Tag: Overwatch

[REVIEW] OVERWATCH 2 – Balance Issues Defeated by Boredom! (Multiplayer Beta Review)

Overwatch 2 is here! Almost. After spending $40 to buy the “Watchpoint Pack” (essentially just paying to get a beta key), I’ve spent the last week testing out the game’s multiplayer. How is it? Good? Bad? The answer is honestly somewhere in the middle, which if I had to describe in one word would probably be… “meh”.


Overwatch 1 is one of the most fun and also one of the most frustrating games that I’ve ever played. The rollercoaster of good and bad games that sometimes make you feel like a king and then five minutes later make you feel like the entire world is somehow out to get you is very addictive, but as the game has declined in the last couple of years, my friends and I have been playing it less and less, finding that the number of bad games we’ve been getting is starting to greatly outnumber the number of good ones, a stark contrast to how we felt when the IP was at its best with new content rolling out on a regular basis.


Overwatch 2 has somehow managed to iron out these up and downs into a very mediocre middle ground where I find that I never really like or dislike a single game, but always have this neutral “I’m kind of bored…” feeling at all times, usually resulting in me quitting after a few games and going back to play Overwatch 1 for a little while. Yes, you read that right, after paying $40 to get access to the three week beta, I have played much more Overwatch 1 the last week (and surprisingly enjoyed it!) than I have Overwatch 2. Why? Because Overwatch 1, even in its current sad state, is better than Overwatch 2.


Here’s the deal. Overwatch 2 feels very much like Overwatch 1. I agree with the popular review on Youtube from “dunkee” that the game, at this point, is much more like an “Overwatch 1.1” than it is any sort of proper sequel. There are things I like. The graphical improvements, while subtle, look amazing. The new characters, Sojourn and Junker Queen, are both really well designed, and playing them is the closest thing that I had to fun the entire time I’ve spent in the beta. Orisa’s redesign is also really fun. Some of the new maps, especially Parisio, are really nice. There are some improvements here. Not every change in Overwatch 2 is bad. I would kill to have Sojourn and Junker Queen in Overwatch 1 right now, because they are both some of my favorite characters to play now. I really miss not having them as options when I boot up Overwatch 1.


Unfortunately, I just don’t think the main gimmick of Overwatch 2, the 5v5 instead of 6v6 dynamic, really works AT ALL. First of all, drastically changing the team dynamic has significantly lowered the number of viable characters. Since very few characters were re-balanced for the new 5v5 gameplay, and some have had key aspects of their toolkit (McCree’s stun/Mei’s ability to freeze) taken away, there seem to be a lot fewer competitively viable characters than before. Being a Support is also a big problem now – they’re too squishy. Without a second tank around, it is very hard to play Support and stay alive, especially if the one tank you have is going off on their own a lot or is simply not very good. (Also, very aggressive tanks like Junker Queen offer little to no protection to you if your team is using her.) I’ve noticed that players trying to use any Supports other than Mercy and Moira are getting very low healing numbers, as it is very hard to stay alive long enough to be an effective support to your team with anyone else, plus having a Mercy constantly boosting/healing/rezzing your team’s one already overpowered supertank is becoming a staple strategy I’m seeing in most games.


DPS and tanks have a different problem – queue times. Both queues have a 10 minute wait to get into a game, as no one wants to play Support and constantly die, so everyone is either playing the already overselected DPS role, or queueing in to be their team’s new DPS-heavy supertank. As someone who usually plays Support or Tank, I find it extremely frustrating to have to choose between being a weak (almost useless) Support or having to queue 10+ minutes for a game. Playing games in Open Queue instead of Role Queue eliminates some of the waiting issues, but reveals a bigger one – most teams in Open Queue play with 2 Tanks, 2 DPS, and 1 healer, as healers are mostly useless in Overwatch 2 (they might as well just go back to 6v6 with 2 Tanks and 4 DPS – the Supports really aren’t needed anymore), but having 2 supertanks per team is amazing! So much for the game’s new balance in Open Queue. This will only get worse with time as more tanks specifically built for 5v5 are added to the game.


I’m not a big fan of the new “Push” game mode, either. It’s just a really annoying version of “Tug of War” where you go back and forth over the same little stretch of road over and over and over and over again for like 10 minutes, and it’s hard to feel like you’re really doing anything fun or productive. It’s not terrible. Again, like every other change in this game, it just feels very “meh”. So many of the changes in Overwatch 2 feel like this – they’ve “balanced” the game but also removed all the fun. I like the new scoreboard. I like that all your skins all carry over from Overwatch 1. There are things I like, but, honestly, all playing Overwatch 2 does is make me want to go and play Overwatch 1, which I’ve had some surprisingly good games in lately.


The best argument I can make in favor of Overwatch 2 is that its multiplayer changes are only supposed to be a SMALL part of the game, as the addition of PvE campaigns is supposed to be the big draw of the sequel. Except… we haven’t seen anything about this supposed content, which leads me to believe that the development of it is not going well, and the Overwatch Team is stalling by showing us as much as possible of the multiplayer changes ahead of time to buy time to iron out PvE’s problems. I saw one of the interviews about the PvE. Null Sector is back? Isn’t this game supposed to be about equal representation and rights for everyone? Why are the robots fighting against human oppression always the bad guys? Can’t they come up with something more engaging than “Good guys shoot robots – go boom”? Now they’re talking about releasing the PvE in stages. Great, we can spend more time in the mediocre multiplayer, then, I guess.


Before I go on any more of a rant, let me just summarize my thoughts on Overwatch 2 so far and let you go on about your busy day. The PvP is very similar to Overwatch 1, feeling more like an update to it rather than a sequel, yet, unfortunately, most of the changes they have made to Overwatch 1’s formula feel bad (to me, at least) rather than good, and take all the fun out of the game under the guise of “fixing” it, creating a very bland, safe version of Overwatch that I honestly do not enjoy playing almost at all. (I played one game today, and then quit. It was… ok. I played Moira and had over double the healing numbers of my team’s other Support. We lost.) The PvE could be its saving grace, but I am very suspicious that Blizzard is still showing us nothing of what is supposed to be the biggest part of the “sequel”, leading me to believe they are very behind on its development, or otherwise are having significant problems with it. The best part of Overwatch 2 is the new characters, Sojourn and Junker Queen, which are a blast, and I really don’t mind paying $40 just to try them out. I just wish they were in Overwatch 1, not the game’s bland “sequel”. (On an unrelated note, good luck playing a weird tank like Hammond in Overwatch 2 with only one tank slot.)


Review score time. When I first started playing Overwatch, I would have given that game a very impressive 9/10. As Overwatch has declined, however, I would probably give the current state of the game a much more waning 7/10 – still fun sometimes, but desperately needing new content injected into it. Overwatch 2? A very mediocre 6/10. That’s all I can give it right now. Rather than fixing Overwatch 1’s problems, it seems like all Overwatch 2 can do is worsen them, or otherwise replace them with absolute boredom. No wonder Jeff Kaplan left. He probably fell asleep beta-testing it. I know I wanted to.

Blizzard, my mind’s not completely made up yet. Fix this before October. Please?

[SATIRE] The “Eye of Zatara” Investigates – PUMPKINFOOT

[Original Article: Monday, October 18, 2021]

As I came to the edge of the mostly unheard-of little town of Lyre, Louisiana, I looked for the signs I had been given by locals to find a creature that was said to reside there.  A curious soul by nature, I have spent many a weekend traveling throughout central Louisiana – investigating haunted houses, searching for cryptozoological creatures, and taking guided tours at the very site of the most infamous crimes of the century.  But now I was on the trail of something more elusive, a local legend of a creature said by many to resemble the stories of “Bigfoot” found throughout North America, but a creature that can only be found in the cool months of autumn when orange and brown are everywhere, and when Halloween decorations and Thanksgiving celebrations spread like a plague of strange contentment throughout the families of the land.  I was searching for the strange and oddly scented creature known only to a few local fishermen as… “Pumpkinfoot”.

As I approached Ficton Pond, a mossy little fishing hole that served as one of the few “landmarks” of note in the mostly swamp and wilderness of Lyre, I saw unusual footprints in the mud along the pond’s north-facing edge – large footprints, resembling those of a man, but much bigger, and with a strange scent clinging to them that I recognized immediately as a steady purveyor of Starbucks lattes in the fall  – it was the scent of pumpkin spice.  Suddenly, I heard a sound.  An inhuman growling like that of a wounded beast which shook me to my very core, for I could hear in that bestial roar, an almost human undertone to the screaming that told me I was on the verge of meeting something terrifying.  Running from the pond out of instinct, I tripped over a limb from a fallen log in the underbrush, only to look behind and see the silhouette of the very creature I had foolishly come to this little town to uncover.  It seems that instead of me finding and investigating it, Pumpkinfoot had, instead, come to see and investigate ME.

Tall and imposing, with a large ragged red beard like that of a man, the creature towered over me in the waning afternoon light, his visible teeth gnarled and yellow, his fingernails long and dirty, and a faded Metallic shirt and torn up old blue jeans, obviously “borrowed” from humans he had killed, covering up his otherwise mostly hair-laden body.  He walked barefoot through the brush towards me, his cold amber eyes staring down imposingly into my own baby blues, as he opened his mouth to speak or consume me, I wasn’t sure which, but I feared the worst, and searching inside myself for any hint of ingenuity and courage with which to get out of this terrible situation, and finding none, I turned to prayer to find comfort in my final moments.

“This is private property, Man.  You can’t just be coming in here on my land and poking about.  It’s not a public fishing spot.”

I opened my closed eyes in shock.  The creature speaks!  And not just in a vague, incomprehensible mix of human and beast, but clear, concise, albeit a little informal, human English!  I was too startled, at first, to even respond.

“Look, you got $20?  You give me $20, and I’ll let you fish here all you want today.  Just come to the front door of my house next time, and ask.  I was trying to carry my team in another lousy match of Overwatch when I saw you poking about from my window.” the beast pointed to a rudimentary, almost abandoned looking, dwelling on the other side of the pond, a clouded window facing exactly in my direction.  “I REALLY don’t have the patience for trespassers today.”

I reached for my wallet.  I couldn’t remember… had I brought any cash with me today?  Would this strange creature let me live even if I did?  Does he possibly have CashApp?

“You don’t have any money, huh?” the man-creature roared, taking a sip of something, most likely fresh human blood, kept warm in an old cracked tumbler in his hand.  “Hmmm… well, those are some pretty nice shoes you got there.”  The creature smiled a hearty, gnarl-toothed smile, the scent of pumpkin spice and coffee wafting out from his otherwise foul breath as his mighty lungs exhaled.

“S…Sure.” I said, taking off my tennis shoes without realizing what I was doing and handing them to the creature, who immediately grabbed them and put them in place on his large, mud-stained old feet.

“How nice.  A perfect fit.” The man-creature smiled again, an oddly satisfied look in its cold amber eyes.  He took another drink from his chalice of warm human blood.  “Alright, you’re free to fish.  Just don’t try to connect to my Wifi…”

“W…Wifi?” I asked sheepishly, crawling slowly through the mud away from the creature in the general direction of my silver Ford pick-up truck just outside the small woodland clearing.

“Yes, my Wifi.  It’s not secured.  And I need it to play Overwatch.” the creature smiled sweetly, a bestial glint flashing briefly in his eyes as he tracked my cowardly movements in the opposite direction of him.  “The last guy who connected to my Wifi while fishing here and made me lose a game because of lag… well… HE’S what I’ve been mixing in with my pumpkin spice coffee each morning the last couple of weeks.  SEE FOR YOURSELF!”

The creature laughed, throwing coffee from his old tumbler in my face which was, indeed, mixed with some kind of thick reddish liquid and also what appeared to be small bits of human flesh and bones!  Screaming, I ran off with my hands over my face, despite the coffee being lukewarm at best, frantically racing to my nearby truck and driving hastily away from the area as quickly as I could.  The man-creature just stood there, watching me without breaking his gaze, not even seeming to move a muscle throughout the entire length of time that I fled from his vicinity.

“You can come out now, Ma.  The intruder’s gone.” the man-creature whispered, drinking down what remained of his mostly lost cup of coffee before spitting out a finger bone that got caught in his mouth.  In response to these words, a nine foot tall naked bestial creature whose features were concealed entirely in several layers of a very thick coating of dark black fur like a bear’s stepped out of the shadows behind a nearby cluster of trees near the man-creature’s house, walking barefoot over to her smiling son and hugging him sheepishly in thanks for warding me off.  The hairy thing growled contentedly before letting off a strange aroma of pumpkin-like musk from somewhere in a gland along its back that quickly filled the whole clearing around old Ficton Pond with the scent of autumn spice.  “I know, I know.  You get scared when humans come around here looking for you.  I understand.  Don’t worry, the old Koolaid and fake skin and bones trick worked like a charm again this time.”

The man-creature smiled.

“And, not only that, I even got some nice new shoes out of it.”

Upon seeing the second creature out of the corner of my eye while flooring it out of the little town containing Ficton Pond, I never again resumed my hunt for the legendary creature known to its locals as “Pumpkinfoot”, or even returned again within 50 miles of the frightful little bump on the road remembered forever in my nightmares as Lyre, Louisiana.

 

***

 

While difficult to believe, the “Eye of Zatara” stands behind this story, following countless long hours of not investigating it and interviewing unrelated passersby.  All throughout the month of October, we will continue to investigate the strange and paranormal.  Stay tuned here for the latest supernatural news, fact-checked by honest, reliable writers and journalists who always, for your benefit, take every possible step to watch YouTube instead of investigating anything.  Have you, too, seen a creature resembling “Pumpkinfoot” in the wilds of Louisiana?  If so, contact the “Eye of Zatara” today, and you just might be the subject of our next 100% true, completely unexaggerated, right as rain, Snopes-verified (for whatever that’s worth) news story in… “The Eye of Zatara Investigates”!

~The Gatekeeper

 

This story is ridiculous.  I’m going to get a latte.

 

~The Watchman

 

😛

~The Gatekeeper