Despite my praise for the designs, Overwatch is not a game with in-depth characters - it’s all skin deep. Any attempt to flesh them out usually comes through fine print in the lore, promo reels, or external material like comic books. I understand why fans want these great designs to be built upon further, and I appreciate that a hero shooter all about utilising powers and fast PvP play is not the ideal genre for deep, interconnected stories. Overwatch has two queer characters, which is more than most triple-A games, but it’s hard to give it too much credit when their queerness has been so completely downplayed. It’s often lauded for its diversity - it even once had a GLAAD nomination - but that fact is its two queer characters are white, cis, and straight passing, while there are more playable animals and playable robots than there are playable Black women. That’s not too much of a stretch though, given that there are zero Black women in Overwatch’s heaving roster right now - Sojourn will join in Overwatch 2, but that feels too late for a game with playable 32 charact

Overwatch 2 Guide|Https://Overwatch2Fans.Com/ led the way for the likes of Fortnite , Apex Legends , Paladins, Bleeding Edge, and Valorant . Even Destiny 2 seems to have taken as much from Overwatch as it has the original Destiny. But what those games have in common is the exact thing that stands Overwatch 2 apart for the wrong reasons. Sequels to Fortnite, Apex Legends, and Valorant will never arrive - instead the games continue to evolve with constant updates, new battle passes, and frequent seasonal events pulling you back in. Even Destiny 2, though a sequel itself, is abandoning that model in order to keep building and evolving as it

Overwatch 2 stumbles into a unique conundrum though, because its cosmetic economy is built on a system so different to what we have now. Skins used to be earned randomly, with each loot box offering a small chance of us rolling a rare or legendary item that would absolutely make our day. It was certainly unhealthy and downright exploitative in how it preyed on vulnerable people like me with no concept of how much money or time they were wasting on such pursuits, but now things are so much more definitive.

Next, the first major content update coming to World of Warcraft: Shadowlands was announced. Chains of Damnation will bring players to a new zone in The Maw called Korthia, the City of Secrets, where new quests and world activities will be availa

As a - very - casual Overwatch fan , the characters have always been my favourite thing about the hero shooter. They only tell vague stories, but they’re so well designed and are bursting with such life that they feel like bigger characters than they actually are. They’re similar to comic book characters; you don’t need to have read the decades long history between Batman and the Joker, you just see their iconic designs and you instantly feel as if you know them. Whether it’s Ashe and her Wild West gunslinger aesthetic, D.Va’s e-girl vibe, or Winston the science monke, the character designs tell their own stories. That’s why the recent Archives event feels like a big missed opportun

ItsSliker admitted to scamming over $200,000 from his followers for his gambling addiction, sparking platform-wide controversy on Twitch. Gambling has long been a problem for the streaming site, becoming the latest in a long line of ‘metas’, and now several high-profile streamers have called on Twitch to ban them en ma

Finally, Xbox has implemented How Long to Beat , giving you a heads up on how long on average it’ll take you to go for a completionist run or just a main story playthrough. With gaming’s approach to length changing thanks to subscription services such as Game Pass and PS Plus, features editor Andrew King argues that this is long overdue, letting people find shorter nuggets to power through in their free time, or bigger time sinks for those who prefer a longer adventure with more commitm

The benefit of a battle pass, compared to a loot box, is you get to see what you’re buying. You know exactly what you get for your $10 before you buy the premium tier - though, you still don’t get to choose what you’re buying. If there’s a specific skin, victory pose, or voiceline you’re after, your only option is to buy Coins with real mo

That’s an issue for another day though. Today, I want to focus on the Archives skins, particularly those of our queer characters, Soldier 76 and Tracer. The Archives event is running until April 27, and brings eight new skins to the game, each designed around a given character’s cultural history. Both Soldier 76 and Tracer are included in the event, but it’s extremely telling that neither of their cultural histories includes any reference to queerness. Soldier 76 is becoming Soldier 1776 which, I admit, is a good pun. The American soldier is donning the jacket of the Revolutionaries, these days probably best known from the musical Hamil