Cautiously optimistic!
Apart from the obvious Overwatch influence, It kinda reminds me of some games like Paladins or even Smite (third person action, melee heroes, kinda slower than Overwatch, and combat seems clunkier than usual single player action games)
closed alpha starts in about half an hour. I’ll be streaming. I get keys based on hours I stream and hours people watch plus my progress in the game so hopefully will have some keys to share shortly after.
Oh? I have been very curious about Rivals so I’ll be checking out some streams. What platform or what is your stream information?
He’s on Twitch as Harkonis. I watched a bit, it’s oddly slow in a lot of ways.
And very Overwatch.
Added. Thank you.
I watched a bit. It is VERY Overwatch. And I expected that. But… the sound design or soundscape is so similar to Overwatch that it sort of doesn’t feel like a new game. All of the clicks, bips, charge fill, chaining bop bop bop of attacks, bing bing bing on objective timers, hero quips (including pitch and cadence), the voooom at the end of match, etc. make it more than just familiar. If I close my eyes, it would not be a bad guess to think Overwatch was on the screen. Is the hero shooter such a narrow genre that sound is a fixed element?
Besides that, matches don’t look too dynamic. Maybe it’s the modes or maps, but teams just seem to meet at a point and grind the timer down in a constant static arena. It doesn’t look like flanks or plays are happening. It doesn’t even appear to be ball and counter balling. With all of the auto or semi auto support abilities and range TTK, melee heroes have it rough it looks like. Although tweaks to cooldowns would help that a lot. Map destruction is neat, but seems too sparse in where it can happen and so easy to do that it just comes across as meaningless map noise.
All that said, as an initial public viewing, I’m interested. I am curious how it developes and could see myself playing it someday.
It looked waaay too much Overwatch for me. Not that I didn’t spend heaps of time with OW1, I think I have just moved on for the time being. The other thing I noticed is the UI was not as clean - there was a lot of junk and abilities flying all over the screen all the time which made it hard to follow who was doing what. Sure, some of that is game/hero familiarity, but I still think it was too much clutter.
At this stage I’m not sure it is differentiated enough to sustain traction. Ergo Marvel characters as the only draw I don’t think will carry it.
Content creators were contracted to be non-disparaging in their coverage of the closed alpha. I guess that’s just normal for 2024 where they are essentially just treated as a free extenstion of the marketing team.
He even talks about the agreement above which was eventually rescinded,
They’re not even trying to pretend this isn’t Overwatch.
I’ll still try it!
