Most of Overwatch’s Weekly Brawl alternative modes are not very good. Arcade is.
Arcade was actually the first-ever official Weekly Brawl, and now, months later, it’s getting a second go at the spotlight. If you’re a lapsed, bored or frustrated Overwatch player, I highly recommend that you hop in and give it a try. It’s loud, dumb and — most importantly — refreshing.
Here’s how it works: Everything is normal, except heroes get double health, lightning fast ability cooldowns and quicker ultimate charges. The result? Utter, unbalanced madness.
Pharah can basically fly forever. Zarya pretty much has infinite shields. Lucio can send people flying like he’s a jumping castle given brains, a body and a heart. You can play Reinhardt like a charging bull. Winston leaps like that short-lived version of basketball where there were trampolines everywhere. Matches last forever.
Also Mei can freeze everything forever and it’s TERRIBLE, but come on, don’t be that person.
People pop off ults constantly, but (Mercy voice) Heroes Never Die… because they have so dang much HP. Despite the whimsical lack of balance, Arcade is rarely frustrating. Instead, it’s an arena for absurd spectacle. Team fights devolve into incomprehensible fireworks shows, and everyone — winners and losers — comes away laughing.
It’s a Weekly Brawl that adds to the game rather than subtracting crucial elements (certain heroes and so on). Sure, the novelty of it all eventually goes away, but Arcade is a nice way to blow off steam. Even if you typically don’t touch Weekly Brawls, give it a shot.
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11 responses to “Overwatch’s Best Brawl Is Back”
And then you get 6x Anas who decided to 24/7 sleep dart the entire enemy team. Yay fun game mode guys…
It is a fun game mode, for the team of Anas.
It’s real fun standing in place hitting the same button for 5 min
Yeah, I had real fun trying to play against Meis that would just ice cube and ice wall in rapid succession. Not fun for me either.
Heh, you can still do that in casual mode. Managed to lock an entire team in spawn for 2mins and then wall them of another 100m in for the rest of the match 😉
Arcade mode is a really good example of what Overwatch’s weekly brawl modes need to be, something that changes the rules rather than something that’s the same game but with character restrictions.
I saw a chap unsuccessfully try to persuade everybody to ‘go all Ana’ but when nobody listened they left the Brawl.
Random questions:
Winston and Genji’s melee attacks are quite hard for me to pull off, and their Ultimates are based off those so – how do they work exactly? There’s a shockwave when Winston pounces, does that do damage? I can never land on someone properly. The monkey slap is usually what I end up using. With Genji, am I supposed to chain the dash to the Ultimate to get around or not? I usually die because I’m in the middle of the enemy team.
There are obviously some Ultimate moves that wouldn’t work so well in this mode, Mcree’s being one of them?
On the other side of the coin, constant flying dragons around the level would probably work a bit too well. Much more annoying then Mei’s.
I ended up just playing it safe as Soldier or Tracer, and watching the different situations Ultimates could be used in.
Are you talking generally or in the arcade mode? Everything operates the same just the cooldowns are reduced and everyone has more health…
Winston’s jump is like a knockback affect more than damage. Does 50 dmg on landing according to info. Monkey madness is best used to push people away rather than outright kill them, although if you get a few hits in it can severely damage enemies.
Ideal Genji Ult is dash -> slicey slice -> reset dash cooldown (irrelevant in arcade…) -> rinse and repeat for 6s. Having said that, if everyone’s in close, just running around is a bit faster as well. Also, his sword has stupid reach, so as long as you’re not getting focused you can wipe a lot of people. Remember that Genji can use deflect, dash and double jump etc during the Ult, which means he can technically defend himself during it, which is why everyone complained before the nerf.
Also, no way is constant dragons more annoying than constant blizzard time.
How can you hate an Ultimate the developers named after themselves?
I dunno maybe I just need to warm up to it…
Had good fun playing Zayra with another Zayra close by. Was shielded for most of the match. Going solo against 2 Tracers though can turn into a hellish nightmare.