(This review is satirical, and is 80% meant for comedy. Although, the 19% is to actually review this game, and the other 1% is to release my blood and tears.. So take it with a grain of salt.)

Ah, Overwatch, the overhyped game that was supposed to cure Team Fortress 2 addiction. Well, just like curing any other addiction, I just need to pay $60 dollars for a risk that it might not even work. This leaves me sitting in a corner, questioning if I want to hear the high pitched squeaks of 12 year olds that haunts my dreams from other First Person Shooters.

Putting my PTSD aside, Overwatch is a team oriented first person shooter, or, at least it tries to be. The problem is that Blizzard is making this game a little too much like Team Fortress 2, and while it does bring some of TF2’s good relatives to the family reunion, it also brings over the trophy mom that only talks about how great their kid is and can’t take a hint to stop.

For example, team composition is something people don’t pay attention to in this game. You can have everyone on your team of 6 be the same person, whether it be an attack hero, tank hero, or even a support hero. In my week of playing the game, there was one game where my entire team was the revolver shooting cowboy McCree. While we know that there’s not enough room in town for the 6 of us, we still won. In another game, there were 5 Winstons and me as Lucio. The enemy team didn’t stand a chance.

Now, I do realize that team composition has happened in TF2 multiple times, but in Overwatch it happens more times than I’ve had needles riddled around my body (I’m a diabetic. This is funny. You should laugh)! The sad part is, it somehow works! You can have everyone on the opposite team go Tracer and they’ll still win! Overwatch tries to fix this problem by placing little notifications on the character select screen that there’s too many of one hero. This is like most people’s plan on gun control. Sure, you can wave the obstacle of getting a background check before purchase, but that means diddly squat if you’re criminal, already planning to do something menacing that could land you in the slammer right next to a buff, 6’4” white man named Bubba.

Of course, it’s not like the characters are very fun to go against either. All of the heroes you can play have an ability that lets them evade Death like I evade exercise. Let’s look at a few examples, shall we?

Tracer can teleport across the map and can regain health by reversing time.

Soldier: 76 can place a healing AoE on the ground and camp in that spot.
Reaper can literally go invincible and can eat souls dropped by killed enemies to restore health.
Pharah can stay airborne for more years than I’ve lived for.
Bastion can go into Turret form in a corner and can heal himself.
Mei has a wall that takes a million years to destroy, a self heal, and can make you into a Freezey Pop in a matter of seconds.
D.Va has a bullet shield.
Reinhardt has a shield.
Zarya has TWO shields.
Winston has a shield dome.
Ana can put enemies to sleep AND can heal teammates from halfway across the map.

Finally, the cream of the crop, Lucio is a walking, healing beacon that heals more health than hotcakes a diabetic can eat without going into a coma (I’m going to make a lot of these jokes. I do believe it’s fine because I, a diabetic, is making them). It also doesn’t help that his ultimate gives every ally that’s near him a 700 damage shield! That’s enough to stop 4 headshots, Bastion’s ultimate, Reaper’s ultimate, and even McHigh Noon’s ultimate, which is supposed to instakill!

So, forgoing the fact that each character avoids certain death like I’ve been trying to avoid failing grades, we’ll get to the gameplay. There are only 3 game modes to date. Capture the Point, which is your classic “Take 2 points to win”; King of the Hill, where you and your 5 teammates have a 50/50 chance to take the point and if you don’t win that 50/50 chance, then you have same glimmer of hope that my pancreas has to come back from the dead; and Payload, which is the worst mode of them all. All you have to do to win Payload, is to have just 1 Bastion on the cart. It’s like giving a T-Rex extendable claws. The cart in the payload heals the Bastion, and all the Bastion needs to do is laugh mechanically as everything around him goes to ruins. Extra Credit if a Reinhardt follows the idea and puts a shield in front of your Sentry Wall-E. That’s like giving the T-Rex rocket shoes.
Now, every thorn has its rose, but this rose is black, wilted, and generally looks like the zucchini plant in my backyard. The only thing that’s keeping this rose from turning into tomorrow’s fertilizer is the small amounts of wacky situations you can get yourself into. I mean, how many times have you turned a corner and out of nowhere you meet the business end of a meat hook, and you’re face to face with a tattoo of pig on a fat guy’s beer belly. Maybe you’ll walk out of your spawn and see bombs spewing out of a church window at random angles. You can also see a giant gorilla fly through a window and wipe out two thirds of your team.

All in all, Overwatch, while somehow taking 70 hours of my life, is a decent game in itself, but not as good as its predecessors. TF2 is already free to begin with, and it already has 9 years of experience under its belt. If you wanted to play a cartoon-y FPS, then you should’ve already been bowing to our Lord Gaben and grabbed TF2.

Wait, there’s a new hero out?
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Crap, of course.