Overwatch
Platform: PC/Steam, PS4, Xbox One
Developer: Blizzard Entertainment
Premise: Fight! Fight! Fight! (Kiss! Kiss!)
Release Date: 24/05/2016
Alright, alright, I know what I said about double-updating on the weekend, but my sister was in the musical and I had to go with the rest of the family to watch, and then there was a friend's party, and one thing led to another. An admittedly weak excuse given that it's the last week of term and there's bugger-all else to do, but it's the one I'm going with. Anyway, here it is. The Big One(tm). Overwatch, the game that over the past year has managed to garner a social media profile comparable in size to that of Kim Kardashian. I'll say right off the bat that it was starting out with negative points, given that it's a multiplayer-only game selling at full price. I'm given to understand that in the US it's only $40, but here in Aus it was $70. I can appreciate that they're trying to be the best at just one thing as opposed to being mediocre at a bunch of things, but $70 is a bit steep. Its predecessor TF2 was never that pricey, even before it was free. And it has in-game purchases on top of that.
Actually, the in-game purchases don't bother me that much, given that it's just buying cosmetic things like skins and sprays that don't provide any gameplay advantage (unless you count your opponent being struck dumb by how cool you look for long enough that you can maneuver behind them and shoot them in the head), but what does bother me is that there's no $5 tier of loot boxes. You see, Blizzard vouchers only come in $25 increments, and because the digital download costs $70, I had $5 left. But the smallest tier of paid loot box costs $2.99, so I now have $2 of Blizzard credit that I will never use. Wow, I managed to go from complaining about it costing too much to complaining about it costing too little in the same paragraph. But let's make like Jesse J and forget about the price tag for a minute, because realistically they can charge whatever they want for it as long as the game's fun. And it is, it's just that I wish that there was more of it.
Granted, it is a Blizzard game, which combined with the micro-payments all but certainly mean that it'll get continuous additional content. At time of writing however, what we have are 21 heroes, 12 maps, more cosmetic items than I care to count, and 3-4 game types that don't really seem to evolve much past "push/stop the payload by shooting the dudes" or "capture/defend the point by shooting the dudes." That being said, most of the maps are quite well designed, albeit with an occasionally staggering amount of commute time between respawning and getting to the bit of the map where stuff is actually happening. There are exceptions to the generally high standard, of course; For example, Temple of Anubis is one of the most painful maps to play Attack on. Between the singular entrance that can lead to either the cramped area with no cover overlooked by about 3 different vantage points or a single room that will almost certainly contain a number of turrets, the other archway of death on the second capture point, and the fact that if you can see a Bastion in turret formation then odds are you're almost dead already, it's an absolute chore. The other main example of somewhat shoddy map design is Defense on King's Row. It's reasonably easy to defend the capture point, but if the attacking team unlock the payload then it's pretty much game over. Hardly any cover or vantage points, and a big sodding hole in the floor that leads to an insta-kill death pit means that you'll die to yourself almost as much as the enemy team because you were too busy shooting at something while retreating to notice that the edge was a lot closer than you had originally envisioned.
There are also a few balance issues, which is always something you have to worry about when you've got an extended cast of characters with unique skillsets; It doesn't help that balancing was done with the mindset that people wouldn't try joke team compositions like "All <insert character here>." I played a custom match against AI with a friend where we made it so that everyone was playing Zarya and it took literally a full 10 minutes before anyone died because she has a shield ability that makes her temporarily invulnerable, and her health partially regenerates. Another example of this phenomena is the fact that a full team of Soldier: 76's is terribly powerful because you have a deadly combo of speed, high damage, the ability to set up a healing station, and literal aimbot. Then there are some characters that are pretty unbalanced even without 6 of the bastards; Bastion comes to mind. They've not made any noticeable changes to him/her/it since the Beta, so you can refer to my opinions HERE in regards to that particular unbalance. Playing against Reaper's also a bit of an arse, given that he seems to be a direct counter to pretty much everyone. And when you're playing on a map where he can easily teleport to a place directly above your entire team and use his ultimate (AKA 'Spin to Win'), then he's a lot of an arse. The last balance issue that I've encountered so far is with D.Va's Self-Destruct. The game seems rather temperamental about what constitutes 'cover' from a nuclear blast. Sometimes you can be completely hidden and well out of what you think the blast radius is and still die, other times it'll look the other way even if you were just hiding behind a lamppost within spitting distance of the detonation.
That's most of the balance issues addressed, so let's talk about the cosmetics. The art style seems to be going for a kind of Pixar-esque look, if Pixar's animation department were run by someone who had heard of the phrase 'kid-friendly' and kind of knew what it referred to but hadn't fully understood the concept. What this eventually boils down to is that the character selection ranges from 'time-travelling British adventurer' with Tracer (not the first Brit to go down that path) and 'undead shotgun murderer' with Reaper, or 'pro-gamer turned mech pilot' with D.Va and 'war-machine that has come to symbolise the horrors of the Omnic Crisis' with Bastion. It can't seem to pick a consistent tone, is what I'm trying to get at.
While we're on the topic of characters, I should probably bring up my main gripe with them all: they all feel too...workshopped, for want of a better term. I don't really know how to explain it. They feel like characters, but they don't necessarily all feel like people. I'm going to do something that almost every other reviewer and their cats and their cat's squeaky toys have done (that we really shouldn't) and draw a comparison to Battleborn. Full disclosure, I haven't actually played Battleborn, but from what I've seen and heard about it, there is one thing I can state with some degree of certainty; Its characters feel human. They have personality, and there are definitely certain areas where they do a better job at diversity. They have canonically non-straight/cis characters (yes, plural) for a start. Granted, the devs have confirmed that Overwatch will eventually have multiple LGBT+ characters but they're trying to find a way for it to be brought up naturally instead of just shoe-horning it in, which is something I can appreciate. At time of writing, however, they haven't revealed yet which characters they were referring to (or if they're even in the game yet), so let's just call it a moot point for the time being and move on.
Outside of that, it's all very well designed, with only three major exceptions. Exceptions #1 and #2: What's up with the goth skins for Zarya and Tracer? There's no real plot or backstory reason, and it takes up two of their highest-tier skins each because they do the thing where they make one skin and then a re-colour of it and try to say that it's two different ones. This isn't as big of a problem with Tracer because she has an additional highest-tier skin that comes exclusively in the Origins edition, which I'll admit to being kind of bitter about given that it's her best skin and it costs 20 sodding dollars to get (on top of the original price), but Zarya's got no decent alternate skins. Some of the re-colours are alright, but nothing really interesting. I can't help but feel as though an opportunity was lost to have a skin that reflected her backstory in some way. Exception #3: The 'Thunderbird' and 'Raindancer' skins for Pharah. Visually, they're fine; my main concern is that they're skins based off of Native American culture being worn by a non-Native American character. It probably wouldn't be such a big problem if they were skins for a Native American character, but as it stands it is at best cultural appropriation and at worst horribly misguided and kinda racist. There's a similar case that could possibly be made with Reaper's 'Mariachi' and 'El Blanco' skins, too. I accept that my role in that particular conversation is pretty much limited to pointing out that it's a conversation that needs to be had, but I'll be damned if I'm not gonna do that.
At the end of the day, Overwatch is good at what it does. It's just that what it does doesn't feel like it's worth $70 at the moment. It had the potential for greatness, but didn't quite follow through. Don't get me wrong, I'm still going to play it obsessively, but that's in equal parts out of the fact that the gameplay's fun and the fact that I'm kind of guilting myself into getting my money's worth.
As always, anyone who has a suggestion for a review, rant topic, or just wants to say "hi!", can do so by emailing me at pressxtoreview@gmail.com
-Harry
No comments:
Post a Comment