Why Overwatch is perfect for the non-FPS player.

I’ve never been a big fan of first person shooters. Not because I’m not interested in first person shooters as a genre, or that I class all FPS’s under the Call Of Duty-umbrella (a rather large, brown and green brolly). Rather, there are two reasons that I’ve never been able to jump onto the FPS-train.

Firstly, I missed the metaphorical FPS train when I was younger. I have rather strong memories of being back in the sweaty grey changing rooms during P.E. lessons surrounded by friends talking about how excited they were to buy the new COD (Modern Warfare 2, if you must know). I on the other hand had only just begun to play games, and so was itching to get home and play mariokart, because I was that kid. You know the one — the self-professed “nintendo fanboy”, the one who bought the Official Nintendo Magazine (of which I still own issues from September 2008, through to July 2014. I know. I’m very cool.). Due to this slight Nintendo obsession, I never really played any First Person Shooters, and as such when it came around to them, I was utterly and completely terrible.

In fact, the number of semi-traditional First Person Shooters I’ve played to a level where I can confidently talk about them (ignoring stuff like walking simulators and First Person Puzzlers like Portal) comes to the grand total of two — Tribes Ascend and Planetside 2. Planetside was for a few reasons; namely friends, the incredible scale, and the fact I could main healer and shoot next to zero bullets. Tribes was slightly more complicated — the only class I tended to play was pathfinder — skiing and flying at ridiculous speeds whilst finding and learning the most efficient paths to flags and dodging bullets was a stupid amount of fun. I have a lot of stories from Tribes — something I keep meaning to write about.

Secondly, I was never very good with violence in games, or any media. The mass destruction in End Of The World films still continues to make me anxious, and I can barely bring myself to shoot or kill NPCs or characters that possess any form of character in games — something that regrettably has rendered some games close to unplayable. An example of this is the Bioshock trilogy — something I bought when on sale then was unable to even get past the first few levels due to the uncomfortable level of violence. Realistic or consequential violence tends to make me very uncomfortable.

So with these two in mind — realistic/consequential violence and being a near beginner to First Person Shooters, how is Overwatch good for people like me?

First of all, let's talk violence. One of the more striking things about Overwatch (and a current trend that AAA developers all seem to suddenly be rushing towards) is its visual style. The cartoony, pixar-like animations, the bright colours and brilliantly full characters all scream “FUN” at you. Everywhere you look, in the map design themselves, in the mechanics of the characters and how they contextually fit, in the voice lines and the modelling of the weapons and effects, everything is happy and fun — the complete opposite to realistic violence.

This is, needless to say, a refreshing change to the previous generation of shooters — the past generation of the Xbox 360 and PS3 could almost be characterised by gritty, realistic, mature shooters — the hallmark of brown, grey and black melding into one muddy mess, paired with the classic jam-on-the-screen blood effect. Overwatch completely and utterly ignores all of these tropes, and is all the more enjoyable for it.

A prominent example that Overwatch uses is the lack of a pained animation. When I hit someone, instead of blood effects appearing (whether subtle or over the top), I simply just hit them and move on. There’s no blood-splatters on the floor, no pained cry from your enemy, Overwatch just gets on with it. The other, prominent example within Overwatch is the detachment from reality that it brings. With definite Nintendo-family-friendly vibes oozing from Overwatch, all of the colour and pixar feel helped to remove myself from actually being there and instead reduced the anxiety and uncomfortable feelings gained from playing some of the more stereotypical First Person Shooters.

Secondly, how does Overwatch help complete beginners get used to First Person Shooters? Simply, generous hitboxes, a brilliant, subtle feedback system and a lack of pressure. In Overwatch’s tutorial, you play as Soldier 76 — one of the easiest heroes to get to grips with. Soldier 76 is a brilliant introduction to Overwatch’s mechanics — he’s speedy, easy to aim with, and has just enough variety within his mechanics to keep you on your toes.

Overwatch also refuses to give you access to competitive mode until you’re level 25 — at which point you will be slightly experienced. In doing this, Overwatch near-forces you to play quick matches — games which have no real consequence on your rating, apart from a positive one in more experience. Most pressure to do well is off, albeit you still have your team to be held accountable to, and if you win you get more experience. Instead, you can just concentrate on finding out how each hero works, how their mechanics interact with each other and work out deeper levels of playing (such as learning maps, counters and working with verticality).

This, combined with the friendly aesthetic, means that most of Overwatch is not at all pressurised, instead providing a beautifully warm, “feel-good” vibe. Overwatch’s hitboxes and feedback add to all of this. Whilst the hitboxes aren’t so big that it feels unfair, they’re big enough so that if you point at your enemy and pull the trigger, you’re guaranteed to hit (unless he blocks). Add on top of this the hitmarkers and sounds and it is a pleasure to play. If you just hit someone, a grey hitmarker appears, along with a typical hit “sound”. However, if you hit someone somewhere that causes critical damage, the hitmarker becomes red and a higher pitch noise is heard. I know that Overwatch isn’t the first to do this, but, in a true blizzard fashion, it is stupidly satisfying in action.

I came to Overwatch fairly new to First Person Shooters, and not expecting to really like it (The reason I bought it was that I had about five different people trying to get me to play it). However, Blizzard has created such a wonderfully satisfying feel good shooter that is almost non-violent. They’re not the first to do a “family-friendly” shooter (two examples I can think of, off the top of my head are Plants vs Zombies and Splatoon), but they’ve executed it in such a Blizzard way — massive, and incredibly polished.