Sexuality is a defining part of your identity, and the passion amongst fans to see this explored in the games is evident, but I will admit it remains drenched in heteronormativity. I committed the cardinal sin of searching for ‘Tracer and Emily’ in Google images and was greeted with far more than the comic introducing their relationship, with crudely animated porn primed on the male gaze being pushed more than anything e

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

Chains of Damnation will also introduce a new raid, Sanctum of Domination, a new mega-dungeon, Tazavesh, the Veiled Market, and a new Covenant campaign that will see all four Covenants join together to bring the fight to the Jai

These days, I’m lucky enough to work in games, and that means even if I don’t get a game code, I know that I’ll be able to write about a game and make money off it. In 2016 when Overwatch released, that wasn’t the case. I’d buy new games, beat them, then flip them at a second hand shop and use that money to buy another game, and so on. That’s a big part of why single player games, with a definitive ending, matter so much to me. The Witcher, The Last of Us, Horizon, Grand Theft Auto 4, Red Dead Redemption 2, and every FIFA from 09 to 19 all entered my life that way. Countless others, too. Despite this, I still have my old Overwatch 2 abilities|https://overwatch2fans.com/ disc, gathering dust on my shelf as it dwindles in value and my play time trickles up by a few measly minutes every six months or so. There’s just something very compelling about Overwatch’s existence that never quite translates to its gamep

Where a lot of hero shooters have characters that either riff on Overwatch or age old tropes, Overwatch’s originality makes it easy to project onto. They still aren’t perfect - we won’t be able to play as a Black woman until Overwatch 2 - but they’re head and shoulders above the competition in terms of what I look for in the genre, even though I never play

This is a result of Blizzard gently touching on the queer nature of its characters before running away and never mentioning it again. Fans are forced to draw their own conclusions, and the post-launch announcement that some characters are gay simply feels like performative nonsense. Was this the plan from the start, or did it seem like an easy diversity win when writing the next co

Blizzard actually removed loot boxes from Overwatch before it went offline. If you played in the last few weeks, you would have earned Credits just for playing games. Overwatch 2 could reward a similar drip feed of Coins alongside battle pass progress - or offer coins as battle pass rewards for that matter - but it doesn’t. You can’t even earn enough Coins in a season to pay for the next one since you can only earn 540 over nine weeks, and the premium battle pass costs 1,

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

If you’re a free-to-play Overwatch 2 player, you only get 20 items from the seasonal battle pass. Overwatch 2 seasons last nine weeks, so it would take you just over 20 years of consistently completing every battle pass to earn the same number of items I got from Overwatch’s loot boxes. If you’re willing to upgrade to the premium battle pass, which gives you all 80 items, you’ll catch up to me in a little over five years - and it will only cost you $500. I’m doing napkin math here. I haven't factored in the 60 Coins you can earn a week or whatever we might get for free from seasonal events, but you can see my po

So, let’s crunch the numbers. In a 1v1, it doesn’t matter who you pick (although you should probably play DPS or an off-tank, realistically speaking). 2v2 means you’re missing one role, which means you need to outsmart your opponent. 3v3 is a 1-1-1 formation. 4v4 has the opposite strategic makeup to 2v2, in that you can field one of each role and tactically decide which one to choose for your fourth player. 5v5 is shit. 6v6 is how it is now. 7v7 gives you one extra space on top of having one hero from each role and sub-role, and 8v8 does the same but with two extras. 9v9 is 3v3, which actually sounds great provided it would hypothetically be implemented alongside larger m