. Most games end like I’m walking out of a concert with buzzing ears and shaking hands. It’s all adrenaline and there’s little time to think.
Every battle in Overwatch 2 is an audition to be the protagonist, the hero who steals the spotlight and grabs the spotlight. It doesn’t always happen; sometimes it’s really a whole team effort, but everything depends on a single player. Increased chances mean less strategic depth. Overwatch’s design benefits from its jagged heroes and characters that lock together like a puzzle. Angel’s damage boost amplifies the threat of Pharah in the sky, distracting enemy teams so she can enter. When a glass cannon hero like Tracer swoops in, the Wrecking Ball’s ability to withstand massive attacks can drain the enemy team’s resources to assassinate low-health targets.
Overwatch 2’s relentless rhythm doesn’t emphasize this kind of strategic play as an alternative to teamwork that interests players more than mechanical acumen’s victories, but rather causes these interactions to occur so frequently on both teams. occur so that their effects are neutralized in discordant play. In too many engagements, it takes far longer to research your opponent and find bugs than it would take to use your opponent first and win with a surprise attack. Overwatch 2 lets you tweak the layers of strategy and leave it all up to reaction. When you find the right opportunities at the right time and execute them, you will be rewarded as if you had done it alone.
Even if this isn’t technically true — seasoned players can recognize how teamwork leads to victory — it illustrates how much Overwatch 2 masks the subtle dynamics of team play and encourages players to chase their own “Breakout” moment. In the absence of any clear teamwork metrics, whether through the game’s new in-game scoreboard or the same old post-game clips, Overwatch 2 is selling the illusion that to win, you have to Lead your team.
daily grind
(Image credit: Tyler C. / Activision Blizzard)
This individualism in Overwatch 2 fuels its new reverse monetization program. Overwatch 2 heroes are no longer instantly available to everyone like they were in the first game. New accounts start with a handful of heroes and must play around 100 games to unlock the rest, while current players need to reach level 55 out of 80 in the free battle pass to get the latest additions, or spend $10 to get them instantly. By removing the guarantee that everyone can use the same hero, the possibilities for synergy within your team are limited and inconsistent. You have no choice but to play for yourself and hope your team meets you.
To earn XP on Battle Pass and Overwatch Coins to buy cosmetics in the store, you must complete daily, weekly and seasonal challenges. Some of them are as simple as winning a match, while others give you specific goals, like recovering 10,000 health or getting a triple kill. No challenge is so off-topic that you have to grieve to finish, but it’s hard to find motivation to do more than I need to do every day on a night when I have other plans. I’m sure I’m not alone, which makes me worry about which of my teammates are there to grind and which to win. It’s easy enough to get four or five tiers of Battle Pass over a few hours of play, but if you’re going to play against new heroes or grab a customizable Mythic skin, the matches might start to look more like chores than…
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