Disclaimer! I am in no way a fan of shooters in general, much less FPS MOBAs or team based shooters like Overwatch and Team Fortress 2, or whatever you want to categorize them as. So this is going to be in the perspective of a gamer that does not at all hold any hype for the genre.
While there aren’t any Steam Codes for Overwatch, it’s still the most hyped game right now and isn’t slowing down at all. Now, even I, as I said earlier, am not a fan of shooters, but Overwatch has caught me hook, line, and sinker from the trailers and animated shorts alone. But, of course, I had my own share of healthy skepticism considering that the game had nothing past its MMO PvP-like arenas. I was attracted to the lore and the very existence of its characters, so why would a non-shooter gamer ever pick it up? Well, my curiosity and want to involve myself with the characters and Overwatch’s world was enough to spur me to buy the game. Again, it doesn’t have a Steam CD key, so that added to my initial reluctance as I only ever play Steam games. Hesitantly, I picked up the game a few days ago and I was even thinking that I was going to regret the purchase. I’m glad that I was wrong.
Steam Codes: The Core of Overwatch
Overwatch, at its beginning, assumes that you are a nub in all things shooter. This is true in my case and the brief tutorial, with the help of Athena, Overwatch’s own sentient computer, and the very lovely Tracer, ran me through the basics once more just to make sure I wouldn’t make a fool of myself in a real match. Blizzard really put a lot of thought into making the game accessible to every because this intention is extremely pronounced with how simple it is to understand how your hero works and how to do mechanics in a match. The best noob-friendly thing in the game is never running out of ammo. Yes, you do run out of ammo in your clip and will have to reload eventually, but you don’t need to go rummaging throughout the arena for clips if your reserves run low because, well, it’s infinite in Overwatch. You can’t ever run out of steam.
After going through the extremely basic tutorial of Overwatch, I immediately headed into quick play mode where I found a match in no less that 5 seconds. There are tons of people playing this game right now, so there isn’t any issue in getting a match. Once in, the objectives are very clear, simple, and to the point. Every arena right now only has objective capturing and nothing else. While that does sound weak for a game this hyped, I assure you that it simply isn’t the case. There are 3 kinds of objective capturing in Overwatch; King of the Hill style, Base capturing, and Payload delivery. All these mechanics merely involve one of your team mates to stand in the highlighted area to capture it. A capture stops and becomes contested when a player of the opposing team steps into the area as well.
King of the hill is as simple as can be; capture the target area before the timer runs out and you win the game. Base capturing varies on the team you’re on. The attacking team, randomly chosen, needs to capture both base points in the arena before the timer runs out to win. The defending team, on the other hand, has to prevent these base points from the attacking team and, in order to win, has to run the clock to zero. Lastly, Payload delivery focuses on bringing a movable objective from point A to point B. This is true for the escorting team that has to remain by the side of the payload in order for it to move. The more players near a payload, the faster it will move. The defending team in this game has to stop the payload from reaching its destination. They can do this by, of course, wiping out the enemy team enough so that they don’t ever get to move the payload, and by moving the payload the opposite direction themselves simply by standing close to it or on top of it.
As you can see, while the mechanics may be inherently similar, the variation of this single objective capturing mechanic gives Overwatch a lot of flavor all on its own. With 12 varied maps with their own interesting twists, turns, and secret accessways, there’s really no end to the fun that can be had in Overwatch. Now if only it had Steam Keys, I’d much better prefer playing on Steam than on Battle.net…