Overwatch

A year ago, when Overwatch was barely announced, it already had a community that no Rainbow Six: Siege or even Splatoon dreamed of. Cosplayers cosplayed, artists skinned up, and the internet passed around funny pictures about Shinji Ikari, who was hormone-addicted and grew into Korean Hana Song, and the cowboy McCree, who always has a payback time on his watch. Meanwhile, the new game came dangerously close to Minecraft in terms of frequency of requests on Pornhub.

The bottom line is that Overwatch is on everyone’s radar, it definitely already has a future (sorry, Battleborn), and it appears to be pretty great. And thanks, it seems, go to the drawn porn and Lena Oxton’s red-headed ass, which, with all due respect, can’t be confused with anyone else’s.

Also, Blizzard’s first shooter is bold, calculated down to the last detail, played with a kind of unfathomable, unbearable ease, and there’s nothing superfluous about it. But that doesn’t really matter anymore, does it?

The main thing that should be stated at once: this is not a MOBA. At all. There is no in-game training, no equipment, only players fight, death by a single headshot is commonplace, and the tasks are very clear: two teams of six people trying to capture (or defend) a point or escort (or prevent) a cart. The only thing that Overwatch resembles League of Legends, Dota 2 and others – the heroes. They are conventionally divided into four classes (stormtroopers, defenders, “tanks” and support fighters), and each has its own set of cool things they can do from time to time.

There are twenty-one heroes here compared to the nine classes in Team Fortress 2, with which Overwatch is commonly compared, and they are assembled quite compactly: each has one gun (the engineer Torbjorn also has a hammer, the medic Angela Ziegler has a simple weapon – but these are exceptions), two or three active skills and an ultimative ability, which can be activated after filling the scale. Not much, but enough to make you feel like this hero.

When you’re Winston, you’re a smart gorilla, bouncing across half the map and occasionally turning on “I’m not a scientist, I crash” mode to become twice as tough and hurl enemies. When you’re a Tracer, you’re a nasty little flea who flickers in space, laughs, annoys everyone, and manages to slip away every time. Being a Reaper, you start playing a grim super-assassin in a black robe and materialize at the backs of enemies without any stealth, but with some cool phrase like “DEATH IS RIGHT HERE” to make everyone pay attention to you, and then get shot in the face.