The Overwatch Beta Ended...

And now I have nothing to play... But to be honest, when I first played the game during the open beta, the game was rage inducing. I kept getting killed by what I thought were cheap kills. But after giving it some time (3 hours of raging and dying in game), I finally got better at Overwatch (better, not good, there's a difference). In the beginning, I had a bit of a problem. Do I try all the heroes (and possibly not enjoy the game at all), or do I stick with a few heroes, get the hang of them and possibly kick butt (I did the latter).

I have been hyped up about Overwatch ever since the first trailer came out. Such a new look for a Blizzard game (more cartoon-ish and a first-person shooter too), and also Pixar level animation. Then, the characters were shown, as gameplay overviews, and more hyped built up. And as hard as I tried pressing that sign-up for beta button, I never got invites to the closed beta, until the open beta was announced, and I decided, "Hey, I have decent internet speed which means I could probably play it before the beta ends." I enjoy first-person shooter games a lot so this was also pretty much a must for me.

So, you start off the game with this loading screen. No, you don't get McCree staring at you every time you start the game, random heroes appear each time. You get "HIGHLIGHTS" only get after a few exceptional games and you can go through each one. This is a very nice feature, from which you can view (and also screen record if you forgot to) your best plays in every game (if you perform that is). You have several modes, Quick Play, Vs. AI, Custom Games and Weekly Brawl. I basically spent most of my time on the open beta in Quick Play, cause I wanted to get the best feel of the game.

"Dooo dooo do bee do"

The first character I actually took the time to practice and master was Bastion. To be honest, the moment I saw his gameplay overview, I wanted this character to be my main. However, the way Overwatch works is each player in the team has to play a role. Bastion falls under the category of a defense character because he can hold points very well. And true to that he does. He plays mostly like a normal gunner in recon mode, but press shift and he transforms into a turret, which just begs you to spray hot lead at targets. Probably the most played character (many people use him as well), but that's to be expected because of his simple playstyle.

Being able to repair up without looking for a health pack also makes him relatively easy to play. Take too much damage, find a safe spot and repair up, then get back in the fight. He can also repair while in turret mode, which makes it so that you have to kill him quickly when you find him defending a point. However, you can't repair with firing or moving, so you are a sitting duck while doing it, and being able to do so would be very unfair. Also, they remove the shield from him when in turret mode, which is a logical move, he is very hard to kill even without it.

"Time to raise my APM!"

Second on the list was McCree. But I'm so bad at using him I'll skip to third... but make it seem like she's second. I practiced D.Va because... reasons... Well, not really. She falls under the tank category, which makes her great for holding a point or trying to capture a point which is filled with enemies. And most of the time, I get paired with people who like to choose the "cool" characters, ie. Tracer, Soldier 76, McCree, or Pharah. The team ends up being too offensive, and the game even recommends a more balanced team. So I chose D.Va because, well I did say reasons.

The main mistake I made with D.Va was playing her like a medium-ranged or long-ranged character. She is only effective at closer ranges, which allows her auto-shotty cannons to deal a lot of damage. However, once your HP gets lowered to 0, instead of dying and waiting to respawn, you eject from the mech and play as D.Va herself. She plays very different then, from tanky to extremely squishy, from close range to medium or far-range. You then try and build up your ultimate "Q" to get your Mech back. With the Mech your ultimate ability is self-destruct, which upon activating makes you eject from the Mecha and it explodes shortly after. This was extremely fun to use, especially since you can boost the Mech before ejecting to keep the Mech moving, and man does it do a lot of damage. D.Va was fun once I got used to playing her, and also knowing to use her defensive matrix ability, which allows her to soak up a lot of shots.

At the end of a game, the play of the game is shown. This guy owned us as Bastion. The game was to capture a point, and this dude was so incredibly annoying to get by.

After the game ends, this screen appears after showing you the play of the game. This is where honourable mentions of other players in the game who have contributed significantly, and allows you to commend them, even the enemy team! I kind of like this (especially when people upvote you) as it shows how people think about your performance.

"It's high noon somewhere in the world..."

And now... McCree... I have not been blessed with the skill to play this guy. Like seriously, I get wrecked (REKT) so hard every time I decide to give this guy a chance. But man, to get wrecked playing this guy and also get beaten by someone else playing him is extremely infuriating... So, not going to talk much about this guy.

"I have opened the path!"

I never excepted to enjoy Symmetra as much as I did but man, she is quite awesome. However, playing as her does take off the need to go completely offensive. She mainly excels at defending a location due to her being able to put sentry turrets however she can still take down foes with her really close range left click or really slow moving charge up right click charge attack.

But the reason why I enjoyed playing as her was the switch of playstyle. You start to worry more about positioning your turrets at good locations to take an enemy by surprise near the objective, as well as keeping your allies shielded. And her ultimate might be the most boring, but it's incredibly helpful as it allows your allies to get back in the action very quickly. Your allies will always appreciate a good Symmetra, even if it's just for the teleporter (position it so that it's safe that's all).

Even got honourable mention for sentry turret kills, muhuhu~

And now the character I probably spent the most time on : Soldier 76. I won't lie, the reason why I spent the most time playing this character was because of how comfortable I was playing him. I played a lot of Blacklight Retribution, and he plays just like those kind of first person shooters. It was also because of how versatile he is as an offensive character, and also his (in my opinion) overpowered ultimate ability, you basically wreck your enemies if you are fairly capable in an FPS. 

But, that was the reason put him in as a character. You can very easily take him down by using other characters (in my case it was that McCree), however, you have something to fall back on after if you keep losing trying out other characters. His ultimate ability does not do all the aiming for you. You still need to aim your crosshairs close to the target you want to take down or else in the event of more than 3 characters in your sights, the auto-aim goes crazy if you don't focus on a target.

Overwatch's rating system focuses on many different stats and not just number of kills. However, usually for play of the game, it is number of kills. But I like the move of focus to overall play. I mean, characters like Mercy, or Zenyatta excel in healing allies or boosting the damage they do, hence, how would such characters get kills. Symmetra and Torbjorn excel at defending locations, with their respective turrets, or armour supplied.

You can also view your profile overview, and as you can see, I did try other characters, I just wasn't good at them (never got the hang of Genji as cool as he was).

And now the Loot Boxes. You get a Loot Box after you level up, and your level cap is infinite if I'm not mistaken, you could possibly get every character customization just by playing the game... a lot... The drops range from Heroic Intros, Victory Poses, Colour or Character customization, Emotes, Spray Patterns and Quotes. In the screenshot above, I got an emote, a new quote, and 2 spray patterns. You will never get duplicates, as if you get a duplicate, you'll be awarded in-game currency instead equivalent to the price of the customization you would have gotten, and then, you can buy more customizations!

You view all the customizations you unlock through the Hero Gallery and they nicely list how many you have unlocked for each character. It's almost funny, how I got the most unlocks for the 2 characters I don't play much, Reinhardt and... ugh... McCree...

An example of the different Heroic Poses (poses that play during the highlights of the game). I actually spent my in-game currency for Bastion's heroic pose on the last day of the Open Beta, since I would lose it after the beta ended.

 Above are some of the different colours or customizations for D.Va. I do like the Scavenger D.Va model. Looks much better in my opinion.

I thoroughly enjoyed playing Overwatch during the open beta. However, I worry that after buying this game, I won't spend as much time with it as I should (spend so much time playing Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2, so Overwatch has quite a record beat). Now to save money to buy this...





Farid