Overwatch Critic Reviews

Overwatch is a fast, fun, and fresh take on the class-based shooter. Blizzard has made sure its first new IP in 17 years is polished to perfection.

Pretty much everything about this game feels fresh and exciting: the class-based combat, the art style, the roster, the modes. It's equal parts strategic and twitchy, encouraging you to think while also rewarding skill, and its roster is a delight. Overwatch may well be the best new multiplayer shooter to come along since Modern Warfare and Team Fortress 2 took 2007 by storm. I can't wait to play more.

Just as Team Fortress 2 burst onto the scene and captivated so many with its charm, and accessible gameplay, Overwatch is poised to do the same with its sharp gameplay and likable characters. There’s little doubt that the next great class-based shooter has arrived

You can't help but take note of the attention to detail immediately, even during the first few seconds of booting it up and watching a random character emote on the title screen. This arena shooter (not a MOBA) looks, sounds, and feels great, with the polish of a Pixar film without feeling overly childish. That extends to every facet of the experience, from its 60 FPS frame rate (even on consoles), beautiful locations, and insanely detailed character models.

Overwatch is an amazing experience. It’s fresh and consistently fun, with matches that are great in random groups, but astonishingly good when played with friends. Blizzard has taken its masterful art of polishing and perfection to the team shooter, and things will never be the same.

It has been a very long time since I’ve felt this much passion for a game. Overwatch is a perfect storm. It’s a new IP, looks gorgeous, plays phenomenally and singlehandedly rekindled my desire to play a genre of game I thought I’d left behind at this point.

Overwatch delivers an unprecedented amount of fun and excitement to a genre that desperately needed a shot in the arm. The charm and personality of the characters and environments only serve to enhance the game's pitch-perfect action and fine-tuned mechanics.

Blizzard’s take on the team-based shooter is as polished as you’d expect, marrying tactical breadth with an emphasis on variety and inclusivity.

If there is a complaint to be had it is that, currently, there is perhaps not enough to it. The four game types are a variation on two themes, the 12 maps quickly repeat, while competitive ranked play is yet to be included. But Blizzard has made all the right noises about being committed to building on Overwatch, providing new heroes, maps and gametypes for free across the game’s lifespan.

The first Blizzard shooter excels above the current competition in all aspects. A distinctive audiovisual style and plenty of pleasant details on each step are nice additions to its precisely-tuned gameplay.

To sum it up, Overwatch is absolutely deserving of the majority of the praise it’s receiving. Some people will be turned away by just how much hype has surrounded the game as they have been burned by over-hyped games before, but Overwatch has objectively proven itself to be a great multiplayer shooter.

I haven’t been this addicted to an online shooter since I was kid spending every day after school capturing flags in Team Fortress Classic (well, trying to capture them, anyway). Overwatch has everything going for it. It’s fun, beautiful, deep, and so far, it’s never boring. You might be overwhelmed at first when you start your first match and have to pick just one of those 21 gorgeous heroes, but you’ll quickly have a blast as you learn each characters’ strengths.

Overwatch does the things most video games only dream of doing. This is a fresh, joyful experience offering an incredible variety of gameplay, high ease of access, and deep potential for mastery. In a genre full of dour shootymans using realistic guns to shoot at realistic people, Overwatch polishes off the grit to reveal a game that's optimistic and eager to be explored. This is a world you'll want to stay in, bring your friends to, and keep coming back to for years to come.

This new Blizzard title feels effortless, and already feels like another addition to their list of seminal, necessary releases. It doesn’t necessarily reinvent the wheel, but the way it polishes, presents, and executes is well above and beyond standards. Easily one of the most necessary multiplayer experiences of the last few years, and a shot across the bow at shooters complacent in their defined expectations: whatever you do, Overwatch does it better.

Overwatch is one of the most refreshing experiences in the FPS genre in recent memory. It’s easy to pick up but hard to master. Seventeen years after its latest new IP, Blizzard finally has a new crown jewel.

Will it have the legs that games like Team Fortress and Counter-Strike have had? No idea, but Blizzard certainly has an impressive track record when it comes to supporting their games over time. For now, though, I can say that this is the most fun I’ve had with a shooter in years, and if you’ve got even a passing interest in team-based shooting, you should absolutely be playing it.

A gaming experience that’s more polished and exciting than I have ever had the pleasure of experiencing and one I’ll be sure to continue to play for the foreseeable future. If not for the inclusion of microtransactions, this would have been a perfect game in my book.

I fell in love with Team Fortress 2 because in that game, you win by being smart and considerate instead of quickly sniping off everyone you see. Overwatch improves on this concept tenfold.

Overwatch catches you instantly due to the hurricane dynamics of matches and the amazing smoothness of the game engine. There are no problems with the network code which can give odds to Swiss watches. It is impossible to get lost in the wilds of the interface. It offers extremely convenient controls. As a result Overwatch is very easy to learn.

Overwatch is a punch to the face for multiplayer shooters. It mingles quick-fix, objective-based gameplay with a deep tactical core and intelligent meta, forming a game that is simply perfect in short bites and thoroughly satisfying to play for hours on end.