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New hero in Overwatch – Brigitte

Posted on by When Duty Calls

Brigitte is the new hero in Overwatch. She specialized in armor, could heal allies by dropping repair kits for them and by attacking enemies with her whip. She could deal damage in a small cone in front of her, just like Reinhardt. She is armed with a small shield, with which she could cover her self or allies.

Brigitte Overwatch young

Brigitte BIO

  • Real Name: Brigitte Lindholm;
  • Age: 28 years;
  • Base: Goteborg, Sweden;

Brigitte is such a person who always rushes into the heart of battle, to save those who needed her help. She is the youngest daughter of the Torbjorn. Only she decided to learn engineering craftsmanship, and her father helped her in everything he could.

Brigitte Overwatch repair

Her godfather is Reinhardt, and also he is a teacher of this young woman. As a squire, Brigitte had many duties, but the main one was to maintain Reinhardt’s armor in good repair. The device of the armor of the class “Crusader” was known to the girl long and wide because the last version of the design was developed by her father. However, in due course she had to look more and more frequently for Reinhardt himself and to suppress his excessive enthusiasm, for the years of battles had not passed for him without a trace.

Briggite’s Abilities

Engineering skills of Brigitte make her an unbending hero of a support class. She is capable of holding a position, treating allies and supplying armor at the same time. Her main weapon is a chain, a wide swing which can hit several opponents at a time. “Whiplash” allows Brigitte to toss the chain forward, which damages enemies in the distance and pushes them away. Thanks to the passive “Vigor” skill, every stroke of Brigitte treats allies nearby.

Brigitte Overwatch reinhardt

The ability “Personal Barrier” unfolds before Brigitte an energy shield that absorbs a share of the damage and protects the allies behind her. When the barrier is raised, Brigitte can use the Shield Strike and lunge forward, which will stun the first enemy on the way. The engineer’s skill allows her to create repair kits that instantly heal injured allies and provide armor of companions with a maximum of health. Gathering strength, Brigitta can apply the superpower “Shared collection” – this insistent appeal gives allies near armor and increases the speed of movement of Brigitte, which allows her to lead the comrades into battle.

Overwatch – First Anniversary

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Anniversary of Overwatch

Overwatch anniversary skins

Yesterday, on May 23, the Overwatch turned one year old! This is a great joy for all the fans of the session FPS games and for the developers themselves. Blizzard decided to celebrate this day with their fans and added new maps and items to the game.

Three new arena maps in Arcade mode, more than a hundred new awards including 11 legendary skins and new dance emotions for EVERY hero of the Overwatch game. This is the largest update on the number of added content, and you can get it all from the new containers – the anniversary containers of Overwatch. According to the established tradition, you will receive one free box when you enter the game from May 23 to June 12, 2017. You can also buy holiday containers, but only until the end of the festive season.

New items in anniversary containers

In the game were added next items:

  • 25 graffiti (1 each hero + 1 festive)
  • 48 replicas (2 for each hero)
  • 11 legendary skins
  • 24 dance emotions
  • Emotions “Sitting” and “Laughter” for Sombra and Orisa (are not festive content)

New legendary skins for Overwatch:

  • Pharra – Beduin
  • Soldier 76 – Cyborg: 76
  • DiVa – Cruiser
  • Tracer – Graffiti
  • Hanzo – Cyberninja
  • Mei – Beekeeper
  • Zarya – Cyberian
  • Bastion – Dune Buggy
  • Genji – Sentai
  • Symmetra – Oasis
  • Lucio – Jazzy

Overwatch anniversary dance emotes

New maps

New maps were added for the game modes 1×1 and 3×3. To win in these modes, you just need to destroy all the opponents.

Necropolis

Ana Amari has in the necropolis not only her secret shelter but also an advanced observation post. A lot of peaks for observation, narrow alleys for sudden attacks, all this was created only for one purpose – to determine the best of you. Only do not fall into the pit.

Castillo

Castillo is an old port in Dorado Bay, it is here that the Calaveras Bar is located. This bar is famous for its visitors, and they can not be called as good guys. Also nearby is the base of the famous group of Los Muertos and the refuge of Sombra. Use the vertical advantages of this map if you want to defeat the opponent.

Black forest

Not far from Eichenwalde is a long-abandoned battlefield, which is the last refuge for a lot of Bastion type omnics. But today this quiet place will again be lit up by flashes of gunfire and poisoned by spilled blood. Destroy enemies while they are moving along the trails from the castle to the forest and use wooden balconies to move among the map.

Overwatch first anniversary

Check my other articles about various FPS games:

Call of Duty: World War II

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COD is back

CoD: World war II

No surprises: Call of Duty: WW2 will come on November 3 on PC, PS4, and Xbox One, and will be dedicated to fighting on the Western Front of the Second World War. As expected, the preorder award will be eligible for early participation in the multiplayer testing. The owners of the PS4 will have the first access to the closed beta test, but later other platforms can join.

Call of Duty: WWII at the E3 2017

More details about multiplayer promises to be opened at the E3 2017 exhibit. For the time being, it is known that a special map will be created for multiplayer, something resembling a tower in the Destiny. Also, a new asymmetric capture mode and a new class system will appear. And, of course, the game will have a cooperative zombie mode – the Third Reich could not resist the temptation to create a cool mystical army in an attempt to reverse the course of war.

The story will rotate around the fate of the rookie of the United States 1st Infantry Division, Sergeant William Pearson, even though the game is not limited to one protagonist, and it will be possible to play as the woman in the French Resistance. Naturally, the game will show the most popular battles of the Second World War, such as the Normandy landing and the Battle of Hardenne. Most of the game will take place in the 1944-1945 year, but some of the Missions will be deployed in an earlier period to introduce the player to the heroes and lay the basis for the narrative. One of the main actors in the game – Josh Duhamel, known for “Transformers” and smaller movies.

CoD: WWII Zombie

Information about story

The scene campaign will become more personal, focused on the perception of a particular soldier, though the scale scenes are not going anywhere. Developers claim that they have done a tremendous job of making the locations and events in the game look reliable. The general tone of the Call of Duty: WW2 will be a dark, unpainted.

No more Wolverines in CoD

Automatic regeneration should be replaced by a system of closer interaction with the squad: the details are not yet revealed, but it is clear that some of the storyline’s partners will be able to heal your wounds, while others can share bullets. Distance is an important factor: if run far from the squad, then the medical care or additional supplies can be forgotten. And how it’s going to be implemented in multiplayer nobody knows yet.

Another significant innovation for the game supports the simultaneous participation of up to 48 players in multiplayer modes. Probably, this info is about “Headquarters” – the social space in which players are drawn between battles, but perhaps new modes will be able to accept more players than they have in the series.

Other CoD and Overwatch related news:

Overwatch: New event info was leaked

Posted on by When Duty Calls

Through the X-box live interface leaked the first picture of the new skins for Overwatch’s heroes that were created for the new event. As we suppose before this event will be take base from from the e-comix “Uprising”, and new skins will receive such heroes as Reinhardt, Mercy, Tracer and Torbjorn.

Overwatch new event

New event as we think will be chained with the Overwatch’s lore and will have some PvE ingame mod. As we can see the plot of this event will be tied with the Omnic terroristic group named as “Zero sector”. And our heroes will confront them at the Kings Row.

By the way, if you still do not read this comix, then we highly recommend to read it. You can find Uprising comix at the official Overwatch’s website. Or at this link.

Overwatch: Sound effects

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Voice features Overwatch

Some developers who are responsible for the sound and atmosphere of the Overwatch answered a few questions from users of Reddit. The Blizzard development team works very well with the community. They regularly release videoblogs, where they told about an update. And everything was telling by Jeff Kaplan himself. One of the last of such works was the AMA on the Overwatch subreddit. Developers who are engaged in sound answered several questions about the Overwatch. Also you can find all voice actors that works under Overwatch.

Anna’s voice

Forum user Skyponyyt asked: “how long have you worked on the voice acting of Ana?”

Blizz_PaulLackey answers: “from training to production prior to shipment takes about 12 weeks. This time includes preparation, and then while game designers will release new hero model. Then we give the character sounds for testing. It only remains to optimize character, make emotions, surface interaction and voice recording.”

Mccree's voice actor

Genji’s sfx

AeroRespawn asked a question: “How was Genji’s blade sound in the Highlight was recorded?”

Blizz-PaulLackey answered: “we just took 2 swords, and then beat them by each other to make them resonate, and after we just play it backwards.”

12 various voice actors for each Overwatch hero

Rechan asked: “This game have a record number of languages. How many translators working on one character? “.

ScottLawlor responds: “I won’t say exact numbers, but I’m sure that Overwatch is localized into 12 languages, so that means that we have 12 different actors for each character. But there are exceptions, for example a Widowmaker has one the same actress that speaks in both English and French. If you watched the short films on YouTube, you can notice it.

Mercy's voice actor

SnugglesFabric asked: “How does the dialogue system works? And how many people are working on this?”

ScottLawlor responds: “our writer Michael Chu makes nearly 100% of the dialogues in the game, but the team sometimes have a good idea. One of the coolest things that we have done with our dialog system is a “specialization” rows. For example, there are “stinging” string that can be heard when you kill someone. Most of these general lines (refer to any old/category), but Mike could easily add a criteria for which rows will be related to spot: If the action will happen on a certain map or with a specific character. For example is a replica of the Tracer “death comes“, when she mocks at Reaper after his assassination.

Tracer's voice actor

Wow_so_rpg asked: “for what the character was more fun to do sounds?”

Blizz_ScottLawlo replied: “for me it was a Tracer’s blink. By the way, this sound was one of the first sounds in the game.”

 

Other news about Overwatch:

Overwatch: Heath bars

Posted on by When Duty Calls

In the Overwatch’s world, we have health, shields, barriers and even additional armor that increase your’s maximum Hp pool. 5 various options and each of them are different from each other, but all of them try to reach one goal – to keep you alive.

Health Points in Overwatch

Health points are the easiest of all health bars in overwatch because it follows the all basic rules of video games. All heroes have a base amount of health points, that is shown up in the white color in the user’s interface. Each vertical bar equals to 25 health points, and if yours hp reach zero, you’ll just die.

Health points can be restored by the healers, or by picking up first aid kits, that are spawning on various places on the map. Little medkits have cylindrical form and heal by the 75 points, but large medkits restore 250 hp. All these kits have a respawn timer that equals to 10 sec.

Armor in Overwatch

Armor is shown in the interface, but in the yellow color. Some characters have armor from the start, and any champion can get an additional 75 point of armor by picking up a Torbjorn’s armor kit. To create this kit he need to collect 50 pieces of scrap, and this made this ability the most useless in the whole game. Sad but true. This is true because all Health bars can be restored by healers (but in twice slower then healt points) or just by picking up a healthkit. Torbjorn’s armor can not be restores after destroying. Well of course, you can restore it by picking up another armor kit.

Health bars in Overwatch

Besides the fact that armor can be restored, it’s role is in the keeping your hero safe. Firstly – armor is the first thing that damaged while you hero is under attack. Your health bars reading from the right to the left, and this means that all that you have beside health points will be destroyed first. Also armor decrease all incoming damage by 5 points, but if the damage is less then 10, then it will be decreased by half (200 damage – 5 =195 damage in armor, 6 damage / 2 = 3 damage in armor).

Shields in Overwatch

Shield is third and final form of healt bars in Overwatch. They displayed in the user’s interface by the light-blue color. Shield points are equal to the health point, but the as in the armor case are positioned in the right side of your’s health bar, so they will be damaged in the first. Some heroes have shields from the very beginning, but Symmetra’s ultimate – Shield Generator add additional 75 points of shield to all allies in the radius of 50 meters. Sheild can not be restored by healers, and this is a great problem to such heroes like Zenyatta, Zarya, Symmetra. Medkits also can not restore shields.

But the bright side of all this, that shield are self restoring points. All you need to hide for a short period of time, and your regeneration process will be started immediately.

Barriers in Overwatch

Well this is not really a health bar, but i just can not ignore them. Barriers do not affect any other health bars, but the prevent damage of all heroes that stands under it’s protections. The brightest example of the barrier – Reinhardt’s shield. Barriers just absorb enemie’s damage. All barriers have their own healt bars and after they reach their limit, they will just be destroyed.

Zarya's barrier

At the moment we have 3 barrier types in the game:

  • Frontal – As Osyra or Reinhardt’s shields that prevent damage from the one side.
  • Dome – Winston’s shield barrier that have a dome form.
  • Bubble – Zarya’s bulle that covers an ally hero in the bubble that prevents 200 damage.

Overwatch: Can Symmenta be saved?

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The Indian architect with a fancy name at the moment has the most unenviable position in the game. Despite the fact that the percentage of winrate of Symmetra has always been higher then all the other characters, and she is chosen often enough in the professional and amateur games, she is – the most highly specialized character in Overwatch, which dramatically loses its value depending on the mode , maps and stages of the match.

How blizzard can save Symmetra?

Symmetra

In a recent address to the players Jeff Kaplan, general producer of Overwatch, said that they are aware of the problems of Symmetra and they are going to change her in the near future.

Meticulous players found in the files of the game, several new Indian replics, in which she reports that “10 charges left” and warns that she is ready to “strengthen shields.” It is unclear what exactly it means. Perhaps Teleport charges will increase to 10, and maybe she will have some new ability that can be used a limited number of times. Strengthening shield can also mean that one button will impose symmetra’s shields, and then temporarily “blow” them from 25 to, for example, 100. Then, the shield will be blown back as the “sound barrier” Lucio.

Overwatch Symmetra

We know that the developers do not like to clone abilities, so it is unlikely that they will introduce something so similar to barriers of Zarya and Lucio, but the other options it is difficult to imagine.

Before Halloween update players on the forums have started to dream about how it would be possible to change the character, Jeff Kaplan is clearly aware of the most popular proposals, so he thought it necessary to say, that the Symmetra will not heal any one, in any form. Symmetra is not a doctor, and she will never be. Well, sad, ideas about healing turrets were curious.

Fantasizing on what would change this arrogant woman into a more universal character, it is quite interesting, but first you need to understand the disadvantages of its current set of abilities.

Symmetra’s Teleport

Symmetra's teleport

It is the main advantage and the main curse. If we imagine that each character has a fixed set of “coolness points“, then the teleport is too expensive, and the two basic ability and her basic attack have no points to became better. Any other abilitie will make that Indian too powerful.

If the enemy team has a sensible Genji or Tracer and they saw the first red ball flying at them at the beginning of the match, they realize their mission. Listen carefully as some of the allies did say “enemy have a teleport”, then – go into the rear, ignoring the object and capture enemy fire, rummage all the most obvious places for teleport, find it and destroy it. If they succeed, their team gets the advantage. If in the fear of the enemies Symmetra begins to put teleport away from the point, in less obvious places, it has reduced its value as the amount of time that it saves reduced. In the cargo mode you can sometimes not even look for a teleport, because it will be destroyed each time you capture a control point, so simply drop off cargo and not to worry about the enemy reinforcements.

Other articles about Overwatch:

Why it is worth to buy Overwatch

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New king of team FPS genre? Meet – Overwatch

Tracer Overwatch

Multiplayer shooters live for as long as they can maintain the interest of the audience, it is critical to gain the attention of gamers and hold it. Not all games can do that, but Overwatch, Blizzards debut in the genre of the team FPS, inspire us with great hope.

Until now, the king of the genre of team shooters with different character classes was Team Fortress 2, which is 9 years old, hard to belive to that. And tens of thousands people still play it every day – and I was among them.

The first step to winning the TF2 audience was its widespread availability. But it was enough just to try it and it will dispel all doubts – it was intuitive, rich, bright and extremely addictive shooter game that is not a bit bored and it was possible to spend days and weeks playing that game. I’ve played enough in TF2 (more than four thousand hours), and of all the games in the past many years, only one seriously could covet the throne of shooter from Valve – Overwatch.

Overwatch team

And there were many candidates. Yes, but where are they all? Does anyone now remembers Battlefield Heroes? APB (2010)? Brink? Primal Carnage? Loadout? Even large and hyped multiplayer shooters from industry giants, like Titanfall and Evolve, became “extinct” shortly after release: almost no one plays in them. However, there are much reasons to believe that in the case of the Overwatch that will not happen again.

King is dead all hail the king

Blizzard managed to create an incredible buzz around the game. Open Beta of Overwatch gathered more participants than any other, and Blizzard beat past record from Ubisoft – Tom Clancy’s The Division, and winged with hype around the new “Star Wars” Battlefront. Unlike Valve with TF2, Blizzard did not have to impose their game to the public – the people themselves flew at her, biting own elbows while waiting for Overwatch release, and then just after release servers was immediately dropped, but Blizzard was ready for almost anything.

Widowmaker Overwatch

People will remain in the game – just for the reason for which many blamed Overwatch. It is not free-to-play, and people that are willing to pay $ 40-60, by default a lot more interested in it than one who ran to “play game or two” in the shareware game simply because it does not cost anything.

The absence of other game modes, except multiplayer, ensures that all who have bought the game are interested in it and not in something else.

Finally, Overwatchs user base will not be fragmented. Blizzard has promised that all the characters, modes and arenas will go free in the future, which means that all the players will always be on a par.

Try to read my other articles about FPS games:

Battlefield 1, first impressions

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What we have before?

Battlefield airship

Battlefield changes its scenery without any regard in the second time. The last time the series was surprised even more when they replace bored battles of modern armies with cinematic showdown of gangsters with the cops.

I remember how Battlefield 4 disappointed their fans with a small campaign, which has bad plot, the key word here – BAD. Then they do a Battlefield: Hardline: Detective story, bad cops, cocaine, palm tree, very bad cops. But what from Battlefield they left in that game? What kind of Battlefield it is, if in a half of the game you crawling on all fours, and snapping villains in handcuffs?

It’s time to go back to the origins of mass war. Such that involves an entire society, not just a small class of human soldiers.

Brighter future

World War 1 tank

Battlefield 1 is much different from any other game. This BF does not have any logical plot, just a few stories from a simple soldiers, that have not any connections between them. All that campaign are short, for an hour or little more, and all of them contain only 1 story from theirs life.

Black soldier from the tittle – soldier of Harlem Hellfighters appear in game only  in prologue. Prologue itself is very short, and it tries to show to you how miserable was life of a small soldier in a World War I.

Other campaigns are bigger of course. 1 story – is a story of a young driver, that try to survive in a Tank Mark V. For a few missions they will tell you about your duty, will to live, and try to set the grim spirit of the World War I. Then we will watch at conflict between naive patriotism, and cynocism, that was boiled in his own blood. Another chapter of this story will tell us about a Gallipoli Campaign – main fetish of australian militaries. Then we will watch how Osmanic soulless machenary fights against Arabic Horsemans.

These stories are nice, but all they are naive: Here main hero change his view on life too easily, and logic (even military logic) is broken more than once.

MMOFPS part of BF 1

Battlefield 1

But Battlefield are games about Online Battles, and not about plot. And they succeeded in that. Now we have airships, dreadnoughts, and the armored train. Elite soldiers (like Heroes in Battlefront), and horses.

Role of tanks has changed, now they are not the fast monsters that destroys everything that they see, they became a prehistoric iron boxes, that must play a support role to others. Almost behind every machine you will see a bunch of soldiers that try to hide from enemy fire.

In Batllefield 1 you will not find a shelter on the map in the late game. They all will be destroyed, and all that you can, is try to find some cover under each tree branch.

Recap

After a desperate defense of fortress Faw when you and two friends were for a ten minutes in the funnel, trying to count explosions overhead, seeing nothing of the thick smoke, firing at random into the void – that’s when you realize that Battlefield moved on the rusty, but still working rails of First World War.