It’s Overwatch’s first Christmas, and
with it comes gifts and goodies for all players…provided you find them in loot
boxes, of course. With another event having arisen for the holiday season,
Blizzard has decked the halls and introduced new gear, including a few very
desirable skins.
Similar to the Halloween event, every
character has received a new holiday-themed Voice Line as well as two new
sprays each. They’ve also thrown in some new player icons that are always a
disappointment to unbox, especially considering you normally only get one
Christmas item in each loot box. There’s also new Highlight Intros, Victory
Poses and Emotes for a few characters, such as Symmetra, D.Va and Zarya.
The real draw here, though is the
Skins, and honestly, I think that while the epic skins are for the most part better
than the ones we got in the Halloween event, a few of the legendaries leave a
lot to be desired. Starting with the epic skins, the best ones are Pharah,
Reaper, Roadhog and McCree’s skins. Pharah gets an ice inspired skin, Roadhog
is Rudolph, McCree is Scrooge, and Reaper is fittingly the Ghost of Christmas
Future. Lucio, Sombra and Zarya got skins as well, but they mostly look like
Christmas themed recolours. In fact, Zarya’s skin is a direct rip on her
existing Dawn skin, just with some extra snow added.
As for the legendaries, there are two
major draws here: Santa Torbjorn and Yeti Winston. Both look super cool and
super unique, complete with awesome weapons. I’m currently saving my gold in
hopes of buying Winston if I don’t unbox him before the end of the season.
Zenyatta gets a really cool Nutcracker inspired skin as well, although I don’t
really prefer it to the other two.
Unfortunately, the other two legendary
skins honestly feel more like they belong with the epics. Mei and Tracer get a
Santa and Elf inspired skin respectively, but they seem more like standard
recolours with a Santa hat slapped on top. Mei has a little more of an
advantage, as the Santa skin adds a little extra surprise to her Cryo-Freeze
ability that I dare not spoil here, but I don’t know what the story is with
Tracer’s skin. That’s not to say they look bad by any means, but I definitely think
that Tracer’s skin should’ve been an Epic instead.
It wouldn’t be an Overwatch holiday
without a spin on classic maps, and Winter Wonderland doesn’t disappoint. Both
King’s Row and Hanamura have been decorated to the nines, complete with freshly
fallen snow. I personally prefer the King’s Row take on the Holiday, as being
set at night allows the Christmas lights to be turned on, adding a lot of great
colour to the map. Plus, the final push to the end has been entirely frozen,
adding a really cool blue colour to everything. Hanamura also looks good, but
honestly doesn’t really feel that different from the classic version of the map
aside from some holly and wreaths hanged around. It’s still great, just not as
good as King’s Row or Halloween Hollywood.
But the real draw of Winter Wonderland
is the new brawls. First, if you really want to play on the Christmas maps but
can’t find them in regular play, Mystery Heroes is hosting them and only them all
throughout the season, so if you really want to see them you can go there. The
other brawl is Mei’s Snowball Offensive, a nightmarish battle at a nighttime
Ecopoint: Antarctica. Here’s how it works: each team is comprised of 6 Meis.
For the sake of this brawl, Mei has been changed, making it that both her
primary and secondary shot has been replaced by a snowball firing cannon. The
snowballs are a one-hit kill, and if you die you’re out of the round. The catch
is that you can only carry one snowball at a time, and to reload you have to
find a pile of snow on the ground and pack it into your gun. You also have
access to Mei’s standard Ice Wall and Cryo-Freeze abilities, plus a new ultimate
called Flurry that allows you to unleash a barrage of snowballs on your
enemies.
I’m not joking when I say that Mei’s
Snowball Offensive is hard. Really, really
hard. You need to be extremely quick thinking about which battles to fight
and which to flee from, as using up your one shot and missing often leads to
complete disaster. Make one mistake, and you’re dead. Adding onto this already
hefty difficulty is the reality that Mei’s Snowball Offensive could give Silent
Hill a run for it’s money when it comes to straight-up horror. Seeing an enemy
Mei running towards you while you’re unarmed is flat-out terrifying, punctuated
by some of Mei’s frightening new brawl-only voice lines (when reloading, she
sometimes says “I’m putting a rock in this one!” Not cool, Mei. Not cool.) Even
further, every time one of your teammates dies a jingle bell sound plays, leaving
you terrified for your safety as you hide in terror, hoping the bell won’t toll
for you next, listening to the sinister cries of enemy Meis as they announce
their intention of finding you for all to hear, as you desperately search for
one last pile of snow to defend yourself with before it’s all over and the Meis swarm you and cut you down with their
icy weapons of dooooooooooooooom!!!
…Ahem, sorry, I got sidetracked. Where
was I?
Oh yeah, Mei’s Snowball Offensive. It’s
difficult but a lot of fun once you get the hang of it.
All in all, I think I can say that
Winter Wonderland is easily on par with Halloween and far better than the
Summer Games, but it doesn’t really do anything to surpass the October event’s
heights. The new maps are really pretty, and while the skins are still kind of
hit or miss, there isn’t one that’s infuriatingly ugly or lackluster (okay,
maybe the Zarya skin, but that’s the only one). Plus, Mei’s Snowball Offensive
is a fun albeit difficult and slightly nightmare inducing addition to the other
two awesome holiday brawls. If you haven’t played Overwatch in a while, this is
a good time to pick it up again. One thing important to remember though is that
the event will end on January 2, and I feel I must remind you all to not buy
anything before you’ve officially finished getting loot boxes. Wait until New
Year’s Day at the earliest to spend your gold on anything, because you don’t
want to buy Santa Torbjorn only to find one you could’ve gotten for free
waiting in the next loot box. At Halloween I literally got Frankenstein Roadhog
in my last box of the event, so you don’t want to spend money on something you
might end up getting later. I hope everyone gets whatever skins and sprays they’re
after, and enjoys the event!
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