Overwatch
And of course, finally, we have Overwatch. Nothing this year — nothing in the last few years — has been like Overwatch for me. It’s been kind of hard for me to even come up with just one angle to tackle this game from, so instead I’m just going to ramble about every random thing that comes to mind until I feel like it’s enough. It’s just so good.
I tend to have main games that become my fallback when nothing else catches my eye: the Hearthstones and Dark Souls, ones that I can come home to after work and just play around with for a bit, the stuff I do when nothing else in or out of video games feels appealing to me. Obviously, Overwatch is one of those games. With a huge roster of unique characters, on any given night I can decide I want to play completely differently than usual, pick up a new character, and spend hours having a totally new experience. It keeps itself so fresh, it’s incredible. The game rewards quick reflexes, but it also rewards tactical thinking, good positioning, and truly understanding how your character works. It requires you to communicate with your team, often total randos, for better and for worse.
But really, all that isn’t all that makes Overwatch special. It’s a lot, sure, but the game’s appeal comes from far more than mechanics. It’s a social phenomenon. While a lot of writing has been done about Pokemon Go creating new social groups and modes of interaction, I’ve seen a lot less about Overwatch, even though it has one of the largest, most active Discord servers in existence (/r/Overwatch, at over 42,000 users). The whole community of players has jokes about poor Mercies trying to keep their team alive and Hanjos breaking rails. At a more personal level, my current main Discord started very small but more than doubled in size thanks to Overwatch. Even a year later, some of us play together almost every night, sometimes for competitive, sometimes just to fuck around. Whatever people feel like, they can usually find it in Overwatch.
Overwatch is the perfect social activity. You communicate tactical info during the game, but chat about your day or make jokes while waiting for the round to start. With so many characters almost everyone finds a niche that they enjoy, so no one feels like they’re just along for the ride.
And even more, what Overwatch has that so many other big AAA games these days don’t, is optimism. In a year that’s been so gross and awful for just about everyone, in a medium that gave us Aiden Pearce, Iconic Action Hero, Overwatch is a ray of hope and positivity that is such a breath of fresh air. The writing is simplistic, corny, Saturday Morning Cartoon-y, but doesn’t take itself too seriously. I can’t help but laugh every time I kill a Reaper and get this beautiful line:
The characters are all so full of life, with an incredible amount of care put into their design, animation, and voice acting to make each and every character feel powerful, or playful, or menacing. The cast of characters is incredibly diverse, and while some of them are dragged down by generic writing and backstories, it’s still so refreshing and welcome to see such a wide range of playable characters. Personally I’ve spent most of my time this competitive season playing Ana Amari, the 60-year old Egyptian Sniper-Healer. She plays completely differently from everyone else, shooting her teammates to heal them and throwing out grenades and sleep darts in the chaos of battle. When I really get a handle on it and manage to take down a flanking Tracer or stall out a payload all by myself I feel ridiculously powerful. It’s so much fun.
And that’s what it all comes down to in the end. Overwatch is fun, in more ways than I could possibly list. It feels so slick, every character feels like they had so much love and polish put into them, every level feels like it’s been playtested to death to create a predictable, enjoyable ebb and flow to battle, everything feels like it comes together to create a ridiculously funny, epic, beautiful moment every single game. Even Blizzard’s open attitude towards actively buffing and nerfing characters and willingness to just try something totally new with older characters who don’t see play makes me feel really optimistic about the future of this game.
It’s certainly enough that I know I’ll be playing the game tomorrow, and next week, and god knows how much longer.
