Hey, I just wanted to check in and explain why I haven’t written very much of anything over the last few weeks. I was taking a class for work that demanded a lot of my time, which meant I had very little time left over to play video games and even less time to write about them. I mostly only played a few hours of Overwatch on the Xbox One over the last few weeks, and while I prefer the PC version, the fact that I have friends who play on the Xbox that I can group up with makes it much more fun to play on the Xbox.
I tried out Deus Ex: Mankind Divided from Redbox, but didn’t really like it at all. I found the opening cinematic very corny / video gamey, and couldn’t take it serious. Besides that I found it to be overly difficult, even on the easiest setting. I had never played a Deus Ex game before and I died over and over again early on until I just decided to give up all together and go back to Overwatch.
I’ll be writing soon! Thank you for your patience!
This weekend I ended up buying a second copy of Overwatch for the Xbox One (I’ve only played on PC previously) because I wanted to be able to play with some friends who only play on Xbox. I’ve played a handful of matches on the Xbox so far, and it’s an entirely different world compared to PC. During the very first match I played I ended up with three kids on my team, who sounded maybe 11 or 12, who had no idea what they were doing, but they’d just scream in excitement anytime anything happened. Heck, one of the kid’s gamertag had the word Minecraft in it. It was a cringeworthy experience. I played several more matches, and I was having flashbacks to my early Halo 3 experiences on the Xbox 360 via the voice chat. I’ve often complained that it seems like no one uses voice chat on the Xbox One, but that’s certainly not true so far with Overwatch.
I’m hoping the negative experiences are just because I’m playing at a low level so far (around level 5), but the community isn’t the only thing that makes it different than playing on PC. I’ve noticed the load times are excruciatingly slow. On PC I can launch into a match in a matter of seconds, however on the Xbox One it seems like every time I end up waiting a minute, get thrown into a skirmish for several minutes and then end up loading into an actual match. I’ve hardly ever experienced the skirmish “waiting room” on PC, and it wouldn’t really bug me, but the load time into and out of the skirmish is painfully slow.
The graphics, of course, look a lot less sharp, but they’re not terrible. The real bummer comes with using the controller to aim. It’s an incredibly different experience, and it’s incredibly painful to line up shots. Despite this, I’ve found it incredibly easy to dominate as Bastion. Maybe it’s because I have a lot of experience with Bastion on the PC and I’m playing against presumably newer players so far, but I’ve gotten higher kill streaks than I ever have on PC and it’s been fun!
The PC version of Overwatch will continue to be my go to game, however it’s nice to be able to hop in and play with an entirely different pool of players every now and then. I don’t feel bad about buying Overwatch twice at all. Blizzard has made such a beautiful game that they deserve every penny they’ve earned from me.
avideogamelife 