I’ll always think of Overwatch as being one of my favourite games, aware as I am that my lack of playtime means that couldn’t possibly be true. I’m excited to see what comes next, even though I probably won’t play that much either. My favourite thing about Overwatch is hoping that it somehow becomes an open-world, third-person shooter RPG with Zarya in the driving seat - just please Blizzard, never ever make this game. Just let me hope for

Before I make a case for every number that’s not five, allow me to explain why five is so astronomically stupid. Each of Overwatch’s three roles can be subdivided into two smaller positions within them. For example, supports can be main or secondary support - consider Mercy and Zenyatta’s healing capacities, respectively - whereas DPS is usually separated into hitscan (insta-registration of bullets) and projectile (anything fired has an arc with its own distinct velocity and trajectory). You can also make a case for builders and support DPS as opposed to traditional damage-dealers, but the main distinction has to do with impact registration and how that pertains to team compositions and map layo

We recently learned that Overwatch 2 is due to shrink squad sizes from six players per team to just five. As someone with well over 1,000 hours in the game, who used to play on a team that averaged out at around 3,600 SR (Masters, the second-highest competitive rank in the game, accounting for the top four percent of players worldwide), I’m here to tell you that this, reader, is the absolute worst number of players any Overwatch team can h

Tanks, meanwhile, are divided into main tank and off-tank categories. The former includes Reinhardt, Orisa, Winston, and sort of Sigma, whereas the latter subset is occupied by Zarya, Roadhog, D.Va, and sort of Wrecking Ball. The "sort of" clauses here are because the more recent tanks added to Overwatch’s roster are mostly aligned with one category, but adopt minor inspiration from the other one. Ultimately, though, the main distinction has to do with whether or not the tank has a shield, which directly affects their ability to function as a main tank, which in turn refers to how effectively they can use their status as a team anchor Overwatch2fans.com to control engagem

Overwatch 2 is free to play, so in theory it’s not too much of an issue that it’s an entirely new game. Splatoon and Call of Duty both charge full price for their updates on what came before, and Overwatch 2 at least avoids that. But it doesn’t mitigate how dated Overwatch 2’s structure already feels, and how much that contrasts with how the initial game felt at launch. Overwatch is a hero shooter, and part of its popularity has been the affection for its heroes, not to mention how differently each of its roster plays. There are characters with pistols, shotguns, bazookas, ice blasters, revolvers, sniper rifles, mech suits, and bows and arrows, but whatever the weapon is, Blizzard seems dead set on aiming them all directly at its f

I don’t really need an Overwatch story mode or an Overwatch spin-off to exist; I’m happy believing I’d love them if they ever came to life, and I don’t need to test that theory. A single player futuristic Western revenge drama with Ashe and McCree as the leads? Yes please. A Netflix adaptation of Overwatch’s main story with Maisie Williams as Tracer? Sounds amazing - please never make it. The idea of literally any genre of solo game with Mei or Mercy sounds fantastic, but it would never live up to my expectations and I’m much happier in my ignorant hope than in cold, hard real

Right now I have almost everything I could ever want, and I’m smart enough now to avoid wasting money on currency unless there is something I desperately want. The battle pass is one of the few means of progression right now, with the character levelling system teased in earlier trailers abandoned until PvE rolls around. Seasonal skins that used to justify events are now available whenever we like, or a part of bundles that cycle through the store each and every day.

Overwatch 2 is right around the corner, and even though it shouldn’t really exist , there’s an air of excitement around its launch. The first Overwatch completely reinvented the online shooter space when it launched in 2016, and deserves to be spoken about in the same breath as gaming’s all time greats. It was fresh, fast, and fiendishly compelling, but the very fact a sequel exists highlights how much Overwatch has fallen off the pace. The latest revelation about the hero roster only underscores this furt

While the main tank functions in this way, the off-tank is doing every tanky job the main tank doesn’t have time for - protecting support heroes, supplementing damage heroes, and tending to any objective that requires a big, chunky health bar. From Roadhog’s hook to Zarya’s bubbles, each off-tank has some degree of authority over space manipulation, too, which allows them to use the main tank’s anchorage to support more active area control. They’re an essential part of fluid, facile, and fantastic Overwatch - and guess what? They’ll be the first on the chopping block when it moves to