Overwatch: The Ultimate Hero Shooter?

Overwatch is a game that has revolutionized the world of gaming by combining the strategy and hero aspect of MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena) games with the shooting mechanics and fast paced action of FPS (first-person shooter) games. But how important is this? And what else does Overwatch have to offer? In this review I will be grading Overwatch on a scale of 1-10 in four categories: Innovation, Teamwork, Basic Mechanics, and Pro League.

First off is innovation. Overwatch takes a new approach to first person shooters by implementing a high level of ability/teamwork based strategy that is generally only seen in MOBA games such as League of Legends and Dota 2. The basics of this strategy are this: each team has six players. Each player chooses one of 29 characters, each with their own abilities and weapons. It's worth noting that "Hero Shooters" like this already exist, but Overwatch has revolutionized the genre by bringing diverse characters, smooth graphics and gameplay and backstory. The heroes fall into one of three categories: Tank, Damage and Support. Tanks have high health but low damage, damages have high damage/mobility but less health, and support doesn't have the damage or health of the other two categories but can heal other players. You can't pick the same hero as anyone else on your team, and this forces your team to use potent combinations to take down your enemies. Not enough tanks and your team will simply die easily, not enough damages and you won't be able to kill anyone, not enough supports and your frontlines will go down too quickly. This combination of strategy and teamwork makes for a game that is simultaneously pretty simple and also very complicated at the same time. This level of strategy is almost unheard of in multiplayer games and is probably only rivaled by Team Fortress 2 and Rainbow Six Siege, which has a very different style. I give Overwatch a 7/10 for innovation, because it hasn't actually created hero shooters but rather progressed them.

As I said previously teamwork is a huge aspect of Overwatch, and I believe it requires its own category. The six players on each team are always made up of humans: there are no bots. There are two ways to queue up for a game; you can solo queue, where you get grouped with five teammates that you don't know, or you can get people that you know in your group (or party, as its called by most games and gamers) before you queue, which will put them in your team with you, and the rest of the team will be filled by random teammates. I  highly advise playing with people that you know that know what they're doing whenever possible. For some games, having a good team can make it boring as they kind of take over and leave little to no action for you, but in Overwatch teamwork, communication and strategy are key, all of which are made infinitely easier when you're working with people you know. Solo queuing can be extremely frustrating, as getting paired with people who don't know what they're doing is pretty common. Considering this, I'm giving Overwatch a 7/10. This is mostly personal bias as I rarely find people to play Overwatch with and am therefore stuck playing with randoms most of the time.

Overwatch has a unique way of approaching basic mechanics, and it has to because of the differences between heroes. Each hero has a different weapon and different abilities from Soldier 76's fairly conventional assault rifle to D.va's rotating shotgun/Gatling guns to Hanzo's bow. This means that there really aren't many universal mechanics beyond walking, jumping and crouching. Even sprinting, which is a staple of most modern first/third person shooter games, has been consigned to one of Soldier 76's abilities. Most heroes have some similarities, however: a couple of abilities, a weapon of some sort, and an ultimate ability. Some characters also have an alternate fire (right click on PC, left trigger on Xbox/PS4) that fires something different from the normal weapon. I'm going to use Soldier 76 as an example for this. For Soldier 76 his standard fire is a pretty generic assault rifle that can't scope in. His alternate fire fires three small grenades in a tight spiral that deals good damage to whatever they hit, but they take time to get to their target and are somewhat easy to dodge. His first ability is the sprint that I mentioned earlier, where he lowers his gun and moves faster. His other ability sets down a small healing station much like the ones in The Division, which heals him over time while he's within the radius, until it runs out. Finally, there's his ultimate. Ultimate abilities take time to charge, and do so by default, but also charge faster when you are dealing damage. Soldier 76's ultimate causes his bullets to auto track to an enemy near his cross hairs, essentially giving him auto aim for a limited time. This unique ability system can most closely be compared to MOBA games like Dota 2 and League of Legends, which is why Overwatch is often considered to be a cross between FPS and MOBA games. This combination is incredibly fun, and surprisingly smooth to use. It takes time to learn the intricacies of each hero, some of which aren't stated explicitly by the game (such as Genji's double jump ability), but overall I love this hero-shooter style that Overwatch has popularized, streamlined and perfected. 9/10

Overwatch's teamwork and strategy style was just begging for a pro scene from the beginning. Both MOBA games and FPS-teamwork games are saturated with active pro scenes, and it was a natural step that any hero shooter with even a moderately good amount of popularity and income would form a pro league. Blizzard, the developers of Overwatch, announced that they would be forming OWL, also known as the Overwatch League, in 2016. Twelve teams were announced throughout 2017, and the teams played the first season from January to June 2018. In the postseason Blizzard announced eight expansion teams. This Pro League is still relatively small on the grand scale (compared to games like Counter Strike and League of Legends) but is growing and progressing constantly, and has a huge potential to be the next big Pro League. That said, popularity for Overwatch is definitely dimming, though OWL's playoffs got a peak viewership of 1.2 million viewers. I personally think that Overwatch will become the next big pro league, for a couple of reasons that I will get into in another blog. Blizzard's support and the popularity of this game has jump-started OWL and combine this good start with continued support from Blizzard and I'm going to give OWL a 8/10.

In summary, Overwatch gets a high seven. It's a very good game (provided you play with friends) and Blizzard has shown that they will continue to support it. I'm excited to see where Overwatch will be in two to three years.