Overwatch 2 being a free-to-play live-service is the right call. Since the original game launched in 2016, we’ve seen games like Fortnite , Apex Legends , Destiny 2 , Genshin Impact , Warframe , and myriad others emerge and redefine what it means to progress in a multiplayer landscape. Battle passes are a thing now, while the loot boxes that Blizzard once helped bring into the mainstream are frowned upon outside the freemium mobile space.

Overwatch 2 is a weird sequel. It’s more of a live-service update with fancier menus and quality of life improvements instead of a fundamental evolution of what came before, except it’s a whole new game - although it’s free and your progress carries over, so it’s not really that much of anything.

I played a lot of Overwatch. I owned it across all platforms and put in hundreds of hours across a number of years since its original release. I also bought far too many loot boxes thanks to my compulsive personality and skins my brain convinced me I couldn’t live without. With the power of hindsight it was a pretty bad time, and I’m relieved the RNG has been wiped away in favour of a more honest model of purchasing skins. No longer am I toying with a slot machine and pulling myself further into a spiraling gambling obsession.

For that reason I know that Kiriko is right up my street, and I’ll be playing her with a passion when launch rolls around, but knowing that potential to experiment is no longer possible unless I decide to grind my life away or make an investment kinda sucks, and takes away the free cadence of content I’d grown used to with the first game. This may be the price to pay for no loot boxes and a modernised progression system, but this feels like a teething pain instead of the game Overwatch 2 really wants to be. Perhaps I’ll be proven wrong and the payoff will be worthwhile, but right now I’m not so sure.

Overwatch 2 strategy|https://overwatch2fans.com/ was the game I played constantly at university, and playing around with its existing roster while delving into each new hero was a big part of its appeal. My flatmates and I would fall in love with specific roles, or gravitate towards certain heroes because their aesthetic called out to us. I’m a filthy weeb and also very gay, so my mains ended up being D.Va, Mercy, and Lucio, with venturing into DPS territory rarely.

I prefer a scoreboard in general. Transparent information is just more useful and easier to parse, and the medal system never functioned the way it was intended to. However, I do think something valuable was lost in the transition. In Overwatch, every match would end with a score screen that revealed all of your medals. In Overwatch 2, matches just end. On the one hand, getting players back into the queue to play another round as quickly as possible is a good priority to have. On the other, where are my shiny medals god damn

But for those not planning to pick up the premium battle pass or aren’t already cemented in the Overwatch ecosystem, some new heroes are locked behind progression in ways that actively discourages the experimentation this game is all about. Kiriko - the new fox girl support hero who I am totally not simping for already - is available immediately to premium battle pass holders or existing players of the original Overwatch, while everyone else must grind to Level 55 in order to unlock her. That’s a big time investment for a hero in a hero shooter.

On the surface, the game is making all the right decisions. Both versions of the battle pass are packed with skins, sprays, charms, and a variety of content that outweighs anything its predecessor had in its first few months. Seasonal events are established, and an existing roster of heroes we’ve already fallen in love with have a generous roster of cosmetics and lore to build upon. I’m already invested, and for Blizzard that is half the battle right now.

Yesterday I took a look at how good each of the Overwatch 2 Tanks would be at driving a tank . We had some laughs, had some fun, but then it was time to put away childish toys and become a gamer. I played a few rounds of Overwatch 2 and, as is tradition, I lost badly. The fact D.Va is an expert tank driving in real life did not help me play any better as her. I'm wounded. Lost. I feel like I can't go on. I need support. Emotional support. So then, let's rank all of the Overwatch 2 Supports by how supportive they would be in an emotional cri

Another controversial one? I don’t really know enough about Kiriko yet, but I don’t get friendly vibes from her. She seems a little too contrived - I know all Overwatch characters are created by a team of designers and developers who go through reams of concept art and try to hit the right demographic markets, but with Kiriko that feels especially blatant. She doesn’t strike me as having much of a persona at all, so middle of the list she g

Brigitte is a far more relatable character than Mercy, and girls with hair like that are always great friends. She's not intimidating like Mercy, instead she knows the solution to most problems is eating ice cream, watching Mean Girls, and listening to Taylor Swift. She'll sit in her old threadbare jumper on her cheap couch with her store-bought rose and she'll offer solutions, but it doesn't matter if these solutions are impossible and ridiculous - most problems can be solved by talking about them, and Brigitte's understanding of that makes her the most supportive Support there