overwatch-tracerBlizzcon 2014 has come and gone – another fun and exciting time for fans of the Blizzard franchises that include World of Warcraft, Diablo and StarCraft.  During Blizzcon 2014 – the team announced a brand new IP called Overwatch which is a multiplayer online shooter.

We had a chance to play Overwatch hands-on and also attend a small developer panel discussion on the making of the new game and key decisions going into development.  The Overwatch developers talked about how the game is being produced by a ‘seasoned team’ and promised that there will be a great deal of gameplay balance put into the game.  The Overwatch developers stressed that there will not be benefits to stacking a team with too many of the same classes (or heroes) and that they wanted the game to have a rock/paper/scissors feel as for combat – allowing the chance for any character class (hero) to beat the other.

For our hands-on time with Overwatch we played two matches one was defending and the other attacking.  We played with Tracer a female character who can ‘blink’ or teleport forward up to three times – attack – then ‘trace’ back to her original position.  We also got to use some of Winston who is a gorilla fitted with robotic parts and more of a tank-like character that can leap forward to attack and also can go berserk using his ‘Primal Rage’.

Overwatch gameplay was super smooth – the beta will launch in 2015 – no release date was given to us during Blizzcon.  From what we saw all of the design and character models looked visually appealing and the game should kick off to a success upon launch.

Overwatch Gameplay Trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoLGlIdc0-Y

Overwatch Beta Sign-Ups
www.playoverwatch.com