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In May 2016, Blizzard Entertainment released a team-based multiplayer first-person shooter, Overwatch. The idea came about by a cancelled MMORPG they were working on called Titan. While details of the cancellation are still unknown, game director Jeff Kaplan and a team of 40 took assets from the project to create Overwatch. The idea was to make a hero-team based shooter to capitalize on the multiplayer online battle arena craze, which was dominating the market (and still is). With existing assets in hand, they were able to show proof-of-concept and get the green light to create the game they wanted – a futuristic world with a colorful cast of characters each with their own weapon, abilities, and play style. Overwatch would become the first new intellectual property from Blizzard since 1996’s Starcraft.
Overwatch was unveiled at Blizzcon in 2014 followed by a closed beta in 2015. While reviews were positive, Blizzard kept fingers crossed as the big test would come in the form of a pre-release open beta. A record breaking 10 million players participated in the Overwatch open beta! Gamers praised the title for its characters, gameplay, animation style, and accessibility. A year after its official release, it had pulled in an estimated one billion dollars in revenue for Blizzard. After 3 years, the game had more than 50 million players!
Gameplay is a team-based, 5-on-5, and highly competitive. It’s a colorful multiplayer masterpiece with over 30 unique characters to choose from and hundreds of unlockable cosmetics to boot. Players experience several different combat settings including, “Escort The Payload”, “Attack the Objective”, “Capture The Flag”, and more! There are also seasonal co-op PVE events on holidays and special occasions – a no limits mode where players can pick the same characters, and a very competitive ranked mode that is not for the novice by any means. Those of you looking for a story won’t find it in this game, but rather through the use of promotional animated shorts released by Blizzard. In a nutshell, Overwatch is set sixty years in the future, thirty years after the revolution called the “Omnic Crisis.” – a series of events that involved robots attacking humankind.
After individual efforts failed, the U.N. formed an international task force to combat the threat to humanity, the task force: Overwatch.
Originally released in May 2016 for PS4, Xbox One, and Windows and later ported to Switch. It was one of the first cross-play enabled multiplayer games to hit the market. Overwatch, now known as Overwatch 2 in 2022 due to a free to play expansion, took home four Game of The Year awards with solid 10 out of 10 reviews across the video game press board, and even has its own pro-league in esports gaming. While the game has been going for 6 years straight with no campaign and a name change, the new content doesn’t stop as Blizzard has announced a campaign mode coming in 2023 set in “The Second Crisis.”
If first-person shooters and playing with friends is your thing, look no further than Overwatch. It’s a fun, beautifully animated first-person shooter with a character and game mode for everyone. It’s one of those games where you lose track of time having so much fun that before you know it, you’ve been playing 3-plus hours. As the character Brigitte would say, “You won’t be disappointed.”
