Terror Watch

I think it’s pretty cool that Overwatch is currently having their new seasonal event (October 11th, 2016 to November 1st, 2016), Overwatch Halloween Terror, right now. Blizzard tested the water earlier this year with their Summer Games (Olympics without the trademark) event and it was met with mixed results and I believe that they’ve made steps to improve the player’s experience with their latest event.

First off, before we get into the meat of the review let’s get the minor things out of the way, the skins. When Blizzard introduced new skins during the Summer Games one of the things that rubbed players the wrong way was how you unlocked the skins. You couldn’t unlock them with the currency earned in-game, so the only was through real money purchase of loot boxes or through leveling. This time around, Blizzard added in-game currency purchase of skins. It’s a little expensive in my opinion, but if you played Overwatch so much that you had a huge surplus of in-game currency you could just unlock all of them if you so choose. Aesthetics wise, I feel the new skins look much cooler than the ones offered during the Summer Games period but that’s a personal preference.

Moving on to the main part of the event, Junkenstein’s Revenge. In Junkenstein’s Revenge, four players are tasked to defend a gate from being destroyed. It’s a first-person tower defense style game. The enemies spawns are pre-determined depending on the difficulty level chosen with higher difficulties spawning more enemies and elites that are harder to kill. It feels simplistic at first with players just trying to kill enemies as quickly as possible before the enemies break the gate down. But similar to other tower defense style games, the goal of this mode is to make it to the end with a perfect run as possible. What this means is having the spawn patterns memorized, usage of skills and ultimate skills at the right time so that players are not overwhelmed and to kill elites as quickly as possible.

So why would someone return to this mode? The wrinkle comes in the way player chooses their characters. In this mode, you can only choose one out of 4 characters (Ana, McCree, Solder: 76 and Hanzo). Doing so locks that character from being chosen by the other players. This is a double-edged sword as you might be locked out from choosing a character you are familiar with, but introduces a sense of randomness to the game depending on your and other player’s familiarity with the characters and this mode. Thus, depending on how well your team works together you may or may not be seeing the victory screen.

Of course, if you wanted to get through the round with the gate relatively unscathed you might want to play with friends and communicate with them. But even without grouping with friends, Blizzard added a few U.I. elements and tells to help the player know what’s going on around them. There’s a new U.I element that indicates the players’ healths and the percentages of the ultimates charged. It’s so simple but informative that I kind of wish that this U.I element can be added into the main game itself. Next is the commentator and sound cues. The commentator will chime in regarding elite spawns and kills which might let the player know when you should save your ultimate or not to use it as the elite has already been killed. A bell toll will chime when a player dies and hearing 3 of them in close succession means you should try to get out of the fray because the round ends when the fourth player is killed and the whole team is wiped out before your teammates respawn. Your characters are more chatty as well, serving both as backstory and gameplay alerts.

While it might feel like a minor distraction from the main game at times, one should be reminded that Junkenstein’s Revenge and the Halloween skins are free additions to the game that are meant to get lapsed players back and provide a bit of variety into the game while Blizzard works on the next map or character. So I’m quite happy with what they have offered, even if it’s not as substantial as some might want. I can’t wait to see what the next seasonal event will bring.