Overwatch is one of the best damn games to come out in the last decade. The reason for its reverence isn’t the games’ genre, or it’s creator/publisher (Blizzard), or the fact that they completely jacked the concept from Valve (Team Fortress). But, rather, its credibility manifests from the fact that the people who created it took into account what makes a game great, and this achieved the ultimate ideal: nearly endless replayability.

Overwatch is a first person shooter. Instead of customizing an avatars appearance/gear such as in the call of Duty or battlefield series’, you’re given the choice between twenty-two different heroes, all with different guns, abilities, and utility. Some characters specialize in damage, some in healing, some in tanking, and some in utility. You have a gnome who makes turrets and armor, a grim reaper with twin shotguns who can teleport, a cyber punk with twin plasma pistols and the ability to bend time, a DJ with dreadlocks that heals with sound, and eighteen others just as unique and dynamic as the others.

The maps are perfectly crafted for their particular game mode, of which there are three: Move the payload, capture the point, and king of the hill. It’s very likely they will add others in the future, including capture the flag. Games last no more than fifteen minutes, and every match feels undecided until the very last moments. In Overwatch, instead of having long, linear maps, they’re layered horizontally. Certain heroes will only be able to reach certain heights, depending on their utility and play style.

You can switch characters at any juncture, allowing you to react to team based strategies with your own team based strategies, instantaneously. This component is also featured in Battlefield, but the maps are much too large to coordinate any real sort of strategy, and Call of Duty maps are too small with randomized spawn points, which ensures chaos and makes the experience unmanageable. The primary goal in Overwatch is never kills, but team based objectives, so working together and communicating is the only real staple in being successful.

The game is insanely balanced. Each hero can feel game breakingly overpowered/brittle in the right/wrong hands. The skill ceilings are seeming inconceivable while the skill caps stay non existent. The game is light hearted in its’ aesthetics, lamenting very cartoony graphics, but mechanical in its’ purpose, creating a game with one of the biggest potentials for engaging virtual competition never before previously seen.  They really thought it all through, and coupled with a whole fleet of new characters, maps, skins, and other content to release, Overwatch will stay relevant for the years to come.

Blizzard took a big risk when they decided to start a new franchise, especially in a genre they had no previous experience in. Despite this, it clearly paid off, and has resulted in one of the most enthusing lines of code I’ve ever had the pleasure of consuming. I’ll be enjoying Overwatch in the few wee hours of relaxation I experience, and you should too.