Overwatch 2 doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but damn, it’s a nice wheel

polygon.com:

Yes, it’s true: Overwatch is shutting down on Oct. 2. And after a daylong maintenance period, it’ll be forever replaced with Overwatch 2. But this transition from an original game to a sequel is not like going from The Last of Usto The Last of Us Part 2 — one story is not building upon another. Think of Overwatch2 as an add-on to the original, with a slew of impactful adjustments.

When Overwatch 2 is released on Oct. 4, players will immediately jump into largely the same competitive and casual queues they’re already accustomed to. There are new maps (quite a few of them) but most of the old ones are playable, too. There’s also a new mode called Push, which is basically an iteration on Escort. Instead of escorting a truck through a map, players are fighting for control of a large robot that pushes a barrier to opposing goal lines; whoever gets the robot the farthest wins. Most of the heroes have had their stats tweaked, and some abilities changed. For instance, Blizzard removed a lot of Overwatch’s stun abilities. Mei’s ice gun won’t freeze enemies solid anymore, and Cassidy’s no longer got a flashbang.

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Crucially, matches now have five players per team instead of six. While this doesn’t affect the actual mechanics of each character all that much, it absolutely shakes up the overall strategy of each match. More than anything, Overwatch 2 feels much faster than Overwatch. Even though tanks are now harder to destroy, the speed of play feels chaotic — in a good way — when playing a damage-dealing hero. Pair that with the new hero Kiriko’s ultimate ability, which speeds up movement and fire rate, and you’ve got matches that unfold at breakneck speed.

Coming into Overwatch 2 as a lapsed but formerly quite dedicated