Review Edit:
This is still a predatory, cash grabby game that does not deserve the title and promotion of a sequel, but i’ve increased my rating by half a star simply because they have made some solid adjustments, the new heroes are actually quite fun and the balance isn’t bad. I still wish it wasn’t 5 heroes per team and believe it or not I miss 2cp, they could have reworked it slightly to make it more fair on attack by widening choke points or something, I personally don’t think it needed removing entirely. They make it hard to truly like this game but boy is it addictive.
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I have a lot of history with overwatch and have been playing since the beta way back in 2016 when I was 19, from early on I was hooked and spent ages playing it with friends and when their interest died out, mine only grew. At the absolute lowest point of my life, overwatch, bizarrely, kept me sane (which considering that its a stressful and frustrating experience most of the time, is quite surprising).
I have a LOT of thoughts on overwatch and overwatch 2 in general, far too many to list them all (as I often do lmao) and i've expressed them, some good, some bad, among friend groups and communities for literal years. Overwatch has meant a lot to me and despite its only increasingly evident flaws, it was a fundamental escape for me at a time when I was suffering and felt helpless. Because of the hours I poured into this game at a competitive level (around high diamond to low master rank) I became very familiar with the stagnating nature of overwatch and its completely chaotic meta shifts. At launch overwatch was huge and in many ways reinvigorated a genre, it was fresh and fun but with each and every patch & update it became increasingly clear that none of them were fixing its problems or actively improving the experience. Overwatch's entire lifespan was a downhill slope as people got fed up with the same repetitive gameplay, the same tired comps, the same headache inducing choke points and the same shield shooting simulation every time you loaded it up. Like most, I retired from it, around 2019 i'd decided I was wasting my time by still playing it as all my friends had left it and, to add insult to injury, blizzard outright stopped caring about it - farting out carbon copies of the exact same seasonal events, the occasional ugliest cosmetics i've ever seen & still no worthwhile changes to be seen. While I appreciated the overwatch team's forthright approach to communicating changes with the community, said approach felt like throwing shit at the wall and seeing what would stick. For all of overwatch's charm, its colourful vibe and cast of characters and its apparent impact, it just could not follow it up.
The reason why, in a review of overwatch 2 I am talking about overwatch 1 so much is because they are the same game! When it was announced I remember audibly laughing to myself because it felt like a joke, it was announced not long after i'd fully given it up and after seeing the game stagnate, it was getting a sequel. Except it clearly wasn't a sequel, its a title thrown onto overwatch with a coat of paint and a laughable lack of new content. The main difference was to be a new focus on pve modes, which remains to be seen, and the visual changes to its cast of characters are absolutely cringe worthy - add a couple accessories, give them a beard or a hat or something then call it a day.
This is pretty much the result of constant failures on blizzard's front - disturbing scandals, walkouts, a complete lack of organisation and a real lack of new ideas and creativity. On top of that I do think overwatch 2 is the kind of game that corporate executives and investors eat up - a free to play 'games as a service' platform, a battle pass system to unlock content that used to be completely free and what feels like the bare minimum in terms of content and scope to merit a so called 'sequel' - when it could easily have been one extra large update or even remaster of overwatch 1. I'm particularly peeved that even though I transferred all of my hard earned unlocks from my many many hours in overwatch 1 - it didn't carry over my credits. Credits are now excessively valuable where they were once expendable and easily obtained just by playing casually. Not to mention the costs to purchase them with real money - £16 / $20 for ONE legendary skin, are you actually having a laugh hahaha. Besides I feel like most of the new skins are horrendous.
Anyway yeah overwatch 2 is a joke and deserves its negative public reception - its still decently fun at its best moments because its fundamentally still overwatch, but its past its sell by date and playing it now feels like opening up an old wound and that is just sad. Blizzard has tarnished their own reputation and to see them come back from it would be practically miraculous. It would be nice to see new ideas and new game modes that aren't just more of the same shit but more of the same shit is what they do best and i'm growing out of it.
This is still a predatory, cash grabby game that does not deserve the title and promotion of a sequel, but i’ve increased my rating by half a star simply because they have made some solid adjustments, the new heroes are actually quite fun and the balance isn’t bad. I still wish it wasn’t 5 heroes per team and believe it or not I miss 2cp, they could have reworked it slightly to make it more fair on attack by widening choke points or something, I personally don’t think it needed removing entirely. They make it hard to truly like this game but boy is it addictive.
-
I have a lot of history with overwatch and have been playing since the beta way back in 2016 when I was 19, from early on I was hooked and spent ages playing it with friends and when their interest died out, mine only grew. At the absolute lowest point of my life, overwatch, bizarrely, kept me sane (which considering that its a stressful and frustrating experience most of the time, is quite surprising).
I have a LOT of thoughts on overwatch and overwatch 2 in general, far too many to list them all (as I often do lmao) and i've expressed them, some good, some bad, among friend groups and communities for literal years. Overwatch has meant a lot to me and despite its only increasingly evident flaws, it was a fundamental escape for me at a time when I was suffering and felt helpless. Because of the hours I poured into this game at a competitive level (around high diamond to low master rank) I became very familiar with the stagnating nature of overwatch and its completely chaotic meta shifts. At launch overwatch was huge and in many ways reinvigorated a genre, it was fresh and fun but with each and every patch & update it became increasingly clear that none of them were fixing its problems or actively improving the experience. Overwatch's entire lifespan was a downhill slope as people got fed up with the same repetitive gameplay, the same tired comps, the same headache inducing choke points and the same shield shooting simulation every time you loaded it up. Like most, I retired from it, around 2019 i'd decided I was wasting my time by still playing it as all my friends had left it and, to add insult to injury, blizzard outright stopped caring about it - farting out carbon copies of the exact same seasonal events, the occasional ugliest cosmetics i've ever seen & still no worthwhile changes to be seen. While I appreciated the overwatch team's forthright approach to communicating changes with the community, said approach felt like throwing shit at the wall and seeing what would stick. For all of overwatch's charm, its colourful vibe and cast of characters and its apparent impact, it just could not follow it up.
The reason why, in a review of overwatch 2 I am talking about overwatch 1 so much is because they are the same game! When it was announced I remember audibly laughing to myself because it felt like a joke, it was announced not long after i'd fully given it up and after seeing the game stagnate, it was getting a sequel. Except it clearly wasn't a sequel, its a title thrown onto overwatch with a coat of paint and a laughable lack of new content. The main difference was to be a new focus on pve modes, which remains to be seen, and the visual changes to its cast of characters are absolutely cringe worthy - add a couple accessories, give them a beard or a hat or something then call it a day.
This is pretty much the result of constant failures on blizzard's front - disturbing scandals, walkouts, a complete lack of organisation and a real lack of new ideas and creativity. On top of that I do think overwatch 2 is the kind of game that corporate executives and investors eat up - a free to play 'games as a service' platform, a battle pass system to unlock content that used to be completely free and what feels like the bare minimum in terms of content and scope to merit a so called 'sequel' - when it could easily have been one extra large update or even remaster of overwatch 1. I'm particularly peeved that even though I transferred all of my hard earned unlocks from my many many hours in overwatch 1 - it didn't carry over my credits. Credits are now excessively valuable where they were once expendable and easily obtained just by playing casually. Not to mention the costs to purchase them with real money - £16 / $20 for ONE legendary skin, are you actually having a laugh hahaha. Besides I feel like most of the new skins are horrendous.
Anyway yeah overwatch 2 is a joke and deserves its negative public reception - its still decently fun at its best moments because its fundamentally still overwatch, but its past its sell by date and playing it now feels like opening up an old wound and that is just sad. Blizzard has tarnished their own reputation and to see them come back from it would be practically miraculous. It would be nice to see new ideas and new game modes that aren't just more of the same shit but more of the same shit is what they do best and i'm growing out of it.