To say that I was addicted to Overwatch is a massive understatement. I did not start playing the game until 2007, but my son was there from day one. The funny thing about the start of my Overwatch addiction is that I saw my son play the Christmas themed Mei’s Snowball Offensive and thought that it looked fun so I gave it a show and the rest as they say is history. Like many Overwatch players, I started out messing around with many different characters until I found a few that I liked to play as.
D.Va was the one that stuck with me. My son will tell you that I played as D.Va because I am terrible at aiming and can just fire away with her unlimited ammo or shoot in the vicinity of a target with my rockets, but I like to think I am a somewhat decent player as D.Va. As more characters would be added, Sombra and Orisa would also become characters that I enjoyed playing as. Overwatch was such a fun game, I loved the whole lore behind this world and the characters, and while I would say that it is a game about skill. Overwatch was one of the most fun shooters I had ever played and even if I sucked in a game and did not do well, I still most of the time had fun.
I loved the various events that would happen, especially Lucio Ball! When Lucio Ball season would come that would be literally all I would play! I also loved Junkenstiens Revenge too. Overwatch just had a ton of personality and I ate up everything they did. Even though I never ditched any of my mains, I was always excited to try out a new character. I have to be honest, I never had a problem with the lootbox system either! You got three a week for winning games and you would get one each time you leveled up. I never once felt the temptation to spend actual money on a loot box. If people wanted to do that, that is up to them. Granted, I do think just letting people buy what they want is the right way to go about things, but no one was ever forcing someone to buy loot boxes.
When I heard Overwatch 2 was going to be a thing and that it was going to have a single-player campaign I was so excited! I loved the PVE story-based stuff that added in bits of lore in Overwatch so with Overwatch 2 having a dedicated single-player mode, I was all in…. and then stuff started to come out about Overwatch 2. The biggest one was that it was going to be free to play! I am not a free-to-play gamer, hey if you are more power to you. I just want to pay for the game, get the content, play it, and have fun. I do not want to mess around with battle passes or stuff like that. I hate it when playing a game feels like a part-time job or something like a gym or streaming membership that you have to keep on paying for. Hey, this is modern gaming I get it, but that does not mean I have to like it.
They changed some of the characters and I did not mind that. Orisa for example who I loved to play as feels so different on Overwatch 2 and I do not like playing as her. Before it was very close between D.Va and Sombra in regards to who my main was, but in Overwatch 2, it is most certainly Sombra that I like playing as. Even though I had my reservations, I decided to try to play Overwatch 2, but it did not go well. I felt like there were like a million bars that would pop up after a game and now there were multiple forms of currency! I always felt like I was being hustled to pay for something, that is the way free-to-play games are I get it. However, all it did was turn a huge fan off, and to add insult to injury, that epic single-player mode was nowhere to be found.
I went cold turkey on Overwatch 2 and honestly thought that it had completely passed me by. That was until I heard about Mirrorwatch where some of the bad guys turned good and the good guys turned bad and their abilities were switched up. I heard this and thought that it sounded kind of cool so I thought what the hell, let’s give it a try, Sombra is one of the characters that has been changed so I wanted to see what it was like playing as her with her changed abilities. I played one match of Mirrorwatch and I had a great time! I was smiling the whole time I was playing (even though I did not play all that great) and I decided to jump back in and play another match
Before I knew it, a couple of hours had passed and I had played a whole bunch of Mirrorwatch, as well as a few games of some of the other game modes. Those bars were still filling up after each match and the battle pass thing kept telling me what I had and what I could get if I decided to get the premium one. Yet, I just let all of this blow past me and just kept on playing the game. Overwatch 2 is a very, very fun game. It is one of the most fun shooters that I have ever played. I do feel that it is a very accessible kind of shooter that does offer something for everyone. Still, I would much rather just pay like £50 for the entire game and get it all, but that is not the way things are anymore. I am not sure how long I am going to keep playing Overwatch 2, but it has been well over a week already and I have not had the urge to stop playing yet.
I would love to know your thoughts on Overwatch 2. Did you play Overwatch and then transition over to Overwatch 2 and have been there ever since? Or did the free-to-play mechanics turn you off? I would even be interested to know if anyone did not play Overwatch 1, but has found themselves pulled in by Overwatch 2!