Game Modes
Overwatch currently provides four different game modes. Escort, which has an attacking team trying to take down a payload as it moves to it’s objective point, whilst the defending team try and halt the attackers’ assault until time runs out; Assault, which has two teams vying for control over critical objectives; Assault/Escort, a mix between Escort and Assault where the attacking team must initially capture a critical objective and secondly move a payload to a delivery point; and Control, which has two teams fighting over a series of objectives in a best of three format. The first team to reach one-hundred percent wins the round.
Some gamers might feel a bit disappointed that there’s no basic deathmatch/team deathmatch. However, by creating a host of characters that act more as heroes than backgroundless mercenaries, implementing a mindless mode that only relies on killing the enemy team as much as possible would take a lot away from the experience. Giving the characters/heroes special objectives to accomplish sticks to the story behind Overwatch and does each and every hero’s personality justice.
Being told you don’t have enough of something on your team can be the difference between epic win and epic fail.
Out of the twenty-one heroes to choose from, they’re all split into four different roles. Offence, defence, support and tank. Offence excel at dealing damage, defence can prevent the enemy from moving onwards, support provides advantages to the team, and tank can soak up a lot of damage.
What I find interesting with Overwatch is when you land yourself into a game and it’s time to choose your character, there are “Team Tips” that inform everyone what your team is missing. Perhaps everyone has chosen to play defence by choosing Bastion. So what the game does is informs you that you have too many defence units and not enough support, or not enough snipers etc. A very interesting and handy mechanic that can help lead a team to victory.
Along with Quick Play, Vs A.I. etc., you can also choose to take part in the Arcade/Weekly Brawl. This is similar to the Tavern Brawl you see in Hearthstone where specific conditions are set. Some conditions might be extra or less health per character, quicker Ultimate Ability charging or shorter ability cooldown timers. Being a weekly brawl, expect to see some fun different game modes to play in each week.
The Story
Some gorgeous artwork to go along with the story excerpt.
As I mentioned earlier, Overwatch isn’t just a typical, mindless online shooter. Each character has their own back story, and the game itself has it’s own story and lore to go with it. Please find an excerpt from the Overwatch Wiki page:
The story of Overwatch starts in a highly fictionalized version of future Earth, where humans and robots known as the Omnics existed together. The peace did not last; the omniums producing the omnics went rogue and began constructing militarized robots to stage an uprising. To fight back, the United Nations found the most elite soldiers from around the world and formed the peacekeeping force known as Overwatch.
Their job was to save earth from the rogue omnics, which they did quite successfully. Over the next 30 years, Overwatch grew to be a vast coalition of the world’s top soldiers and scientists. Though it was revered across the planet, as time went on accusations of human rights abuses and internal conspiracy tore the organization apart. Now, with terrorism rampant, inequality commonplace, and corrupt companies unchecked, one thing is clear: the world needs heroes.
To accompany the release of Overwatch, Blizzard released a few animated shorts to provide a bit of background about each character. Please find the current releases below: