I’ve not gotten stuck into a competitive FPS in years, so playing alongside PC players with a mouse advantage meant I was never going to cut it aim-wise. Fortunately, Junkrat’s bouncing bombastic balls don’t need precision. Just launch a volley of them into the general direction of the enemy team and damage is done. Skirmishes in Overwatch 2 are far more chaotic than I thought they would be, so playing a hero that can just let the explosions fly helped me to ensure I was fulfilling the role of a DPS, even if I didn’t know exactly who I was hitt
Furthermore, Zarya’s Overwatch 2 buffs made her a clear winner. In the sequel, she was given 50 extra hit points and five more points to her shield. But the real selling points here are her Barriers, which had their duration increased by half a second. While this might not sound like much, this can make all the difference in a fight, especially when Overwatch 2 is much more fast-paced in gene
But it’s a problem in single-player games too. If I’m losing a game in Marvel Snap I can retreat and I won’t lose as much rank, but if I have a challenge to play cards in the last turn, I have to see it through to the end, even when I know I’m going to lose. In these instances I have two competing objectives – win the game or play a six-cost card. When you’re playing as though you’re trying to do something other than win, you’re engaging in deviant play. Games should not encourage this, yet almost all of them
You can argue that the game isn’t making you do challenges, and if you don’t like them just ignore them, but that’s also an argument against daily challenges. All of the XP or battle pass progress you earn by completing challenges could be accomplished easier and faster in ways that don’t exploit players’ time. The big studios like Blizzard and EA are going to have to use their unlimited talent and resources to create a better system than this soon, because the current daily challenge system everyone uses is lazy and predat
What I love most of all, though, is Junkrat’s ultimate ability: the RIP-Tire. At first, I thought this ability turned him into the explosive tire that goes screeching at the opposing team before blowing them into teeny tiny pieces. A friend very kindly pointed out that Junkrat is still very much on the map, so it’s important I make sure he’s safe before I trigger it. You can’t just run in the open and whip it out – positioning is key. Driving it up a wall and sending it crashing down on unexpecting foes pushing the objective, wiping them all out was my crowning achievement during my first day playing, and hearing my teammates shout “that was huge!” is a memory of the game that will stick with me for a long t
Online shooters aren’t usually my thing. Overwatch having set heroes takes away from the meta and the stress of having to care about loadouts, and means you can pick to a certain extent based on personality. The reason I play as Ashe is as much because I love westerns and wry cowgirls as it is her gameplay abilities. Overwatch’s aesthetic, low barrier to entry, and quick, varied matches means it’s keeping my interest longer than other online games do. TheGamer is going to have its own Overwatch 2 hero guide|https://overwatch2tactics.com/ showdown soon too, so I need to keep up even if I won’t dominate the way I did on Tekken nig
Support playing as DPS is inevitable with this meta, though. If a flanking Genji or Reaper gets behind the line, you have to fight back, but it’s often too late if you wait for that moment. That means you have to be on the offensive, or you risk getting killed and being spammed with ironic ‘thanks’ and constant ‘I-need-healing’ in the chat. Yeah, I get it, but I was left on my own to fight the two DPS’ and a pushing tank. Healing the 50 damage you took isn’t high on my list of priorities right
Tank is its own role but it comes in two parts – offensive and defensive. You have Reinhardt, Zarya, Orissa, and the like playing defensive, but then you have tanks like Roadhog, Winston, and D.Va who contrast the protective role. Combining offense and defense meant you had someone to defend you from incoming attacks, making it possible to push as a group, while the second tank fought back and kept everyone alive by sponging damage and doling out plenty of their own. These tanks could even work well as flank
Overwatch 2 is, surprisingly as it sounds, 2022’s surprise package for me. It’s just Overwatch, and I’ve played Overwatch before, so I shouldn’t be too shocked by any of it. But it has managed to pull me in in a way a lot of games I had much higher hopes for have failed to do. My time with Overwatch 2 won’t last forever, but I’ve already seen enough to know that when the single-player portion drops, I’ll be right at the front of the l
Does anyone actually enjoy doing daily challenges in games? I for one resent logging in to play and finding a list of chores to do. Even trivial challenges – something I would accomplish through normal play – rub me the wrong way. I don’t know what I’m more upset about: that someone invented such an anti-player progression system, or that every developer in the world took one look at it and said “Yep, that’s good enough for
