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PAX East 2016: Hands on with Overwatch

by: Nathan -
More On: Overwatch PAX East 2016

I have ignored and not cared about Overwatch since it was announced. I don't know what it was but I just didn't have any interest in this game at all. You know what? I am happy about that, because now I only have to wait about a month or so for this game. I played Overwatch for the first time at PAX East this year and I absolutely LOVED it. 

The game mode I got to play was Siege mode. In this mode one team must defend the enemies from advancing a payload to the opposite end of the map. For the attackers to move the payload, they simply have to stay near it. This is the kind of game mode which really requires communication between teammates. If you are attackers, and you are all just running of chasing kills, you aren't really helping much as a single enemy can just stand by the payload to keep it from moving. You really need to work as a team on both the attacking team and defending team to keep enemies away from the payload. Each team gets to play as attacker and defender so it's important to switch up your team comps between games. 

I didn't get a chance to play with all of the characters but my favorite character out of the ones I did get to play was Zarya, an Amazonian brute of a woman and a tank that not only can protect the team, but can deal out great damage as well. Zarya's main weapon includes a particle cannon which shoots out short beams of energy and a particle launcher which is essentially a grenade launcher. Her abilities include being able to shield herself or one of her teammates and her ultimate ability throws out a massive ball of energy which sucks in all nearby enemies for a short time. Now even though she is a tank she can actually deal some serious damage as well as her passive ability let's her convert damage she takes while shielded into additional damage for the article cannon.

The version of the game I got to play at PAX was the PS3 version and I will admit that I suck at FPS on consoles. I tried playing Widowmaker but sniping with her was damn near impossible on a controller in a game this fast, but of course there are people out there that are probably better with controllers than a mouse and keyboard so I wont hold this against the game. 

This is a game that I honestly had zero interest in and now it's near the top of my list of most anticipated games of 2016. I cannot wait until the beta goes live so I can I hop back in and play more of this.