Offers a diverse list of characters that offer a lot of possible team combinations

Gets players right into the thick of action within their skill levels with its quick and easy matchmaking system

Keeps players competitively engaged with its Brawl and Competitive multiplayer modes

Blizzard has not release a new game franchise for sixteen years as they continued to launch more games for their franchises such as Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo. Finally that spell has broken and they have released an entire new franchise with Overwatch. The game is set on a futuristic Earth where a massive conflict between humans and sentient machines called Omnics has trembled the planet. As a solution to the Omnic Crisis, an organization called Overwatch was formed to end the conflict. Unfortunately corruption and allegations have struck the organization and eventually was shut down. A few years later a massive recall order was initiated to the Overwatch agents as they are finally back in action.

The first thing players will discover about Overwatch is its strong line-up of characters, as each of the heroes has its own personality and play style. Players will have a different play experience per character; Pharah is more on aerial assaults while Soldier 76 is a homage to the modern day shooter games. Another great thing with the characters are their diverse personality, it matches well on their play style which makes them memorable, like Reaper having an edgy attitude to Tracer as a bubbly character, every player will have their favorite Overwatch character. Each character have its own roles per team, from high damaging offensive characters to the counter active defense types to the frontline tanks up to the backup supports. Having a well balanced team is very important as it can spell victory or defeat.

The game lacks any single player content which could turn off some who would like to play alone, but the online modes can still provide hours of non-stop fun to anyone who wants a quick match. A single match can last from five to ten minutes depending on the intensity of the battle, and with three different game matches that encourages everyone to team up rather than focusing on getting the highest kills, and it they want to test themselves to the extreme, the Brawl mode features insane challenge conditions to keep the matches more interesting, and every week the Brawl mode conditions change to keep things fresh.

Then for those who wants a more competitive match, the Competitive mode has become available and features a more objective point-based matches that tests any players’ skills and team coordination to the next level. The game will also rate the player’s performance based on its competitive performance and will use it on matchmaking to match players on the same skill rating. Players can earn points to redeem exclusive cosmetic items as their medal of achievement.

Since Overwatch is available as a retail game, all upcoming content updates and new character releases will be available free of charge, it also has a loot box system where players can acquire cosmetic items. These loot boxes can be obtained by leveling up in the game or by purchasing it with real money, the cosmetic items offer a lot of customizable options for the characters; from unique skins to custom profile icons. The micro transaction option for the loot boxes left some mixed reactions to some players as some think it should not be added as a feature since players need to purchase the entire game. But these cosmetics does not provide any unfair advantage to those who does not spend on the loot boxes.

With this new game, Blizzard has just single-handedly brought back the glorious days of team-based shooters. Overwatch is both diverse and simple, its diversity provide a wide array of unique characters that offered different game strategies and team compositions, its simplicity makes it easy for players to start the game immediately without any content restrictions as all the characters are available at the beginning. The game may lack any single player content but it was compensated with the weekly Brawl mode and the new Competitive mode to keep players busy, and not to mention constant game updates to balance the heroes as well as introducing new ones to the roster. Blizzard took a while to launch an entire new game franchise, and it was worth it. So, don’t miss out - find out why this game is the biggest online shooter for 2016!