Recent reviews by Avensol

Overwatch is a masterclass on how to screw up a game:
- Launch OW1, everyone loves it and thinks it's gonna be the next big thing, there are a few flaws but everyone has faith that those issues will be fixed in good time

- Only 1 year into OW's life, Blizzard kills the budding OW esports scene because they want to make a wannabe version of the NBA but for OW called the Overwatch League

- They also make a tier 2 league called Overwatch contenders as an official way of getting into OWL, except winning Contenders doesn't even gurantee you a spot in OWL, and you have to grind full-time non-stop and put yourself in literal poverty to even have a chance of winning

- Overwatch sees its first few metas. There's the beyblade meta in season 2 and the triple tank meta in season 3. Most people liked these metas because they didn't last too long. But after that, Blizzard got lazy with balance and started letting metas stagnate.

- After 1 week of Bastion being meta at the start of season 4, the meta is now dive. And it stays that way for 2 whole years. In that time, Blizzard reworks Mercy and turns her into an instant rez bot that hits the undo button on any crucial picks the enemy gets. It takes way too many nerfs to get Mercy under control again, which only adds insult to injury after how long we've had dive meta for.

- As a last ditch attempt to get rid of dive, Blizzard decides to add the mistake that is Brigitte, who is a DPS, tank and healer all in one. She could give her entire team more health, and you could now stack 3 AoE healers, which meant you didn't need DPS any more, you could just have 3 tanks. And if that sounds familiar, that's because it's exactly what happened back in season 3. Blizzard didn't learn from their mistakes. It was totally avoidable, but now we were stuck with 2 whole years of GOATS meta. Blizzard couldn't figure out how to kill this meta properly, so eventually they just forced 2-2-2 comps and called it a day

- Now that 2-2-2 is forced, the game is a complete mess. Blizzard had spent 2 years trying to buff other heroes to compete with GOATS instead of directly nerfing the GOATS heroes, so now that GOATS was gone, we had some massive power creep issues. All those heroes that got buffed during GOATS were now wreaking havoc. Mei was busted, McCree was busted, Orisa and Roadhog were busted. And to make things worse, Blizzard added Sigma to the game, a hero with a deployable shield just like Orisa's, leading to 2 years of Double shield meta. We'd gone from shooting tanks that wouldn't die, to shooting shields that wouldn't die.

- OW1 is dying as Blizzard continues to mess up their balancing, so to claw some interest back to their game, they announce Overwatch 2, and they justify calling it a sequel by saying they're finally going to add a story mode to the game

- Somebody has the genius idea to completely stop development of OW1 and put it on life support while they work on OW2, so now the only new content for OW1 is a few recoloured skins and a couple of deathmatch maps, the game stagnates even harder.

- OW2 gets delayed, angering players and causing many to quit. The game director Jeff Kaplan also quits working for Blizzard, which makes players very worried, considering he was the person who announced Overwatch 2 in the first place.

- In the midst of it all, many Activision Blizzard staff are outed as sex offenders with reports from female staff and a leaked photo of a "Bill Cosby Suite", leading to McCree getting renamed to "Cassidy" because he was named after one of the staff who was out as a sex offender. This is the final straw for many people and they start boycotting the game, on top of the people who were already quitting because of the game's stagnation.

- Overwatch 2 gets delayed a 2nd time, causing more people to quit. They're just fed up of the lack of balancing and the lack of new content.

- OWL is a complete failure. It's now flopping harder than Fallout 76 because of years of stagnating metas, the worsening production, and their amazing idea of moving from Twitch to YouTube and signing an exclusivity deal with them, completely alienating OWL's audience. Most of the games aren't even done in front of a live stage anymore. People only watch it to get free OWL tokens. And by "watch" it, I mean they set the stream quality to 144p, mute the tab, and leave the stream running in the background all day. Also, Blizzard wasn't even paying the teams their contracted amounts, so every single OWL teams started a collective bargaining process against the league. All the teams want to leave, so OWL is basically toast.

- All the while, the meta is still double shield. They've nerfed the shield heroes a lot, but the simple fact that you could have 2 deployable shields in the first place is still a fundamental problem. This is the state that Overwatch 1 ended in.

- To appease fans, Blizzard decides to release Overwatch 2 early, without any of PvE content in it, they say they're going to add it at a later date. So it still isn't actually a sequel yet, it's just an overhaul to PvP. They changed it from 6v6 to 5v5 to get rid of double shield meta, made tanks busted, buffed Sombra for no reason, added Kiriko who has an immortality ability, when Bap's immortality ability was already a mistake, and they released the abject mistake that is Sojourn.

- Oh, and now there's a stupid battle pass, new heroes are now locked behind the battle pass, new non-battle pass skins cost over $20 and are only available through the shop on a rotation to pressure people into buying them before they disappear for another 6 months, and events are no longer "events" but just themed skin sales. Sooo it's even more greedily monetised than your average predatory mobile game. Stuff that used to be earnable for free simply by playing the game is now all paid. The battle pass and overpriced skins have actually made them start MISSING lootboxes.

- People quickly get fed up of Overwatch 2 and start quitting the game again, mostly because of Sojourn being absolutely busted. She has sustain damage, long range 1 shotting burst damage, great mobility, an AoE damage + slow attack, and an ultimate that makes her railgun even more OP than it already is. Blizzard completely forgot that in removing a tank from each team, they also needed to rebalance sniper heroes because there was now less shielding across the board. Some people actually wanted 6v6 Overwatch back, even at the cost of bringing back double shield meta, because they hate the new power that snipers have so much. At this point, people just want the PvE content already as a consolation prize. But there's still no word on when the PvE will come out.

- Blizzard stupidly decides to add a 3rd immortality ability to the game with Lifeweaver, even though Bap's was a mistake, and Kiriko's was also a mistake.

- Blizzard eventually does a livestream to give updates on the state of the PvE development, where they announce that half the PvE content they'd originally promised back in Blizzcon 2019 is now CANCELLED, completely undermining the whole "sequel" part of Overwatch 2. The whole justification for leaving Overwatch 1 to die for 3 years was now all for nothing. They did a complete rug-pull bait and switch move, destroying any and all good-faith people had left in the game. And to add insult to injury, it turned out that they'd made this decision long before they'd even decided to release OW2 without the PvE. They only just had the guts to tell everyone about it way AFTER OW2 PvP had already gone live.

- Fast forward to now, we finally get the first scraps of PvE content with the release of Overwatch on Steam. After 4 years of waiting and untold levels of BS, all we got was 4 PvE missions. This is why the game is getting review-bombed so hard.

And despite all this, we'll still play the game :)

Stop forcing keybinds. Every input should be able to be remapped, no exceptions

They timed the release of this game perfectly, you'll have something to grind out when you inevitably have to isolate yourself in your bedroom during the Covid Quarantines

Also it's just really good, there haven't really been any other properly good games released recently

Whether we wanted it or not, we've stepped into a war with the Cabal on Mars. So let's get to taking out their command, one by one. Valus Ta'aurc. From what I can gather he commands the Siege Dancers from an Imperial Land Tank outside of Rubicon. He's well protected, but with the right team, we can punch through those defenses, take this beast out, and break their grip on Freehold.

You will play the same game for 11 years and still love it, despite the F2Ps