Overwatch is one of the most polished gamed I’ve played in a long time.
Every kill feels satisfying, every win is thrilling, and every defeat is infuriating. All of it makes me want to come back and play more. But Overwatch gets held back by itself at points, and it is frustrating to see such a great game not be as great as it could be.
Overwatch’s graphics are conflicting. At times it’s beautiful to look at, the lighting highlights the intricacies of each map in unique ways. The colors are always vibrant and each map has its own theme that helps it stand out from the others. However, often times textures load in slowly, and sometimes textures are just low in general (even on upscaled max settings).
The sound in overwatch ranges between good and great. Each weapon has a distinct flavor to it, each character has great voice acting, and each map has audible dynamic sound design. What makes Overwatch’s sound stand out even more though is those small moments of quiet battles.
Every so often there is a small moment of quiet that resonates so well. The echoes of the defensive characters setting up their respective defenses is heard through the environment, the characters may speak a couple dialogue lines to each other, and right before the enemy reenters to fight their approach slowly grows louder.
But then a problem sets in, and it’s a problem that plagues Overwatch for me. When it comes down to it, Overwatch is a one trick pony with no reward or progression system.
I’ve played Overwatch for a few hundred hours now, and I wish I wanted to come back and play more, but I’m at a point where I just can’t. We all know about the loot box problems in games, and Overwatch isn’t an exception just because Jeff Kaplan comes down from the heavens every so often for a community update with new skins.
Loot boxes are not a progression system, period. There isn’t any excuse for the fact that Overwatch has the monetization of a free to play game.
In fact,some free to play games have better, more rewarding monetization systems. The fact that the only reward for being good at the game is more random loot boxes helps the game get old really fast.
If there were some sort of special skin for achieving so many kills with a character then all the sudden there would be something for me to work for.
And some people may say that the gold weapon skins is that very system already in the game, but there are inherent problems with the gold weapon system.
If you don’t like to play ranked then you don’t have any method of getting the gold
weapon skins, and the achievement of having, let’s say, a gold Soldier 76 gun is somewhat diminished by the fact that I could get the points to purchase that gun by winning with a different character.
Overwatch’s monetization is somewhat conflicting. On one hand you have a new free map and character every other month or so, but on the other hand you have purchasable loot boxes. And don’t get me wrong, Overwatch is well polished, beautiful, and fun, but it’s sad to see how simple it could have been to make it even better.
