Overwatch’s Dedication to Being Inclusive is its Greatest Strength

In terms of visuals, Overwatch is technically fine. It isn’t pushing any graphical boundaries, but it looks good enough and gets the job done. Overwatch features a colorful palette with crisp visuals that is aesthetically appealing and really shines on maps like Hanamura. What is important is that Overwatch maintains a solid 60 frames-per-second, which is good considering it is a fast-paced shooter. The rest of Overwatch’s presentation is solid. The few spoken lines of dialogue are voiced well and many are genuinely funny. Nothing here is as grandiose as Starcraft 2 or Diablo III, but considering Overwatch 2 Steam Release doesn’t have a huge campaign, it’s perfectly understandable.

Heroes of the Storm has officially rolled out the first update of 2025, featuring some balance changes, bug fixes, and the return of Brawl Mode. Players can enjoy these special game modes on a rotating, biweekly basis in Heroes of the Storm right now, starting with the Lunar Rocket Racing minig

There are certain developers out there that make games that are far more polished than everything else out on the market. Blizzard pretty much leads the charge here, and Overwatch is absolutely no exception. In my over one-hundred matches played during the Overwatch beta, I haven’t experienced a single dropped frame or moment of lag. Think about that for a second. We live in an age where AAA games routinely launch broken, so for a beta (though this beta is essentially a final build) to be more polished than the final release of its closest competitor, that really says something.

The 21 characters are grouped together in 1 of 4 classes: Offense, Defense, Tank and Support. Though characters may share a class, each plays completely different from one another. For example, Soldier 76 and Tracer are both part of the Offense class, but each has its own unique strengths and weaknesses. Soldier 76 players like a traditional Assault character from a Battlefield game. He deals good damage at mid-range and can even drop a healing beacon, but he doesn’t have a lot of health. Tracer, on the other hand, has small clip-sizes and low health but is fast and able to rewind time to pull herself to safety. There aren’t two characters that are similar, and there isn’t a single character that is a perfect «all-around» character. Everyone has their own strengths and weaknesses, and learning how to play to those strengths and exploit enemy weaknesses is all part of the game’s meta.

Besides the size of this update, the rate at which this Heroes of the Storm update arrived is particularly noteworthy. Since they resumed in 2022, most of these updates have had two to three months between them, and about a month between the patch’s arrival on the Public Test Realm and the live release. Not only did this patch arrive faster than usual – less than two months after the last Heroes of the Storm update – but it also came the same month as it hit the PTR. While this could mean nothing, Heroes of the Storm ’s 10-year anniversary is on June 2, leading many fans to wonder if the increased attention could herald something big in store for the MOBA’s big milest

Yesterday evening (December 1st, at the time of writing this) was the night of the annual Game Awards show, a lavish live-streamed spectacle where the best and brightest of the video games industry gathered in Los Angeles — in order to receive awards voted on by industry peers and journalists, celebrating the year in gaming. It was a good night for big-name hits like Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End , the reboot of DOOM and Blizzard’s mega-selling team shooter **Overwatch ** , as well as respected independent titles like That Dragon Cancer — and it was a chance for those in attendance to show off all-new trailers for upcoming tit

Though Blizzard’s multi-franchise MOBA has technically been in maintenance mode since July 2022, Heroes of the Storm suddenly received a balance patch over a year later in September 2023. Every few months since then, Heroes of the Storm has consistently rolled out new patches, with the seventh such update arriving in early December 2

This focus on overall team success is part of the game’s DNA, and it shows both in-game and when you’re not actively in a match. There are plenty of leaderboards and statistics to let you know how you fare with each character, and the ability to try out each character in a ‘tutorial map’ is a very useful feature. In-game, there are plenty of ways to communicate with teammates. Aside from traditional methods like voice or type chat, pre-determined messages can be accessed on the fly, from simple greetings to more informational chatter.

Blizzard has perfected the RTS and now they’ve laid a fantastic foundation for the FPS. Though simple on the surface, Overwatch manages to create depth thanks to its 21 character roster and 12 intricately designed maps, consistently rewarding players that master their characters, learn the maps and work as a team. Putting a competent team together and snatching victory from the jaws of defeat is one of the most satisfying experiences a multiplayer game has offered in years. It could use a campaign, a few more game modes and refinement of its RNG system, but none of that distracts from the fact that Overwatch is an superb effort that will entertain players for an ungodly amount of time.