Overwatch

Overwatch Winter Update Brings Festive, Furry Skins, But Little Else

Overwatch’s annual Winter Wonderland event is back, which means snowball fights, festive cheer, and yetis or whatever, but mostly skins. This year, everyone is a furry, except for Mercy, who’s a World of Warcraft elf Here’s everybody in their new holiday duds: Personally, I’m a pretty big fan of Junkrat’s Krampus look, but everything else…

Overwatch League Season Two Will Have Some Road Games

One of the original appeals of the Overwatch League’s formula was the idea of teams traveling around the world to play in each others’ home cities, surrounded by whooping, hollering, body-paint-covered hometown crowds. But that didn’t happen during season one, and reports afterward alleged that it wouldn’t be a thing until 2020. Now, though, OWL…

Some NBA Stars Made An Overwatch Hype Video

A media guy for the Dallas Mavericks has been bugging the team for two years to let him do an Overwatch-style hype video, and they finally relented. It was worth the wait. Especially for Luka Doncic’s half-ass Junkrat. Before you give him too much shit, though, his complete lack of enthusiasm might be explained by…

Overwatch Team Saved From Enemy Ult By Basketball

Every time Overwatch players hear Zarya shout her trademark Russian ult line—“Ogon’ po gotovnosti!”—a sinking feeling of inevitability sets in. It means that you and your team are going to be dragged together by a tiny black hole and then lasered down, or obliterated by a ghost dragon or something. There is, however, a hard…

The Paradox Of Online Games’ Group-Finders

One of the great online gaming paradoxes is the group-finder, a feature intended to bring people together that often does the opposite. It’s a mainstay in online games, a one-size-fits-all solution to the ever-present social gaming problem of “How do I meet people and progress?” Functional, accessible and a little impersonal, the group-finder makes connecting…

This animation of a showdown between Overwatch’s Hammond and Fortnite’s black knight is pretty impressive. The creator, YouTuber 3D Print Guy, made the models from scratch and then pitted them against each other in a miniature battle for the ages. He says he’s done work for Pixar, and it shows.

Popular Overwatch Fan Song Has Turned Into An Excuse To Mock Female Gamers

TikTok is a lip-synching app that’s popular among teenagers. If you’re not a teenager, you might be more familiar with this app through “cringe” compilations, which are videos that string together several TIkTok videos, often for the purposes of mockery. Every single “cringe” compilation that I’ve watched contains at least one instance of the Overwatch-themed…

Overwatch director Jeff Kaplan has acknowledged that new hero Ashe has aim issues Players have been complaining that it feels harder to aim with Ashe than heroes like McCree and Soldier 76, and Kaplan explained that it’s because of an issue with her aim-down-sight animation. It can feel “a bit off” if you’re playing at…

Everyone Could Use A Little McCree

Good Smile Company’s big-headed McCree figure is every bit the roguish cowboy fans know and love, even if his high noon is a lot lower than normal.  Joining the Nendoroid Overwatch figure rosternext July, this version of McCree packs a whole lot of swagger into a small package. Don’t let the smile fool you, he’s also…

Toronto Esports Team Pulls Out Of Overwatch Because It Couldn’t Use ‘Toronto’ Anymore

There’s taking your ball and going home, and then there’s whatever Toronto Esports just did. After a few days of unusual tweets from the organization’s president and founder, including an unanswered challenge issued to Overwatch League’s new Toronto team, Toronto Esports suddenly dropped out of Overwatch’s minor league, Contenders, over a naming dispute. In a…

Overwatch’s newest hero, Ashe, is live. The new patch also includes a handful of other changes, including buffs to Mercy, Symmetra, Reaper, and Roadhog, the latter of whom Kotaku’s resident Roadhog expert Cecilia D’Anastasio says is now “saved.”

BlizzCon 2018’s Cosplay Was Out Of Control

Other shows might be bigger, but every year Blizzcon brings out the absolute best in cosplay. It was held earlier this month at the Anaheim Convention Centre, and many of the top cosplayers not just from North America, but from the rest of the world made the trip to show off their love for Overwatch,…

Overwatch‘s Next Big Patch Will Require A Full Reinstall Of The Game [Update]

Overwatch has had a handful of sizable patches in the past, but the next major one—which presumably will include new hero Ashe—is going to necessitate a full reinstall of the game. Blizzard chalks the inconvenience up to under-the-hood changes that go deeper than just a fresh coat of paint. “The next major patch will have…

Overwatch Probably Won’t Get A Hero Wackier Than Wrecking Ball

There was a time, hard as it might be to remember, when Overwatch’s wackiest hero was a peanut-butter-loving science ape from the moon. Earlier this year, however, he was usurped by a mech-piloting, robo-voiced, Thunderdome-battling hamster who’s also from the moon. How do you top that? Overwatch director Jeff Kaplan isn’t sure he wants to.…

Welcome To Overwatch, Ashe

Kim-Seang “Nesskain” Hong, formerly a Blizzard fan artist, is now a Blizzard artist, and has worked on the last few character reveal trailers, including the latest one, Ashe. Here you’ll see loads of the illustrations he did for the trailer, which were storyboarded by Blizzard’s Mio del Rosario. You can see more of Nesskain’s stuff…

Jeff Kaplan’s Plans To Combat Overwatch Fatigue

This year’s BlizzCon was an odd one on a lot of levels, but I was personally stricken by the number of friends and acquaintances who told me they’d taken weeks or months off from playing Overwatch. Last year and the year before, it was an obsession. Lately, though, it’s felt a little stale. Despite that…

Blizzard Explains Why Overwatch Still Doesn’t Have A Black Woman Hero

Overwatch fans disappointed with Ashe should know that six new heroes are in the works, Blizzard has told Kotaku, and that fans hoping for more diversity in the popular game’s cast of characters will hopefully find what they’re looking for in upcoming updates. “I think if you look at the history of Overwatch, there’s been…

Overwatch‘s Ashe Is More Than Just Another Sniper

In many ways, Overwatch’s newest hero Ashe is a contradiction. She’s pinpoint-accurate at a distance, but she’s not exactly a sniper in the same sense as Widowmaker or Hanzo. Her HP pool drains faster than a water balloon hitting a ceiling fan, but she can get down in the thick of things and help capture…

There’s Official Cosplay Of The Newest Overwatch Hero, Ashe

Like they have the last few times there’s been a new character reveal, Blizzard got in touch with props and costume builders Henchmen Studios to create an almost 1:1 real-life replica of Ashe’s outfit and gear. Cosplayer Karolina Lefaywas brought in to actually wear the gear, and really, if we get any more of these…

Behold, BlizzCon’s giant Lego D.Va statue. Yes, she’s made of Lego bricks. No, you probably won’t be able to buy this one in the near future