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Culture
Portraits Of Overwatch Heroes
Jai Kamat is an artist and illustrator from Rochester, New York. You can see more of Jai’s work at his personal site To see the images in their native resolution, click on the “expand” button in the top-left corner. Fine Art is a celebration of the work of video game artists, showcasing the best of…
By Luke Plunkett Published September 11, 2017 -
Esports
Pro Overwatch Players Sing Smash Mouth While Obliterating Opponents
Somebody once told me Envision is gonna roll me. It was a very good weekend for Envision, an American pro Overwatch team that’s recently risen up from obscurity to knock a handful of top teams down a few pegs in Overwatch’s official minor league, Contenders. Confirming their status as up-and-comers with a serious upside, they…
By Nathan Grayson Published September 11, 2017 -
Overwatch’s Mercy Problem
A big controversy within the Overwatch community this year revolved around the healer Mercy. Top players experienced hostility and harassment just for picking the character, and major Overwatch personalities derided the hero for supposedly having a low skill ceiling. Mercy players, the argument went, weren’t actually good. They were just “one trick ponies” who hid…
By Patricia Hernandez Published September 9, 2017 -
EsportsPro Doomfist Has Clutch Reaction To Tracer Ultimate
Some days you just can’t get rid of a bomb, but you can still try to give it back to the Tracer who threw it. In yesterday’s Overwatch Contenders match between EnVyUs and Kungarna, Michael “mykL” Padilla stuck Kim “Effect” Hyeon with Tracer’s Pulse Bomb, all but ensuring Kim’s imminent demise. Rather than share the…
By Eric Van Allen Published September 3, 2017 -
Zelda vs Overwatch
You can’t get Overwatch on the Switch, but if you could, I bet it’d be full of cameos like this. This is by 3D artist Aaron Walker. If it looks familiar, that’s because it’s a big fancy render of some fan art that we posted last year by French artist Jeremy Vitry The rig and…
By Luke Plunkett Published August 31, 2017 -
Blizzard Fixes “Culturally Insensitive” (Not Really) Overwatch Sign
Blizzard “upset” (not really, but bear with me) many Australians recently with a “culturally insensitive” sign in the new Junkertown map on Overwatch. That sign has now been fixed, and we are all free to get on with our lives. As first detailed in this Kotaku Australia story, the map—which is set in a desolate…
By Luke Plunkett Published August 31, 2017 -
Overwatch Fans Are Losing It Over A Character Who Has Barely Appeared
The Overwatch fandom’s favorite new character has only appeared within an in game poster, but that hasn’t stopped players from drawing fanart of her, cosplaying her, or declaring her as their wife. A week ago, Bizzard previewed a new map for Overwatch, Junkertown, and dropped a new short featuring Junkrat and Roadhog. In the short,…
By Gita Jackson Published August 31, 2017 -
Overwatch‘s New Map, Junkertown, Winds Like A Damn Snake
Overwatch’s new escort map, Junkertown, has a precarious, hacked-together feeling to it—a greasy, grimy look that stands in stark contrast to the game’s usual utopian beauty. It never lets you get comfortable, either, mostly because it never stops winding. Junkertown, which is now live on Overwatch’s PC public test realm, doesn’t reinvent the exploding death…
By Nathan Grayson Published August 30, 2017 -
Overwatch ‘Bronze To Grandmaster Challenges’ Are Fun To Watch, But A Little Shady
“We’re gonna have some fun here,” Beeftipsy said, spraying his tag on the ground of Overwatch’s Oasis map, the Overwatch equivalent of cracking one’s knuckles. It was the first day of the Twitch streamer’s “Bronze to Grandmaster challenge,” a trendy stunt in which master players who want to flex their competitive muscle live for fans…
By Cecilia D'Anastasio Published August 30, 2017 -
Overwatch Finally Gets A Reporting System For Consoles And Here’s How It Works
A year after release, Overwatch players on PS4 and Xbox One now have recourse for the trash Mei who won’t stop icing her teammates into the spawn point. Overwatch, a pleasant game that recently has taken a turn for the toxic, has gotten flack for how long console players waited to get their reporting system.…
By Cecilia D'Anastasio Published August 29, 2017 -
Overwatch‘s Mercy Is More Deadly Now, But She’s Still A Healer
Mercy is a Valkyrie now, and she’s not taking anybody’s crap. Yesterday, Blizzard revealed a surprising overhaul of Overwatch’s most straightforward healer, replacing her uber-powerful resurrection ult—which could potentially bring her whole team back from the brink—with “Valkyrie,” an ult that lets her soar around with a giant clip of super-powered bullets as well as…
By Nathan Grayson Published August 25, 2017 -
Blizzard Overhauling Overwatch‘s Mercy With New Ultimate
Overwatch’s Mercy has two roles on the battlefield: 1) stalwart, reliable healer of your team and 2) stalwart, reliable infuriator of the other team every time she nails a massive resurrection ult, canceling out all their hard work in a single, blinding flash. Blizzard’s decided to change the latter. “It’s pretty disheartening to have Mercy…
By Nathan Grayson Published August 24, 2017 -
Esports
Top Genji Player Can’t Compete In Blizzard’s Overwatch League Because He’s Just 16
This week, Seoul, Korea’s Overwatch League team announced their player roster. Unsurprisingly, they opted to basically snatch up Lunatic Hai, the two-time winners of South Korea’s biggest Overwatch tournament, APEX. There were, however, a couple curious omissions. Overwatch’s pro scene, largely the result of a series of smaller, unaffiliated tournaments held over the course of…
By Nathan Grayson Published August 24, 2017 -
EsportsTop Lucioball Players Create Strategies Blizzard Never Imagined
Overwatch’s Summer Games end on August 29, which means there’s not much time left to get good at Lucioball. Except no one is that good at Lucioball, even the players ranked in top 500. But while players who hate it have already gone back to playing Rocket League, the competitive Lucioball players left standing have…
By Maddy Myers Published August 23, 2017 -
New Overwatch Short Explores Mei’s Tragic Origins
There’s a new Overwatch CGI short, and no, it’s not that painfully brief Junkrat and Roadhog comedy sketch from the other day. This time around, Mei’s the star of the show, largely because all of her friends are dead. The new short is a re-telling of Mei’s origin story, beginning with a cryo-hibernation gone wrong…
By Nathan Grayson Published August 23, 2017 -
EsportsBlizzard Making A Bunch Of Changes To Overwatch‘s Competitive Mode
Overwatch’s fifth competitive season was not the game’s finest hour. Doom and gloom dominated the proceedings, and no, those aren’t the names of Reaper’s shotguns. For season six, Blizzard is changing things up, albeit with a series of tweaks, as opposed to a total overhaul. The biggest news is that competitive seasons will be shorter…
By Nathan Grayson Published August 22, 2017 -
EsportsOverwatch Pro Leaves Wedding Reception, Wins Big Match, Goes Back To Reception
Over the weekend, Overwatch pro Joonas “Zappis” Alakurtti had a decision to make: attend a friend’s wedding, or play his first match in Blizzard’s $100,000 Overwatch Contenders tournament. He chose both. Alakurtti is a member of Finnish organization Team Gigantti, a team with a solid backbone (its members previously played Overwatch for major org Ninjas…
By Nathan Grayson Published August 22, 2017 -
Esports
Pro Overwatch Had A Weekend Of Upsets
The first “real” season of Overwatch’s official minor league, Contenders, kicked off over the weekend, and it was characterized by underdog teams repeatedly flipping the script. It began on the UK side of things, with top-ranked European team eUnited losing 1-3 against the recently-founded Team Gigantti. Gigantti, a team made up of former members of…
By Nathan Grayson Published August 21, 2017 -
Overwatch‘s Next Map Is Junkrat And Roadhog’s Old Home
One man’s town made of trash is another man’s treasure. Though honestly, the other man could take or leave the trash and treasure, as long as he gets to blow shit up. Overwatch is about to get a new map called Junkertown. It’s a city made of scrap and sheet metal, a slice of putrid…
By Nathan Grayson Published August 21, 2017 -
EsportsOverwatch Pros Melt Before The Zarya-Doomfist Double-Ult
The Zarya-Doomfist combination, sometimes referred to as a “gravfist,” is a simple but effective one-two punch. It’s brutal in public games, but seeing it land in a professional Overwatch match is spectacular. Zarya starts it off with her Graviton Surge, which launches a gravity bomb, sucking opponents into one confined area. Then Doomfist launches into…
By Eric Van Allen Published August 20, 2017