Valve are a fantastic company. They’ve produced some fantastic games in the form of the Half-life, Left 4 Dead and Portal series, all with some brilliant game play and storytelling, almost boarding on perfection sometimes. They even brought us Steam - a platform for almost any game allowing all games out there to co-exist in harmony.
One game you may have noticed I left off of my Valve games list was Team Fortress. I didn’t ignore it for a personal disliking of the game, partly because I love it, but I omitted it because, despite the fact that it was one of the biggest shooters of its time it has subsequently spawned a whole genre of what is now termed “Hero Shooters”. What Hero Shooters entail is every player selects a character and all characters are unique - in Team Fortress for example you could select from the Scout, a quick but short ranged character, a Heavy, a slow tank-like character that could soak up a lot of damage and an engineer, your typical healer, and that’s just to name a few.
The point of a Hero Shooter is that characters can provide different play styles for different players through there weapons, movement speed and typically special abilities as opposed to a normal shooter like Halo or CoD where, aside from load outs, every character is essentially identical.
I’ve selected a couple of Hero Shooters to look at today, not necessarily for comparison but to get an overview of the genre.
Speaking of over things, the first one I want to look at is Overwatch.
Overwatch has been dancing a merry jig in the Hero Shooter genre for a while now, since its release back in 2016. It had a small speed bump to get past upon release, namely being Battleborn another Hero Shooter, but it swiftly dealt with Battleborn and has taken the crown and kept a decent grip on it. In Overwatch, players have the choice of a lot of characters that all have unique looks, abilities, movement, and backstories. Games are squad-based, 6 on 6 that can vary from straight forward team death-match to capture the area. Teams battle against each other jockeying for position over a certain time limit or until the objective is complete. Once a character has died players have the opportunity to change their characters if they want before they respawn. Each character also comes with an ultimate meter that fills up during combat based on damage you inflict and take, certain characters ultimates work well generally while others may need a bit of teamwork to get the most out of. As a game that’s Overwatch in a nutshell, it’s an incredibly simple game that hooks you in though takes time to master. The fact that it’s a Blizzard game is probably the reason why it had so much promotion before release and why the servers are very competently maintained to ensure a maximum peak gaming experience. The simplicity will keep players coming back and even though it does employ in-game transactions they are all cosmetic - different outfits, sound clips, sprays etc - and add no power difference to the game, so everyone is on the same level bar experience which is a very nice thing to hear when you’re a casual gamer and want to get into this type of gaming scene. My one personal downside to Overwatch is its convoluted story. For some reason Blizzard felt that they needed to jam this in and honestly I can’t make head nor tail of it. I would invite you to take a look through the wiki page and stuff but it’s all over the place and, like me, you will probably give up a few sentences in when two people were thought to have died but instead of letting people rejoice when they actually weren’t dead they decided to go undercover for shits and giggles.
The next game I’m going to look at today is Rainbow 6: Siege. While technically not classed as a Hero Shooter I lump it in that category as it exhibits the main things a Hero Shooter does: unique characters, unique abilities and unique backstories. Rainbow 6: Siege is a 5 on 5 objective based shooter, all characters have unique load-outs and abilities. The variation Siege has that Overwatch doesn’t is that in Overwatch all characters are available be you on the attacking side or defending side, whereas in Siege only half the amount of operators are available for attacking or defending. Each operator is unique in both load-out, special ability and look, which isn’t dissimilar from Overwatch. Overwatch allows you to build up and use your ultimates throughout the game where Siege gives you a limit of any operator’s special ability - for example Mute, a brute force operator that specializes in disrupting the opposing teams gadgets, has a set amount of jammers to place that can disable the initial drones operators start the game with if they get within range.
Finally, Siege being a tactical shooter where players only have one life per round, it allows for set up. So at the beginning of each round both teams have a one minute period, the attackers take control of drones to scout ahead and the defenders can set up barriers, traps and get the best vantage points.
As I said earlier, this isn’t a comparison article and I enjoy both games, maybe Siege a little more than Overwatch. Even though both fall into the Hero Shooter genre I feel that they offer slightly different gaming aspects: Overwatch goes for a more all guns blazing, jump in and out of combat, team up style whereas Siege is a lot more sneaky, tactical and patient. As it stands, both games are top of their genre and feature heavily in the E-sports rotation of games. Overwatch is probably a bit more rewarding of a game thanks to the fact that you can respawn, so it doesn’t feel like you’ve made one wrong moved and fucked it up for everyone. Siege, on the other hand, feels exactly like that. You run in a room breaking barriers, spraying bullets and before you know it you’ve been picked off by a defending operator and have to sit there and watch the kill cam from their perspective. It’s a hard game but it is rewarding when you finally do something right or even better, get the MVP of the game.
Both games have an ever growing roster of characters and therefor can never truly be mastered or “completed”. This is a good way of keeping players coming back for more as you will always want to try out the new ones. Overwatch offers these characters for free whereas Siege’s operators do cost in game points that can be attained with money or certain solo mission completion, in not a huge fan of this but a game created by Ubisoft is always going to nab money off you along the way, it’s just something we have to accept.
If you’re looking for a fun, off the wall team shooter with a well refined roster then Overwatch is probably the game for you. As I said, it doesn’t punish you too much for running into the fray and not being successful where Siege does. Siege can feel like a hard game sometimes but once you’ve found a couple of operators that work for you and gotten to grips with them you will find your rhythm. Both are available on Xbox One and PS4 and have a decent longevity, until they stop putting out characters for them, so I feel they are worth picking up especially if you like shooters. Overwatch is fine if you want to jump into a game and don’t mind who you’re playing with, Siege on the other hand is a game best played with a team you can talk to and understand how to play with. For example, when you die you can scan the surrounding cameras do give call outs to your team mates which can be very effective if done right.
There are a lot of Hero Shooters out there that all come with slightly different game styles and feels, ranging from casual to hyper competitive. They are a great laugh and even better with friends, they can be slightly addictive but they definitely aid your reactions, especially Siege. Why not have a look around and see which Hero Shooter works for you. Why not let us know what you’re playing via Twitter at @gcgamingtank, and as always keep checking back to Game Changers for more gaming news and updates.
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