Overwatch

“IT’S JOHN CENA.” Overheard (about a life-sized Overwatch statue) at BlizzCon. Winston is, of course, a kindly yet terrifying genetically engineered gorilla—not John Cena, who is a different kindly yet terrifying genetically engineered gorilla. I wonder who would win a fight. Here’s the statue up-close: He even has actual hair. Clearly someone cares a lot…

Overwatch Base Price Will Be $40, $60 On Consoles

Turns out Overwatch won’t be free-to-play, as many (myself included!) had predicted. Instead it’ll cost you $40 to buy the base version of Blizzard’s new hero shooter on PC, Blizzard just announced. To buy the premium “Origins” edition, which comes with a bunch of skins and other perks and is available for PC, PS4, and…

Overwatch Is Coming To Consoles [UPDATE]

Since Blizzard announced Overwatch for PC last year, most of the gaming world has assumed it’s coming to consoles too. Now, GameStop’s all but confirmed it. As of this morning, GameStop is taking pre-orders on the hero shooter for PS4, Xbox One, and PC, according to clerks at an NYC store I just spoke to.…

Overwatch Player Steamrolls Entire Team With Kamikaze Strike

Overwatch’s giant hammer-wielding tank of a man Reinhardt has a powerful charge move that rockets him forward, catching any enemies caught in his path and dragging them along with him. Overwatch also has a lot maps with dangerous precipices to fall off of. You probably see where this is going. In a recent match (via…

What A Typical Match Of Overwatch Looks Like

A lot of gamers have been losing their shit recently because of Overwatch, which just went into closed beta and is already fantastic. You might be wondering: Hey, what does it look like to actually PLAY this game everyone’s so excited about? Wonder no more, my friend! For the sake of clarity, I captured a…

Overwatch Makes A Great First Impression

I can’t remember the last time I felt as excited about a new video game as I feel right now about Overwatch, Blizzard’s unprecedented stab at making a multiplayer shooter. I’ve been playing it for three days and see so much potential. The one game that came close was Heroes of the Storm, Blizzard’s similar-but-also-totally-different…

Overwatch Has Some Cool Easter Eggs

Blizzard’s team-based shooter is now in beta, and those who played on the Japanese-themed map Hanamura, could discover a location with a bunch of silly arcade cabinets Super Siege Mode 3 is a nice reference to the Metal Slug series and The Lost Vikings VI is something similar to the shmup mini-game from the StarCraft…

The Overwatch closed beta will begin on October 27, Blizzard just announced. If you’re interested in the colorful new team shooter (which came from the ashes of Blizzard’sTitan) you can opt in on battle.net. They’ll also be holding beta test weekends starting after BlizzCon in November.

Overwatch Finally Gets More Evil Characters

While there’s no info on Overwatch’s beta yet, Blizzard’s slowly building up the online shooter’s roster. This time they introduced two really evil-looking characters which, besides the gloomy guy Reaper, were missing from the current line-up. The big guy, Roadhog, looks like the perfect mix of a Borderlands and a Mad Max character. He uses…

Blizzard is streaming new stuff from Overwatch and StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void today. You can watch the stream on YouTube here. We’ll be keeping an eye out and will let you know if there are any cool announcements, as always.

People Are Already Making Overwatch Fan-Movies

Blizzard’s upcoming multiplayer shooter Overwatch is not even in beta yet, but some fans are already done with their first live-action video, with some of the characters fighting around the Overwatch HQ. RP WhaBam’s clip—called Overwatch Legacy—has Tracer and Reaper from the game’s roster, and man these are some really well made costumes. To contact…

The Secret Behind Terrific Cosplay: Big Arms

This is Yasemin Arslan—who does not have big arms—doing a hell of a job cosplaying as Overwatch’s Tracer. You may notice, though, that she’s kinda floating in the air. Like magic. How’d she pull this off? “PhotoShop, duh” is only half the answer. The other half is the way Arslan and photographer Beethystaged the shot.…

How Blizzard Is Making Overwatch Different

More than a decade into its lifespan, World of Warcraft is still one of the biggest games in the world. Other games made by Blizzard—like Starcraft or Diablo—boast huge sprawling worlds, too. But they’re trying to make Overwatch a bit more… intimate. Announced last year, Overwatch marks a big departure for Blizzard. It’s a team-based…

New Overwatch Character Shows Blizzard Really Is Listening

After the initial cast of Overwatch was revealed, some folks, like feminist critic Anita Sarkeesian, lamented that the female characters in the team-based shooter were all svelte.Today, Blizzard revealed two new characters, and one of them is a direct response to those types of criticisms. Meet Zarya. According to Blizzard, she is a Russian soldier…

The Colorful Characters Of Overwatch

Arnold Tsang is a concept artist at Blizzard. We’vefeatured his work before, but now that Overwatch is out in the open, we can showcase his work onthe much-hyped shooter Tsang did all the character pieces you see here, giving us one of the first looks at the game’s bright, colourful and very comic booky cast.…

Overwatch Has A Story, But No Single-Player

I spent the weekend at BlizzCon, aka Overwatch-And-Some-Other-Stuff Con, aka Metzcon 2014. I played a demo of the surprising team-based shooter and liked it pretty well—with some reservations—but it was only a small snippet. I asked Blizzard about what the future holds. Here’s what they told me. Will there be a single-player story?—No. While Overwatch…

The More I Played Overwatch, The More I Liked It

Blizzard’s Overwatch is, in the grand scheme of shooters, kinda simple. Each character has one weapon, levels are straightforward, and movement speed feels like everybody is a giant moon ape—not just, you know, the giant moon ape. At first I wasn’t impressed, but then I discovered how interesting its characters are. It took me a…

Overwatch’s Hype Is All About Those Kids

Boy, people sure got excited about that Overwatch reveal, didn’t they? It’s been a while – Watch Dogs’ E3 announcement probably being the last case – since I saw grown humans lose their shit over a trailer and a lil’ bit of early gameplay. But in the case of Overwatch, there’s a very good reason…

With Overwatch, Blizzard Is Trying To Do Women Characters Better

Blizzard lore/story/sunglasses guy Chris Metzen and his daughter were watching a cinematic scene from World of Warcraft. There were swords, spells, dragons—the usual. His daughter, however, couldn’t help but ask of the women characters, “Why are they all in swimsuits?” Metzen relayed the tale during an Overwatch press conference at BlizzCon. He also said that…

Day-One Overwatch Cosplay At Blizzcon

Yesterday afternoon, during the Blizzcon 2014 opening ceremonies, Blizzard announcedOverwatch, a character-driven competitive first-person shooter. At the show’s costume contest few hours later, the first two Overwatch cosplayers appeared. First up is Rachel Day as Widowmaker, the emotionless assassin of theOverwatch cast. Here’s what the character looks like: And here is Rachel’s spot-on interpretation of…