So I’ve been wrong before, in my defense not very often. Originally I dismissed both Battleborn and Overwatch as just more of the same. The same FPS style run and gun modern shooters like Halo and Call of Duty have already brutalized in the ass. Sure, they added new components to impress the PC crowd by stealing from League of Legends but it was only a matter of time. In the case of Battleborn, which could have copy/pasted the entire champion leveling system from League of Legends, I was still mostly right. While I’ll reserve criticism for the final review Battleborn is dreck. It feels as if the developers cut corners everywhere and calling it unique or stylish isn’t going to fly this time. Why they wasted time on this when they could have made Borderlands 3 is beyond me. Overwatch on the other hand is really impressive, even though they both share the same basic arena warfare gameplay type.
First off, it is kind of admirable how they released the beta as it will be when the actual game comes out later this month. These days any kind of demo or beta has so many asterisk next to it players would need advanced degrees in law and astronomy to make heads or tails of anything. While there isn’t a lot yet the stuff that’s present looks great… if more of the same. Not to mention Blizzard has already announced they won’t be charging for future characters. What is with this new trend of developers giving things away? First Sony says it won’t make system exclusive games for the coming PS4.5 and now Blizzard won’t gouge us for a few new characters? Hell must have frozen over. I always assumed Blizzard fueled itself off of micro payments from its MMORPG’s; it wouldn’t be the first story I’ve heard of ‘kids’ doing crazy shit like robbing the family tomb to fund their StarCraft fix.
The game itself is also great, a lot like Team Fortress 2. Bright, colorful, kind of comedic and just a slight aftertaste of brutal carnage. Unlike Battleborn it also has actual animated cut scenes and I believe individual stories for each character, which sounds exciting. Whereas Battleborn has character backgrounds in the form of writing and the couple of animated scenes there are take place as comic style music videos. For reasons I haven’t been able to figure out yet I just like the characters in Overwatch more. Maybe it’s the OCD in me but I just like how each character has an actual role on the team; instead of a random group of characters with various abilities. Of course some were a little too complicated for me but could be devastating in the right hands. If you’re on the fence about which game to try I would say pass on Battleborn and try Overwatch… I wish I had. As a disclaimer, I’m not biased in any way just because there is a character in Overwatch called Reaper… even if he is badass.
