So it’s been a bit – I’m way behind on my game related posts in general, and definitely when it comes to the Overwatch review.  But here it is, and even though I’m playing on PS4 and not on PC, it’s not a bad game.

It would be better, though, if I was on a PC with a group of players that played regularly.  But I say that about a lot of games.

There was a review that said that Blizzard (the company that makes Overwatch) doesn’t necessarily do anything “new”, they just take what other people do and make it unarguably better.  So it is with Overwatch.  You play one of a number (like 16 or more) characters, that while the character can be classified as one of four classes, each character has their own special abilities, strengths, and weaknesses.  Even within a class of characters, you might find yourself playing different characters differently.  As a small example, since the attacker Tracer can teleport short distances and rewind time for herself and has fast firing pistols, you might play her with a little more caution than you do, say, Soldier 76, since his ammo doesn’t seem to run out quite as quickly, and he can set down a healing field to heal himself up.  To put it another way, Tracer’s built for harassment, popping in and out quickly, whereas Soldier 76 will wear you down and kill you, especially if you don’t deal with him quick or if he’s supported by a shield of some sort.

There are four classes of players in Overwatch: attackers, defenders, tanks, and support.  I won’t bore you with explaining exactly what makes a particular character a tank and not an attacker; you can probably figure that out yourself.  What I will say is that on any map, any game mode, any side (attacking or defending team), the team that does the best will (usually) have a decent balance of the four classes.  Indeed, a support healer (there’s one support character that doesn’t heal) is a must have.

The game itself is not all that greatly organized, in my opinion; for the most part, when you play a game, you’re going to play whatever map (and by extension, game mode) is randomly chosen.  You have (at least as far as I’ve found) no choice to say “I want to play game mode X”.  This really isn’t much of a deal though, since a given map only has one game mode, and the game modes are similar enough to where it doesn’t matter – there’s (for the most part) attacking and defending, with two teams of six.  And even when you’re “attacking”, sometimes you’re defending, depending on the game mode.

So, let’s get the positives out of the way first:

• There’s no way to “Pay To Win”.  The only payment beyond the game itself (or any multiplayer service requirement like PSN) is the possibility to buy customizations for the character (chats, outfits, poses, etc.) that have zero impact on gameplay.  And even then, as you level up, you get the chance to randomly win these customizations, and can make an in game currency to buy ones you really really want, without having to spend real money.
• The characters seem like they’re fairly well balanced.  While some characters can be easier to master than others, and taking the time to master the harder ones can be rewarding, two players of similar skill should be able to compete with one another fairly well.
• There is a “Play vs AI” game mode that pits six players against six AIs set to one of three difficulties.  You can jump into a game fairly easily and not have to worry too much about chatting and strategizing with your teammates, because (at least on Easy and Medium difficulties) the opposing team isn’t necessarily all that clever.
• The character concepts and background stories are interesting and well developed, and it’s interesting to hear the characters chat with one another during game setup.

But there are some negatives:

• It took me a bit to figure out how to mute a teammate (WTF is it with you people and not replacing batteries in smoke detectors?  I mean, come on!) and it takes way too many controller motions/buttons to get to that screen, and it resets every round.
• More aggravatingly, in AI and Quick Play, there’s no limit to the amount of people that can play a particular character on a particular team.  Mind you, I enjoy the videos of people stacking a team with six of a particular character and illustrating how difficult the right six can be to defeat, depending on the game, but there’s nothing more frustrating than picking a particular character, and then a few seconds later, another player or two pointedly ignoring the advice the game gives during character choice, and choosing the same character … especially when it becomes obvious that (even against AI) it’s unlikely your team will win if you’re stacked like that.  That said, Tracer in particular has a game-start chat where she talks to the copy of herself, and it’s funny.
• Now, while that annoyance is removed by Overwatch‘s competitive mode, that mode seems to require even more of a commitment than Rainbow Six: Siege‘s Ranked mode.
• The variation of gameplay suffers a bit (especially on vs AI games) due to the lack of maps.  Compared to Rainbow Six: Seige, even though there aren’t a huge number of maps, each game mode can be played on every map, and where the defending takes place can change, leading to more dynamic gameplay.  On Overwatch, each map has exactly one style of gameplay.  This tends to lead to a lot of “Go here with these two or three characters, put a good support character behind them, and the map is locked down” broken only by “If they do that, use these characters to break the blockage and move forward”.

On the whole, games like Overwatch are infinitely more fun if you find yourself with enough friends that play it around the same time as you (and you all have good comms skills).  If you have that, you might actually want to spend the full price ($60 last I knew for the game).

Otherwise?  Wait.  Probably until it drops significantly.  I have a little buyer’s remorse because I bought it in order to play with a friend who seemed really into it at the time, but is on a different gaming schedule than I am, and we don’t find each other playing together as often as I thought.