The traditional sniper hero of the bunch, Widowmaker is a particularly lethal character for those with solid keyboard and mouse skill, or those who are particularly great at sniping with a controller. However, if you don’t consider yourself to be particularly precise with your aim, then it’s best for everyone involved if you don’t weight down your team with a desire to get the greatest headshot of all time. Her weapon, the Widow’s Kiss, has two distinct firing modes that make her one of the highest damage dealers of the entire roster, assuming that you play her correctly. If you fire without aiming down sights, it functions as a close-to-medium range automatic assault rifle, though this should only be used to get yourself out of a jam, as it is nowhere near as powerful as its standard firing mode: the long-range sniper rifle. The longer that one aims down sights, the more powerful the shot will be (up until it fully charges to 100%), so if you’re looking to get your quickscope on, you’re playing the wrong game. Headshots are absolutely lethal, so take your time, line up your shots and ensure that you’re fully charged, as spamming only functions to give away your position.
Overwatch does its best to avoid the pitfalls of other multiplayer-only games, mainly content. Overwatch Skins’s 21 characters provide plenty of variety and the 12 uniquely designed maps will keep players interested for matches on end. Where Overwatch’s content falls flat is in its game modes. There are only four and one of them is merely a hybrid of two other modes. Assault tasks attackers with capturing two consecutive points on the map, Escort is about leading a package through a set number of checkpoints to a final delivery point and Control is King-of-the-Hill. Assault/Escort is a blend of the first two modes where attackers capture a point and then escort a payload. The game modes are perfectly fine, but they can get tiresome after a while. Why there couldn’t be a Team Deathmatch or Domination/Conquest mode is curious. While Blizzard has said they will be adding more heroes and maps post-launch, they have no confirmed if there will be any new game modes outside of Competitive Play mode. New maps and characters are nice, but it’s the lack of game modes that is Overwatch’s big variety problem right now.
Each map was designed specifically for the game mode it’s paired with, meaning nothing feels wrong about the design. An Escort map is designed with one straight path and a few off-shoot areas to accommodate different playstyles. A control map features one central point and multiple paths players can take to try and flank the enemy team and take the spot. These maps also play into the game’s meta. For example, a close-quarters Escort map will benefit Reinhardt whose shield would block everything straight in front of him, but an open control map would leave him vulnerable from many different directions. Being able to control the map with the right hero, managing choke points and figuring out the path that works best with your character’s range is imperative.
There are certain characters in Overwatch that lose their effectiveness when solely used for killing, and Reinhardt is firmly in this camp. If you’ve spent any time watching or playing Overwatch, you’ll recognize this massive sheild and hammer wieldimg knight from a mile away. Reinhardt is one of the lucky few characters that has two distinct weapons, one offensive and one defensive. His Rocket Hammer does massive amounts of damage to anyone who falls inside of a given swing, though it should be noted that these swings are exceptionally slow in the grand scheme of things. In addition to the Rocket Hammer, Reinhardt also utilizes the Barrier Field, his iconic light shield that can reflect up to 2000 hitpoints before retracting. Not only does this shield automatically retract when it runs out of HP, but it also recharges when it’s not in use and Reinhardt is much slower when using it. For these reasons, it’s best to save up your shield for when you’re right on top of a payload as a member of the attacking team, as this is where the Barrier Field is easily the most effective.
With any character-based title, there’s always a “meta” that forms, be it from the developers or the players. From a development perspective, how do you work with the meta that is inevitably going to arise in Overwatch?
With Overwatch, the charming hero shooter from Blizzard, launching this week, we want to make sure that you’re as prepared as possible to help your team dominate. Overwatch’s main focus is clearly on the interplay between its dynamic characters, so in order to become competent, you’ll need to understand how every character works. Throughout the week, we’ll be publishing guides on each of the twenty-one launch heroes, three at a time, with the hopes that you’ll be able to recognize certain patterns on the battlefield.
To top all of this off, none of my teammates were communicating whatsoever. Needless to say, I was extremely frustrated and decided to start playing quarterback, directing my teammates through my microphone. After getting one Tracer and one Reaper to switch to Reinhardt, who rocks a giant shield that blocks enemy bullets, I hung in the background, healing everyone possible and positioning them on the control point in a way that I felt would be successful. Granted, my tone was far more authoritative than I would like to admit, and I’m sure that my teammates probably thought I was a huge jerk, but something very funny happened after I started to take control: we won. We had a completely unbalanced team that was doomed from the start, I chose a character whose main role isn’t inflicting damage and somehow I ended up empowering the team as a whole. This was such a different experience from anything that I had ever experienced in a shooter, and despite the initial frustrations, it was the single most satisfying multiplayer match I was a part of (in any game) in the past two or three years.