Overwatch

Overwatch League Commentators Are Jumping Ship [UPDATE]

Watching professional Overwatch matches can be chaotic. At times, team fights look less like coherent, role-driven skirmishes and more like cartoon characters punching and kicking inside screen-eclipsing dust clouds. Commentators play a crucial role, making sense of the madness to both esports fans and the uninitiated mainstream audience Blizzard hopes to attract. But with season…

Houston Overwatch League Team Decides To Move After New Neighbors Complain

Season three of the Overwatch League kicks off next month, and that means teams are finally gearing up to live and operate out of their home cities. The Houston Outlaws, unfortunately, have not received the warmest of welcomes from their neighbors. Houston Outlaws general manager Matt “Flame” Rodriguez said yesterday on Twitter that his team…

How An Overwatch Skin Left Some Of D.Va’s Biggest Fans Feeling Betrayed

Overwatch hero D.va has been considered a symbol of empowerment by a lot of feminists in the Korean Overwatch community, representing how women could be lauded for their talent instead of their looks. Long before Mei graced protest memes for Hong Kong, a group called FAMERZ, then called National D.va Association, attended rallies and protests…

Seven Games That Were Almost My Game Of The Decade

When people ask me to name my game of the decade, I pause. There are so many. I took away hard-won lessons from some of them, but over time, I’ve come to realize that those lessons were probably wrong. On a more or less annual basis, my game of the decade changes. This is not…

The Greatest Game Trailers Of The Decade

The decade ends, history’s book turns another page, and you’ve still not finished playing The Witcher 3 for some reason. While the games of the past decade have left their marks, we can also remember the flashier side of things: trailers. Here are the best of the decade. Writing a list of best trailers feels…

Real Overwatch Loot Box Opens, Reveals 100% Chance Of Marriage Proposal

I’m not sure what this says about the odds of a successful union, but it’s at least a very nice way to spend big on an engagement. When Gavin Carter—a producer on Fallout 3 and Halo 4—wanted to propose to his girlfriend recently, he didn’t want to do things the old fashioned way. Instead, he…

Overwatch Glitch Allows All Heroes To Fly

Unlike most first-person shooters, Overwatch is not opposed to allowing some heroes to fly. Pharah rockets up and bonks her head on the sky’s ceiling. Sigma soars above the battlefield on an invisible cloud of psychic energy during his ult. Zenyatta hovers and should never be allowed to walk. Real flight for everyone, though, is…

Overwatch Voice Actors Hit BlizzCon Cosplaying As Their Characters

Back in March, we ran a little feature on Carolina Ravassa, the voice actor behind Sombra who spent a day cosplaying as the Overwatch hacker. That was at Katsucon, but for BlizzCon 2019, she was joined by two other cast members, Anjali Bhimani (Symmetra) and Matthew Mercer (McCree). Cosplayer Melanie Jasmine (below, left) made Ravassa…

In The Era Of ‘Live’ Games Like Fortnite And Overwatch, Sequels Are Changing

There was a time when a sequel meant something. I don’t mean that in a wistful, “back in my day” sort of way. I mean that it largely meant one thing: A separate, new game with a shiny “2” somewhere in its title. Then expansions blurred the line, and patches blurred it even more. Now…

HBO’s Watchmen Is Better At Lore Than Most Games

Watchmen, the new HBO television series that we find incredibly intriguing, has a lot in common with some of my favorite video games. There is punching and costumes, damn good music, and a thoroughly imagined world that I want to spend a lot of time in. It also pulls off one of my favorite video…

Overwatch Stagnated Because Of Its Sequel, Says Director

Conspicuous is the word you might use to describe the lack of meat on Overwatch updates’ bones for the past couple of years. Seasonal events like summer’s Lucioball, fall’s Junkenstein’s Revenge, and winter’s Winter Wonderland have ground to such a screeching standstill that players don’t get excited about them anymore. What happened? Here’s a hint:…

Overwatch Director Says There Are Story Reasons For Saving The First Black Woman Hero For The Sequel

Overwatch currently has 31 playable heroes. One of them is a gorilla from the moon. Another is a hamster in a mecha ball. None of them are black women. This has led to a series of increasingly exasperated pleas from fans over the years, to little avail. Now, finally, Blizzard has confirmed the existence of…

The Overwatch D.Va Gaming Chair Makes Me Wish I Still Sat In Gaming Chairs

Back before I was paralyzed from the chest down, I spent a lot of time working, playing, and napping in my Titan gaming chair from Secret Lab. My only problems with the chair were that it was not pink and it did not have a picture of a bunny on it. Well, shit. This D.Va…

Overwatch 2‘s New Modes Are Fun, But Play It Too Safe

Since day one, Overwatch’s existence has been marked by refinement. Balance changes, new heroes, player-made modes, events, role queue, and other additions have indelibly altered the game’s fabric, or at least switched up its stitching. Now it’s getting a sequel, an opportunity for truly foundation-rattling change. So far, however, Overwatch 2 feels like another refinement.…

Overwatch 2 Announced With Emotional Trailer

Blizzard has finally announced Overwatch 2, the next iteration of the developer’s massively popular first-person hero shooter. It’s a sequel with all-new maps, heroes and modes, including player-versus-environment modes and a new player-versus-player mode called “Push.” In the new announcement trailer, revealed today at Blizzcon, Overwatch heroes Mei, Winston and Tracer touch down in Paris,…

Love To Log Into Overwatch And Play Some Tetris

Someone made Tetris using the Overwatch workshop. It’s pretty incredible. The Overwatch workshop allows players to make custom modes by altering in-game scripts, and players have already been making some nifty things with it. To me, this latest creation is more than just nifty. This is Tetris. Somebody put a whole-ass other game in this…

The Switch Just Can’t Handle Overwatch

With today’s launch of Overwatch on Nintendo Switch, there is officially a worst way to play one of the best games of all time. There are a lot of sub-optimal things about this port. The timing is inopportune, for one. Overwatch is landing on Switch three and a half years after its original release, and…

Overwatch’s Dva features in a brand new Switch controller, which I had to grab the moment I saw it. While it looks great in the box, the Dva controller doesn’t feel half as high-quality as a Switch Pro controller, which is $20 more expensive. Thankfully, it has motion controls, so we’ll be able to take…

The party may be canceled, but it’s still Overwatch Switch launch day, everybody! The game goes live globally at 2 p.m. Eastern time. Until then, enjoy the awesome “Please download the latest patch” splash screen.

Blizzard Cancels Overwatch Launch Event At Nintendo World Store

On Wednesday, Blizzard was supposed to be holding a big launch event for the Switch version of Overwatch at the Nintendo World Store in New York City. That event has now been cancelled by Blizzard. Hrm. I wonder why