The Broken Cast is back once again with Episode 7 –The FPS Rundown. This week on the show we talk about three major First Person Shooters that have all hit the market or had closed betas in the last few weeks.
First up we venture through the wastes with Fallout 4, quite a few people on our staff have been playing the game since it was released a month ago and we recount our early hours exploring the burnt out city of Boston. If you haven’t heard of it by now, Fallout 4 is one hell of a game.
Next up we talk about the recent Overwatch Weekend Stress Test. Our EIC absolutely loved her time with the game enough that she went out and pre-purchased the game. Expect lots of gushing about the beta version of the game and hopes of the future.
Last up we talk about Activision’s Call of Duty: Black Ops III. Our reviewer, Erika, gives us her impressions of the game.
You can find our podcast on Itunes or on Soundcloud.
Overwatch is game that everyone wants to play, but very few have access to. It seems Blizzard has decided that even those few are too many to play its FPS-MOBA hybrid, and they will be shutting off their (currently up) beta servers next week. The beta servers have been up for about a month and a half and included one (semi)open weekend of play for many players, but the rest of the time were restricted to a small group of beta testers who were given access. You can read all about Overwatch oonn our site here but the long and short of it is that we liked what we saw, and cant wait for another chance to play it! The Beta is scheduled to end at 9AMPST on Decemver 10th, one week from today, the forums will stay open until December 18. There will be no new waves of players added untill the 10th, and players that are already in will not be kicked out. Blizzard also plans to add more players after it relaunches, but this is a blizzard game so most of what we know is vague and eventaully type of information.
Blizzards said in the announcement. “Since the start of the Overwatch beta in late October, aspiring heroes from around the world have battled it out in more than 900,000 matches. In this same period of time, we’ve also gathered invaluable information about our servers, core systems like matchmaking, and overall map and hero balance—thanks not only to the raw data we’ve collected from the game, but also to the numerous bug reports, suggestions, critiques, and experiences you’ve shared,” “This phase of development has been key, but now it’s time to analyze the data we have, dig into your feedback even further, and put that knowledge to use as best we can.”
PC game did a great video on why overwatch is not free to play which I really liked, it featured several developers and explained in detail why the game simply would not work as a free to play game you can watch it here
It appears that last weekend’s Overwatch Stress Test Weekend was quick the success as Blizzard has revealed some statistics from the recent test on their twitter account. Between all of the players invited for the stress test weekend over 350,000 matches were played with an average match length of 8 minutes and 8 seconds.
If you’re wondering which heroes had the highest win rate among the 21 currently available:
I’m not surprised to see Torbjörn at the top of the defense bracket – with his ability to build & maintain turrets on top of his Armor Pack ability allowing him to drop armor for teammates, I saw quite a bit during my playtime with the game. Soldier 76 leading the pack in terms of assault is the opposite of my experience – I found his quick healing field and sprint to be useful but his low health pool to be quite the drawback. Lastly the fact that D.va won the most matches with her (literal) nuclear ulti is a sign that maybe they need to NERF THIS! D.va was actually my favorite hero during last weekend’s stress test.
Which hero do you enjoy the most? Did any of these statistics surprise you?
I’ve known about Blizzard’s colorful and vibrant first person shooter, Overwatch, for a while now. I remember everyone getting totally amped up about the game last November when the game was unveiled but I wasn’t as taken in my the initial gameplay trailers and character reveals as some fans where. After spending several hours with this weekends Beta Stress Test my opinion on the game has radically changed. Here’s a rundown of what I played and why I enjoyed it so much!Read More
Blizzard has flagged for a huge number of accounts for this weekend’s Overwatch Beta Test Weekend. Luckily, I have had access to the beta for the past few weeks and I wanted to share what you can look forward to.
Now that the excitement of BlizzCon 2015 has come to pass it’s time to settle down and write about other games like… who am I kidding? Everyone on our staff is super excited for OverWatch and our new video partners WhyINeedDiverseGames got into the game’s closed beta. In the embedded player below you can check out 30 uninterrupted minutes of HD gameplay from the closed beta.
We’ll be bringing you more videos from WhyINeedDiverseGames over the course of the next couple of weeks. Based in Chicago, IL WhyINeedDiverseGames focuses on critiquing games through the lens of diversity.
Are you in the OverWatch beta? Let us know what you think of it in the comments.
The stage is set, the lights are up, and its time for Blizzcon, blizzards nexus for news and e-sports tournaments. It all starts with the opening ceremonies.
We open this year with a video about Starcraft, lots of talk from developers about how much they love the series, and how it spawned a e-sport around it. This is really a love story to Legacy of the Void, showing us that the community and the devs made the game it is today. The video wraps up in a neat presentation all about how much everyone loves the Blizzcon and how it all comes here, to this convention. It’s the nexus of all of Blizzards E-sports and all of their news and game dev and its all coming to this stage.
Mike Morhaime (president and a co-founder of BlizzardEntertainment) comes up on stage, and he’s here to talk about how much Blizzard also loves Blizzcon. People attend from everywhere, around the world, and millions buy the stream pass to watch this live. Blizzard is 25 this year, even scarier 20 years since WarCraft II tides of darkness (my first blizzard title I feel old). We get a cute bit about how people have met their spouses here, how people love blizzard, how much it is great company and how much they love the fans.
The first big annoucnment is Brightpaw, a manna kitty, this years charity pet! Its a cute pink cat, who if you purchase your money will go to charity.
Next we got a new trailer for the end of our Star Craft journey. Jim Reynors voice tells us “we just gotta finish what we begun” This trailer gave me literal goosebumps, I couldn’t believe it. it’s a cinematic love story to the SC world, we see the Protoss fighting Aemon, and hear a bit about how the Protoss will be fighting in this the last Star Craft expansion. This is a much expanded trailer from what we have seen so far, but its not really giving us much story. Unfortunately this seems to have been an internal video and I cant find it anywhere that’s shareable.
Our next announcements are Archon Mode, and Co-op missions. They will be non 1v1 modes that are co-operative, and will cater to more casual players, who may not want to ladder.
Just a few minutes ago Blizzard revealed the pre-order pages for both World of Warcraft: Legion and Overwatch: Origins Edition. The pages contain more advanced details than what we’ve been previously shown.
Blizzard’s surprise reveal from BlizzCon 2014 turned recent internet sensation, OverWatch, will be heading to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One alongside the Windows PC version Blizzard announced today.
It seems that several retailers – namely GameStop USA – put out store displays for OverWatch: Origin Edition ahead of tomorrow’s BlizzCon 2015 opening ceremonies. The Origin Edition of the still in closed beta First Person Shooter will include a number of goodies and will be priced at $60 USD – although reports of at least one redditor scoring the Origin Edition for $40 USD have surfaced.
Overwatch-themed content for several Blizzard Entertainment games:
Heroes of the Storm™ – Tracer Hero
World of Warcraft® – Baby Winston Pet
StarCraft® II Portraits
Hearthstone® Cardback
Diablo® III – Mercy Wing
As of press-time OverWatch is not listed on any major retail website checked by us – including GameStop USA, Amazon.com, Amazon.ca or BestBuy.com. Presumably all of the individuals that have reported pre-ordering OverWatch before the reveal have done so physically in-store.
We also don’t know anything the monetization strategy for OverWatch. Whether it will be a purely buy-to-play title with optional micro-transactions, similar to Counter Strike: Global Offensive or free-to-play similar to Blizzard’s own Heroes of the Storm.
Blizzard has also released the official pack shot for all 3 retail versions of Overwatch: Origins Edition:
The newest addition to the line up for Blizzards huge MOBA overwatch has been annoucned. Her name is D.VA (pronounced DIVA). She appeared briefly on Blizzards official over watch twitter with a link to the StarCraft 2 WCS site. In game Hana “D.Va” Song is, in game lore, a real StarCraft 2 pro. She’s the best in the world, in fact, but she’s taking a break from the game so she can serve her homeland.
“At the age of 16, D.Va became the #1 ranked player in the world and proceeded to go undefeated for the next three years in all competitions,” her official StarCraft 2 player biography states. “D.Va is an international star, beloved by her fans at home and abroad, and has toured in exhibitions around the world. Recently, she has taken a step back from competition to focus on her commitment to protect the safety of her homeland.”
Intrestingly she is not yet listed on the Blizzard official Overwatch site, so we have no idea what she can do. Personally id love to see her pilot a mech, as many forum posts and websites have guessed. She is also described as “MEKA’s newest recruit” on Twitter, lending that theroy even more credence.
We will wait official word from Blizzard then update the story!
Today marks the beginning of the closed Overwatch beta which was revealed via live stream a few weeks back. Blizzard has gone to great lengths to ensure that player’s chances of being scammed out of their precious battle.net accounts have been reduced by doing away with beta CD-Keys. Instead those selected for the very limited beta test of Blizzard’s upcoming First Person Shooter will have their account flagged automatically and an email sent to their account.
If you get an email from “Blizzard” asking for your login information or containing a “beta key” there’s a 100% that this is someone trying to phish your account.
Sadly none of us on staff got into the Overwatch Beta as of the publication of this article but on Twitch.TV there are several dozen people streaming their experience with the open beta along with over 134,000 people watching the game alongside them.
So just how you get into the closed Overwatch beta?
Q. How are Closed Beta participants selected? A. Beta testers are chosen based on many factors, including your Battle.net region, when you signed up, your computer hardware specifications, and an element of luck. We are also inviting select journalists and community contributors from around the world on a case-by-case basis.
In regards to how they notify selected players Blizzard said:
If you are selected to participate in the Closed Beta, you will receive an invite via email. Invites will always be sent to the email address associated with your Battle.net account.
To help avoid phishing attempts, if you believe you’ve received an invite, it’s best to refrain from clicking on any links in the email(s) you receive. Instead, you can verify that your account has been granted a Closed Beta license in Battle.net Account Management.
If you’ve been selected for the Overwatch Beta and need to download the game you can follow these instructions, which Blizzard supplied:
Overwatch is a 6 vs 6 multiplayer online first person shooter being developed by Jeff Kaplan’s team at Blizzard. Originally under the development using the code name ‘titan’, Overwatch has had a very long and complicated history. The game was revealed at last year’s BlizzCon and hype for the game is starting to grow leading up to today’s beta live stream event on Twitch.TV at 10 A.M PST. If you’ve been out of the loop completely or missed some of the reveal trailers, Broken Joysticks is here to catch you up before this morning’s big announcements.
Blizzard’s team based First Person Shooter Overwatch will have its first beta go live for select players on October IGN has reported. Like most of Blizzards initial beta tests this version of Overwatch is subject to change – including major system overhauls and is not open to the general public.
In terms of features the initial offerings will include seven different maps and 18 different heroes for players to mess around with. Other major features include the inclusion of voice chat, spectator mode and custom games. It sounds like Blizzard is getting ready for Overwatch to explode onto the e-sports scene in a major way just like Heroes of the Storm did earlier this year.
For those of us who aren’t selected via the Overwatch website Blizzard hopes to hold some larger stress test weekends throughout the remainder of the year. Here’s hoping that they are open to all or at the very least open to a much larger pool of potential players.
Don’t forget that tomorrow Blizzard will be introducing the Overwatch beta to players around the globe via Twitch.tv!
Blizzard will be announcing the first details for the beta version of their highly anticipated Team Based Shooter Overwatch live on Twitch.TV on Thursday October 15th they announced via Battle.Net. Viewers of this stream won’t only get to hear the new details first but will also enjoy over 90 minutes of gameplay footage from two different perspectives.
Here are the official details from Battle.net:
Join a duo of aspiring heroes, Haylinic and Ellohime, as they team up with our developers to fight for the future LIVE from Blizzard HQ. During these inaugural streams, you’ll have a chance to see over 90 minutes of unedited real-time gameplay from not one, but two perspectives—plus, you’ll get a first look at what you can expect from the upcoming Overwatch beta. (Wicked!)
Overwatch was originally announced back in November 2014 and features a number of different colorful characters. Blizzards monetary model for the game is currently not known. Overwatch may be a free-to-play little with purchasable heroes like Heroes of The Storm or it could be a full retail product like Blizzard’s 2012 RPG Diablo III.
We’ll bring you a full recap of the livestream on Thursday!
Over the weekend Blizzard Entertainment unveiled a team based FPS called OverWatch. If this announcement comes as a bit of a surprise, that’s because it is! The developer further stated that the team that was working the cancelled Project Titan continued to refine their ideas until they became what was unveiled at Blizzcon.
In addition to an entire array of screenshots Blizzard also released a nearly six minute long trailer that introduces us to all of the classes. As to be expected all of them have a unique personality, look and game play style. My favorite has to be Widowmaker whom uses a cloaking device to gain the advantage while picking off targets from long distance with her sniper rifle. Another fan amongst the Broken Joysticks staff was also Tracer!
Blizzard hopes that OverWatch will be particularly friendly to new players, in their press release they described the game play style as “pick up and play”. If you want in on the 6 Vs 6 battles Blizzard has opened the beta sign ups on their official site.
Check out the trailer, a whole gallery of screenshots and official characters bios after the jump.Read More
