Let's talk about OVERWATCH

You can't lone wolf Overwatch. If u keep trying, you're gonna lose your mind. I made that mistake with Battlefield. My therapist sez I'm almost ready for trips outside the facility now.

Nah, you can lone wolf it--I figured out how.

1. Your team is a bunch of glory hogging idiots. See all those D.Va's? Yeah.
2. Are you attacking? You should be Mercy. The glory hogs need to be given health and attack power because they don't know D.Va's gun is shit.
3. Are you defending? You should be Reinhart, because they have know idea how to defend and you can at least keep Widowmaker from killing the whole damn team from a mile away.

Easy peasy! Once the game is totally in the bag due to your never recognized achievements (I healed 33% of damage dealt to the team and got one vote. You're welcome), you can try out the other characters.

jeb wrote: Once the game is totally in the bag due to your never recognized achievements (I healed 33% of damage dealt to the team and got one vote. You're welcome)...

As a player who always plays the damn objective, reading that tale hurt me, man.

Iron Banner is active in Destiny, and the IB game mode this month is Control. It might as well be Clash though, with the ceaseless, inveterate assgrabbery that goes on on my public teams. It puts you in a terrible spot. If you go off to claim an objective you're probably going to be on your own against multiple defenders. Stay to defend your team's only control point and you're likely to be attacked by multiple enemies. Meanwhile, most of your team is racking up SICK KILLZ in the center.

It is nice when playing support or playing the objective pays off though.

I saw IB went up last night after I was done gaming. I'll hop in this evening. I loooove Control. Going to get my Titan on and just camp on that thing. Doot de doot. I know folks want Weapons of Light and all that, but screw you, team. We are getting high defense in my everlasting Ward of Dawn. This is OUR Zone. ps: Don't go for the far zone--it lets the enemy spawn behind. A & B or B & C and that's it.

Despite my complaints, I enjoy playing Mercy quite a bit. I think Blizzard did an awesome job with this character. You are slow as all get out, but you can use "Leap" to launch at a teammate and get in the mix fast. You sneak from place to place buffing or healing from around the corner as a tank gets pounded and pounds. And the Heros Never Die super to raise the dead is amazing in a game where running to the objective is the timeout cost of elimination. Totally digging the dynamic of swapping buff/heal and gun too. I don't get a lot of kills, but I do pick off the occasional distracted red guy.

I don't have a new console or a machine capable of running it, and I haven't really played a FPS in years, but this does look pretty fun. Blizzard develops the crap out of stuff and is pretty good at digging their hooks into you.

New Brawl this week--I guess last week was Mayhem mode or something. Quick recharge? I wasn't paying attention. This week it's "Super Shimada Bros" where you can be Genji or Hanzo on the Japanese map, and they have dialed the super charging down I think. Or I really suck because I think I got three in two games. Genji got me my first PotG though, in a losing effort. We were trying to take the second objective, but it's Lone Wolf, so just no organization at all. It's basically required in this matchup. Anyway, I hop up through a window so as not to be killed by the Ricochet Arrow hellfire that the front and side doors represent, hop to a platform and land in the zone and start deflecting and shuriken'ing Hanzos left and right. Sworded two guys, more deflections, another sword--I think I got four kills in about three seconds. Only one player was up for votes at the end though (not me). It was weird. I can tell you, if you don't have communication, just play Hanzo on defense and your team will win. They'll get the first objective, but have just about zero chance on the second one. If you do have a team that will listen, I would do a +1 Hanzo team to cover and Dragon super the way in for the Genjis, who can hold the zone and take out lurkers.

I think Junkrat is my new guy. I can RACK UP elims with the mines and the lobbed bombs around corners. I don't even see half the folks I kill. I lay the mantrap and the mine near each other, wait for "triggered" and blow the mine. I shoot around corners and those things hurt. Plus that crazy tire is sick and can take out a team.

I have been using Reinhart to disrupt the attackers when they are trying to advance the convoy. The shield to bring your guys in and then the launch to send a Bastion packing is key to keeping their team disorganized. If Symettra is there to get me back in a hurry, all the better.

I thought I was going to give this a pass and stick with Dark Souls all summer, but I had $45 of PSN credit thanks to a billing imbroglio so I shrugged and hit download.

No doubt, this is a really, really, really, really, really good video game. The level of polish and refinement is best-in-the-business, this is a game up there in that very tip-top echelon reserved for stuff like R&D1 Mario games.

What blows me away the most about it is how evolutionary it feels- lots of influences coming together here. Counter-Strike and CCGs. Anime. Fighting games. PIxar. Mirror's Edge. MOBAs. So many different elements, it's all so studied and refined that it's almost intimidatingly encyclopedic. It very much feels like an "event", like 10-20 years worth of game design has culminated in this game.

But it also feels spare, as if Blizzard felt that the characters and the moment to moment gameplay were enough. I really would like to see a story mode with these characters, let alone more MP modes that feel unique and distinguished among their peers. There isn't anything about the modes that feels uniquely Overwatch, and that's kind of a disappointment. But I love the format, I love touches like the "play of the game" (which is usually some BULLSHIT!) and the voting at the end. I especially like how shooting dudes in they muthafukkin' face is NOT the gameplay, it succeeds more than any other shooter I can think of in REALLY nailing class synergy and codependency. I like that there are characters that are practically worthless in a fight but INVALUABLE to the team...and you get rewarded for playing them correctly.

As for the characters, I don't know where to start. McCree was the first one I picked because, well, Mad Dog McCree, right? He seemed OK but I moved on to Pharah and kind of had more fun with her. Reaper looked dumb (so 1998), but I wound up really enjoying his style of play and the teleport thing is great. Messed around with a few others, but I think by far my favorite is Reinhart. I love throwing up the shield for the team or hopping on the truck and putting it up so we have a mobile gun platform. The charge attack is great, and I love those face-offs with another Reinhart. I think I've just played maybe ten of the characters and it's awesome that every single one is completely different but totally balanced at least from what I've seen so far.

But there is no doubt in my mind that a free version of this game is forthcoming, probably with just a couple of characters and the rest available as IAPs. I would also expect to see new modes/levels at some point, also IAPs. No telling how much that will all cost. I hope that Blizzard does single player adventures (a la Hearthstone), that would definitely be something I would buy for Overwatch.

I think this game is going to have a long tail...I can't recall the last time a game seemed so galvanizing and universally appealing.

The in-game malleability is amazing. And the fact that abilities are tied to characters, not the player, makes role selection the game. Obviously high APS pays off, but not like it does in CS:GO where everyone can be a sniper once they equip a sniper rifle. Here, sniping is a tradeoff. You will end up spindly. Tanking is a tradeoff, your range is probably about ten feet. 1:1 Specialists struggle mightily in a crowd. Mobile characters have shit damage. There's a dynamic of you-need-to-be-in-it, like capturing points setting up turrets, and you-need-to-be-hidden, like setting up teleporters and using healing ray. This back and forth while playing a character and then again when re-selecting one mid-game is great design.

I did some assy recording (my PC is getting long in the tooth) of a "highlight" from a Mei game:



The actual play of the game was identical, just from Reinhardt's POV.

Jesus wept.

Blizzard is working on the Play-of-the-Game algorithm (shocker: it favors multi-kills), but this seems like an easy fix.

I think my favorite part is the McCree coming around the corner with HIgh Noon at the end.

This game is super fun. It gets its hooks into you like any blizzard game. I think part of it is the post game wrap-up, between the play of the game (which yes, are usually someone like D-Va or Reaper's ultimate going off) to all of the stats tracked at the end with the voting. The characters are different enough that I feel like I'm playing a different sub-game each time. Sure, Torbjörn is almost exactly the Engineer from TF2, and Mercy is very close to the Medic, but when you toss characters like Reinhardt, and Lúcio (it's pretty great that someone put a bard in an FPS) there's quite a bit of variety and less of a focus on what you typically do in these kinds of games.

I haven't played an FPS a lot online since Halo 2 or 3, so I like picking support or objective based classes, like Reinhardt, Mercy, and Torbjörn. I'm trying to broaden my choices up a bit so I've got at least one attacker and sniper in my toolbox. I like Soldier 76 and Widowmaker respectively. There's enough diversity in the cast that I think a lot of people can find some that suit them, and it's pretty cool that the health of the characters is basically inversely proportional to their hit boxes. Those little guys also tend to be more maneuverable, while the snipers have ways to get themselves to high ground, etc. My favorite movement power is Mercy's- it's fun to zip around to your allies either to save them or get yourself away from someone ambushing you. It's a pain in the butt when you die and you have to walk all the way back. Maybe that's a situation where I should swap to Lúcio, but then my stats for the game won't get added up right... ha.

Just played a game with Jeb. Racked up almost 60 objective kills and he couldn't push the payload with me. What a scrub!

Just played a game with Jexik and I had 12 Gold medals and 129 Kills. He is terrible.

HOW DID WE LOSE??