Whether you’re hungry for the crunch of a Roadhog hook and shotgun combo or the snap of Hanzo’s bow, there’s something for every mood.Įvery hero in the game has a counterpart, or a hero specifically designed to get rid of them.

The hero select screen is like your first plate at a buffet. Every match is a new puzzle to solve, because each of the game’s 32 heroes has a distinct style of play. Flexibility and a knowledge of the many interactions between heroes both on your team and the enemy team is paramount. The best players are exceptional decisionmakers, not simply adept at aim and raw reflexes. The players behind these characters don’t have to employ traditional shooter skills, instead working only to disrupt them. Tank heroes like Reinhardt and support heroes like Mercy complicate the act of securing a kill. Unlike most shooters that ask you to express yourself on a purely equal playing field, Overwatch asks you to express yourself on a deliberately unequal playing field.īlizzard’s shooter values a mix of skills and makes nontraditional ones like protection and healing essential in any match. This clash of vast strengths and vast weaknesses demands creative strategies in order to win a match. Except Overwatch heroes don’t exist in a vacuum they exist in a six-versus-six environment where they are kept in check by other heroes with similarly outrageous powers. In a vacuum, fighting any one of its characters is like fighting a boss battle in a game where you’re under-leveled. Overwatch is a competitive shooter, but its definition of balance is vastly different from the many shooters that came before it, as well as the games it’s inspired since its 2016 release. The winner is the one who gets away with the most ridiculous combination of futuristic abilities and successfully escorts a truck or defends a point. Sometimes they fight a tactical battle over control of a dim London road, and other times it’s a steamroll through a Russian mech facility. If, somehow, you’ve never played it, there’s a DJ who heals his allies with music and a gorilla from the moon that pummels enemies off the map. Instead, characters throw an entire periodic table of projectiles and abilities at each other for 10 minutes, and then do it again. Unlike other hero-based shooters, the game, which turned 5 years old this month, has some heroes who don’t even have guns.

Overwatch tik tok song