Take Soldier 76, for example. On the surface, he is the most recognizable of the bunch. To be honest, he looks like he was plucked from any semi-futuristic shooter, but his inclusion and design is an important one. Overwatch is a game that awards team and skill-based play, and Soldier 76 serves the important role of acclimating less experienced players into the game. His moveset is simple, with an ultimate ability that essentially allows you to hold down a trigger and rack up kills without aiming, and he also has a healing item, which helps to minimize the importance of avoiding enemy fire. He also has the benefit of handling like a traditional first person shooter, which is bound to resonate with fans of the genre. There’s also Widowmaker, a fan favorite who wields a powerful sniper rifle. While her moveset and weapons require more skill to successfully use, her character design harkens to the femme fatale types that are instantly recognizable, which makes it easier for newcomers to discern what her purpose is within the game.

Winston's second ability, Barrier Projector, creates a bubble shield that absorbs a small amount of damage before cracking and breaking. This is best winston Stadium build used as a way to temporarily slow down or distract enemies, rather than as a pure defensive ability like, say, Reinhardt's shield. Finally, Winston's ultimate, Primal Rage, not only fills his health bar up to 1000 hitpoints, but it allows him to punch enemies for massive damage and use his jump pack every three seconds. Simply put, Winston should be used as a distraction whenever possible, and then as a tool of destruction once his ultimate meter is totally full.

Overwatch was released earlier this week to critical acclaim and it’s not hard to see why. Blizzard’s newest title is a slick online shooter that manages to be both incredibly deep on the strategic side, but widely accessible for newcomers who don’t have a lot of experience when playing shooters or MOBA-style games. Like most games from Blizzard, it’s also incredibly polished and runs well on both consoles and low-end PC systems.

It’s not surprising that Overwatch would be multiplayer-focused - it is, after all, from the company that made the most successful online RPG in history - but considering their high-quality single-player experiences offered in Diablo , Starcraft , and past Warcraft games, the complete absence of any single player mode aside from tutorials is a bit of a shock. There isn’t even a way to play multiplayer matches offline, as fighting teams of AI players still requires a whole team of other people. As good as the multiplayer is, the game certainly wouldn’t lose anything from some sort of dedicated single-player mode. If it told more of the story alluded to in Blizzard’s incredible trailers and shorts, it would further cement Overwatch as a phenomenal g

With Overwatch, the charming hero shooter from Blizzard, launching this week, we want to make sure that you’re as prepared as possible to help your team dominate. Overwatch’s main focus is clearly on the interplay between its dynamic characters, so in order to become competent, you’ll need to understand how every character works. Throughout the week, we’ll be publishing guides on each of the twenty-one launch heroes, three at a time, with the hopes that you’ll be able to recognize certain patterns on the battlefield.

After a few minutes, it was clear that Blizzard’s biggest goal when creating Overwatch was to instill a sense of inclusivity, and this extends beyond the ethnicities of the playable characters. Aside from characters that originate from countries such as Brazil, China, Japan, India, the United Kingdom and more, Overwatch features a nice mix of both female and male characters. And while plenty of the female characters resemble the traditional female body types seen in games, characters such as Mei and Zarya buck the trend of tall, slender females. There’s also a couple of robot characters and a highly-intelligent gorilla, which just showcases Blizzard’s creative abilities even more.

The support class is also carefully designed for players of all skill levels. While it doesn’t ring true in every situation, there are a few support characters that focus more on aiding the team rather than outright combat, allowing for less skilled players to contribute to the overall success of the team, while more skilled players can pick from certain support characters that demand more strategic use, like Zenyatta.

Yes, we know that it's only ever high noon once a day, but that doesn't stop McCree from uttering his catchphrase at all times of the day. Aside from the fact that McCree memes are the greatest thing known to man, this offensive hero has the potential to be one of the most lethal killers on the battlefield when used correctly (which is actually quite tough). His weapon, the Peacekeeper, is excellent at doing massive damage with both of its firing modes. The standard left click fires single-shot revolver bullets that are extremely accurate and eliminate a ton of its target's health with every shot. However, if you're more interested in getting up close and personal, McCree's secondary fire allows him to rapidly empty the rest of his clip, though the massive upward recoil makes this extremely difficult to control at first.