I posted about Overwatch’s first major update 1.2.0 back in September and now a mere month after the last update comes 1.3.0, bringing with it a newly textured version of the map Citadel which is a much welcome change from the previous update where both maps were dev textured. Another big addition comes with the addition of roles for the Resistance and special abilities for Combine troops. Players familiar with the previous update would be aware of the riot shield but now the Resistance also have access to a medpack, once a player picks up either item they take up that role, a player with a medpack is able to heal other players and themself and is marked by having a medic skin and a medic icon above them. The riot shield holder becomes the defender role and is marked by a shield symbol, only one special item can be held at a time and it’s sure to make teamwork even more vital, especially when you consider that the health regenerators have been removed.
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVTqsk2E9KM
The Combine Overwatch player now has access to special skills for NPC’s such as having Metrocops deploy Manhacks which will give the Overwatch player even more power. If that wasn’t enough then prepare to meet the Overwatch’s new best friend for harassing players, the famous city scanners from Half-Life 2 have found their way into the game and are ready to start blinding players left, right and centre. I was initially skeptical about the city scanners but after being flashed several times in a rather intense combat situation I realised how effective they were in a combat situation.
Another addition that sounded very interesting was where the Resistance players have “Automated Vocal Responses” similar to in Left 4 Dead where you’ll hear their player say when they’ve spotted an enemy, come under fire, started reloading or healing another player. This is a very welcome addition as team play really is key in this mod and knowing what your teammates is up to is key to success. Similar to this players have also been given voice commands that they can use to quickly communicate similar to the ones in Counter-Strike Source which will hopefully speed up communication.
Overwatch is certainly shaping up to be a very interesting mod, I highly encourage people to go download it here and if you have a previous version of the game then you should know that there is a handy auto update feature built into your installation. Just load up the game and in the top right corner you should see an update button.
You can check out the release post here and the official website here
