Now to something completely different: After quite some time I finally played something on my PC again (and am actually surprised that it runs as well as it does): Blizzard’s Overwatch.
Dear Blizzard,
I’m usually not someone who enjoys competitive play all that much. I’m not all that good at it and I don’t see myself spending enough time to change that. There are simple too many other things I love to do (reading books, watching TV shows, listening to podcasts, …).
Overwatch is different. The match-making is good enough that I never faced a group in the quick matches (competitive mode without ranking) that my team couldn’t compete with. Another aspect is that the supporting characters are really great to play as. Over the last ~50 hours of playtime I’ve spent most playing as Mercy, the Swiss guardian angel who can heal team mates and revive them if necessary. At first I was afraid that people would treat healers as kind of a third leg, getting in the way of actually getting the objectives done.
Funny enough, the one time I got heat so far was from the other team when I kept keeping my team alive (or reviving a whole bunch of them when I came too late) over and over again 😃 High praise, then! Some probably even voted for me in the post-match screen (another feature that I absolutely love!).
At first I was a bit weary of getting into the actual competitive mode for the same reason, but even there healers are completely accepted! I still don’t play all that many ranked matches, though, simply because I enjoy the loose atmosphere in the quick matches so much more.
I was also afraid that the few game-modes would get boring rather quickly. And again you managed to proof me wrong! Every week the “Brawl” matches [where the the rules are changed just a bit to make the matches that more interesting] turn out to be tons of fun. Last week, for instance, you could only play as Ana or one of the tank heros. These have been some of the most entertaining matches I’ve had so far … and I think I finally got really good at playing D.VA 😊
The whole cast of characters in general is just so great and diverse. Even after 50 hours I still haven’t played more than a couple of minutes with most of them; something that I definitely want to change. That “vs AI” mode is just perfect for that. The AI is just tough enough that you can actually learn playing a character without annoying the rest of your team. Sure, there are some cry-babies like everywhere else, but they are very rare here (and muting them is easy enough).
I guess, by now I don’t have to write that I will keep playing Overwatch for a long time to come 😉 I might even upgrade my PC again to make it look prettier … the game, not that black box sitting to my right. A big THANK YOU to everyone who has worked on this and please keep doing what you’re doing. It was awesome 😃
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