Despite what my love of recent independent titles like Hyper Light Drifter , Firewatch and The Banner Saga 2 might suggest, I have a strong history with games of a more bombastic persuasion. My most played game of all time, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, found a way to capitalize on the combination of my love for multiplayer chaos and my susceptibility to addictive feedback loops. Granted, I would never claim that Modern Warfare 2 is some sort of godlike game, but there was something about its complete lack of balance and downright brilliant map design that tapped into a very specific portion of my mind.

At the time that I'm writing this, I've completed 101 matches in Overwatch's current beta. It's affected my normally rigorous workout schedule, my level of contact with friends and family and the number of hours of sleep that I've gotten. When I booted up Overwatch to pull that statistic from my Career Profile, I had to consciously force myself to exit the application in order to finish this article. Yes, I have a genuine Overwatch problem, and it's kind of the greatest thing ever.

With all of that gushing out of the way, I'd like to pinpoint the exact moment where I realized that Overwatch was a special experience, at least for me. While the PC audience is far more knowledgeable about team composition than its console counterparts (as a result of sheer time played), I found myself on a team where the other five players thought it would be a good idea to choose three Tracers and two Reapers. If you don't know anything about Overwatch, you should know that a balanced team consisting of offense, defense, tanks and supports is going to succeed far more often than one where every player is in one category. Considering that Tracer is the squishiest offensive hero and Reaper is an offensive character that isn't going to be able to do damage at range, I found myself at a loss. Generally when I'm attacking a central control point, I enjoy picking someone like Junkrat, whose bouncing grenades can cause absolute chaos. Unfortunately, this hero was out of the question, as my more casual teammates would not be able to succeed without a healer. It's for that very reason that I chose Mercy, who can beam health into any allies that she aims her staff at.

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 21 launch heroes, three at a time, with the hopes that you'll be able to recognize certain patterns on the battlefield.

Perhaps it'll be a bit easier to collect my thoughts on Overwatch once the beta period is over, thus giving me a bit of time to ruminate on what has been the best surprise of my time here at Hardcore Gamer to date. Right now, I find myself stuck in a mode of childlike wonder that rarely comes along and the last thing I want to do is ruin this through academic over-analysis. I haven't had a multiplayer experience that has come along and completely enraptured me quite like this in seven years; on top of all of read this blog post from Www.overwatchtactics.com, any semblance of being jaded as a result of playing too many games has all but vanished as a result of Blizzard's impeccably polished arena shooter. Since you all probably would like to see a bit of negative criticism in here to balance out the single most glowing article I've written this year, however, I'll leave you with this: I really don't like the feeling of knowing that I already need to write off hundreds of hours of my life.

Safe to say that the expansion of the internet as not just a tool for communication, but hub for "creativity" (putting it mildly) has given users the means as much the confidence to feel they have a platform to express their feelings without coming across as aggressive, or even saying a solitary word in their respective language. They have the power to reflect the consensus of the wider community, be that their original intention or not. Being the video editing novice that I am, it never ceases to make me smile how even the most simple chop-and-change can shine a ravenously merciless light on, say, the over-indulgent marketing ploys of a game and turn what was a passively-forgettable moment into something entirely more worrying. Least of all when said game ends up being, to a considerable number at least, a rather lacking - if occasionally fun - experience . But anybody can load a video with crazy effects, whack the infamous ‘MLG’ stamp on it and find itself but the latest entry in a long-running, if staple, example of gaming culture having a pop at its own over-zealous indulgence and self-gratifying crotch-handling.

Blizzard Entertainment shocked the industry back in 2014 when it announced that its next MMO, Titan, was canceled and that they would instead be developing a brand new IP in a genre they had never developed for. That game is Overwatch, a team-based multiplayer-only first-person shooter. Overwatch stands out as not only Blizzard’s first foray into the first-person shooter market, but also as Blizzard’s first brand new IP in over seventeen years. Has Blizzard crafted a masterful entry into the genre, or is this one giant mistake?