Overwatch’s seasonal brawls, the sporty Lucio Ball and PVE-centric Junkenstein’s Revenge, have been almost universally beloved, taking the game in directions nobody saw coming. Comparatively, the latest one, Mei’s Snowball Offensive, is kind of a buzzkill.
A snowball fight was, of course, a natural pick for this season’s brawl, but Mei’s is not all that mechanically different from a regular firefight. You aim her gun/heavily augmented hair dryer and pull the trigger. Difference is, snowballs can only be fired once before you need to reload (by scooping more snow off the ground), they have an awkward arc to them, and they take people out in a single hit.
Those things are interesting in that they up the risk factor in every engagement, and helplessly reloading makes you feel like you’re in nothing but your birthday suit, surrounded by slavering polar bears. However, the sum total of it all gets old pretty quickly. While Overwatch players seem to be digging the rest of the holiday event, disappointment with the brawl sticks out like a tongue painfully melded to an icy pole.
So yeah, people aren’t exactly loving it. On the other hand, not everybody feels that way, and folks have posted some esports-level snowball plays. So at least there’s that.
As I said earlier, I dig elements of the new brawl, but on the whole, I’m not tremendously impressed. It also kinda flies in the face of what snowball fights are about: unbridled, ridiculous fun. Unless you’re into permadeath snowball fights IRL (hey, I won’t judge), Mei’s Snowball Offensive doesn’t match the mood and thrill of the real thing. You’d think a company called Blizzard would know better, but then again, they are based in southern California.
It’s a bummer, but oh well. As in snowball fights and I guess love or something, you can’t win ’em all.
Comments
12 responses to “Overwatch’s Holiday Brawl Is A Bit Of A Letdown”
I totally disagree with that assessment. Having a “golden gun” style mode with only 1 ammo and instant fatalities is great. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it being something other than a fast-paced hypefest.
I’ve been having heaps of fun with my friends, but overtime I don’t think it will have much staying power, Mei is my least played hero and I just don’t have the urge to play it solo.
It just seems like they needed a quick idea since they’ve been working on Sombra/Symmetra/Oasis recently and maybe they didnt have time to create an entirely new game mode. This is just another brawl mode really. They didnt even really change the map much, since it was already snowing, they just added the reload piles and made it night time.
Its fun for a couple of minutes, but then it’s back to the regular game.
Played it once to get my free loot box (thankfully we won), can’t see myself going back. Not a fan of elimination matches anyway (only game I’ve enjoyed them in was GOW, for twitch shooters it’s not so much fun imo) and the whole one shot mechanic makes it even worse. Am sure some people must like it, but as someone who likes Overwatch because it isn’t just a twitch shooter death match type game, this mode is miles away from what sparks my interest.
It’s annoying when you see a 4+ on 2 situation and know that there’s pretty much no point continuing. At least it’s over fairly quickly.
The downside for me was that I had the opposite experience to you. I played 9 or 10 matches before our team won. So frustrating when I was getting gold medals in most matches, so I knew at least I wasn’t the one(s) letting the side down.
I haven’t even been able to try it, the game would sit there searching for ages, tell me a match was found, then briefly flash up the match was over and after a bit dump me back to the mode selection screen again and flash up in the corner “error, trying again”. Except it didn’t try again, I had to try manually. And it never got anywhere.
To be fair though, that’s not really an insult. Most devs aspire to be as good as the worst thing Blizzard’s ever made.
Why is it elimination? How many snowball fights have you had where getting hit by one meant sitting it out for the rest of the day (iceballs excepted).
Should be points based if anything, or heck I’d love to see a return of thief modes where you get points for being a part of the mayhem rather than for headshots.
Yeah it should be re-spawn death-match where you take no damage but a head-shot will take you out. You re-spawn and the first team to 20 elims (or whatever) wins the round.
I had a good bit of fun with it earlier today, but I don’t think I’ll play it too often
Already got all sprays. Even managed to get the 25 meter kill and the 4 kills without missing spray in the same match. Much less work then getting all sprays for Junkersteins Revenge.
I love it. Super addicted. It’s so tense when you’re the only one left alive and you manage to take out 3 or 4 people yourself. Lucioball was fantastic but I thought Junkenstein was boring.