GameSpot's The Lobby - How does Overwatch play on consoles?

[MUSIC] I wanna talk to you about Mike Mahardy I've been playing [UNKNOWN] for the past couple of months. And the Beta is coming out in a couple of months time. May third. May third, just around the corner. Yeah. Couple of corners, just around a couple of corners. But we've been playing predominantly on PC, most of the gameplay we've seen has been PC. But you got to go down to Blizzard and play it on consoles. Yeah. So I guess first of all, what did you play it on, Xbox One or Playstation 4? I played Playstation 4. Dave over in the UK did Xbox One. Dave Jewett Yep. And yeah, I play about three or four hours on PS 4. It feels good. It feels like you'd expect. The default aiming sensitivity felt a little slow, but I think that's just because was so used to playing on PC, where you could do a 180 degree turn in no time flat. But even so, the game itself is designed to be very fast paced. So, I think a lot of people like turning their sensitivity up, even if they're not accustomed to that, most of the character abilities are kinda tailored for this really, in some cases, twitchy game like Widowmaker, I'm sure, the sniper, people are really good on PC with her. On console it's going to be a little more adjusting, if people were used to PC, but- Have they changed any of the hero's abilities? Because Widowmaker is the one that, you play Widowmaker like you play Counterstrike. It's straight aim down sights Is that charge on the Sniper Rifle, but it's pretty much like pinpoint. Hanzo almost. Yeah, same thing on Hanzo. Right. But for instance, like Winston the big eight. He's almost like one the easier characters because his gun essentially, just like connects to anyone who's around. Right. So, like that's one that would be simple on consoles. Yeah. Are they changing any of the like, tweaking characters of the theme like- No, I mean from what they've told me, from what I've played it was very similar. Or it was, It was the same thing. From what they've said, they're gonna be updating it simultaneously on all platforms. They said they'd be open to cross play between Xbox One and PS4 if that actually happens, but they've said this a few times. They're not gonna do PC console cuz that would just be a bloodbath. Yeah. They don't want the Dreamcast Quake III thing to happen again. Right. I'm waiting for that one publisher to like, "We do not want cross play between PS4 and XBox." [LAUGH] What publisher is not going to say that's what they want? Yeah. We went to, just want to interject that. It must have felt like it was playing at a slightly different pace. Right, because. I guess it's hard to tell because, A if you play with noobs the first time around it's always going to be a little bit slower as well. Were you playing against Blizzard folks, were you playing with other journalists or YouTubers? What was it like? It was journalists and YouTubers. Okay. But they all seemed pretty experienced. I consider myself decent at shooters, and Overwatch I've been playing a lot on PC. And I was It was a challenge. There were fun matches for this kind of event. I think everybody there was pretty well versed. There weren't too many times I really noticed major differences. There were certain times when the constraints of the controller, how many buttons there are, kind of felt a little weird. As opposed to the keyboard which you can map really well. Mercy, specifically. You can switch from her staff, her healing damage buff staff to her automatic pistol. Yeah. And on the controller, the default was to press right on the D-pad. So when you're in the middle of a fight and then you want to switch it, you have to stop moving with your left thumb. Or, if I started bringing my right thumb over before I remapped it just cuz I could keep moving and not just get shot But you know on the keyboard I just usually map that to Q or something which is really quick. So I'll definitely there might be some finegling I wanna do when I map the buttons when the open beta launches but no it feels really good. It feels like they took their time with it. They've said they don't want to favor one platform over the other. [CROSSTALK] But yeah, I think Diablo 3 they did a very good job of bringing it to consoles. It wasn't as fully fleshed out as PC. They don't have seasons. But still, it felt good. That's cool. Yeah, I guess this is one of the first times we're gonna try and do an identical launch for both PC and console. For [UNKNOWN] anyway. And I guess the other side of this You know, had it a look, had it a play. What was I running in 60 frames a seconds to the look sharp. Yeah. I mean the [UNKNOWN] spans sort of lens itself to some sort of degree scalability kind of look like. Yeah. Right? Yeah it's 60 frames and looks, I don't notice any visual differences between this and PC. Maybe cuz I don't think the art style would really And sometimes like our cell that you could really just jack up on PC for a noticeable difference. But your side by side has probably like loads of lighting and aliasing and bits and bobs that are kind of not as sharp as they would be on PC. But you didn't feel like it was particularly downgraded? No. It was just a normal Playstation 4, not this 4.5. We'll get to that later. But no, it looked great. I don't have any complaints coming off a few hours of it. I think POC might be my preferred platform going forward, although, I'm sure I'll have a few of those friends that won't being playing on PC, like back home. I'd like to jump on PS 3, one that's One of the questions yosamba15's saying, May 3rd on consoles if you preorder, and a couple of days if you don't. Yeah there's a couple of different ways they're selling this actually at the moment. Theres the origins editions, and there's special editions and what not. Some of the pre-order bonuses for different character skins, and all of that stuff. I wonder if people would be actually interested in this or not. And pick who your favorite characters are. And last question on this did you feel find yourself like favoring certain characters over other ones that you wouldn't necessarily on PC. I feel like widow maker bastion the taurus was the one that was OP for a while where it had the shield and I feel like people have now gotten so good at widow maker that you can just destroy anyone if you've got a good sniper. So I kinda feel like they're gonna nerf her anyway but did you feel like less people were using characters like that? Sure, yeah. I played Hanso for one match and I noticed someone else was playing Widow maker throughout the matches so they seem comfortable. But it definitely seems Winston was one of the ones, mercy. Those are some of the characters I think, just for the purposes of the event, I gravitated toward because. Again, I was used to those twitchier characters I was used to on PC and there were some that just felt more naturally suited to the controller. But I've been playing shooters on controllers for A while now. Yeah. And, you know, like in Counter Strike and Teen Fortress Two were the ones I always think about when I think about PC shooters. And I ended up playing both of those on consoles later. I got used to them pretty fast. So I'm expecting it to do that with all the characters, but There's definitely something to be said about certain characters working better on console. Like Winston I think is one good example. Just because he is so good waylay leaping focus. Yes, his weapon sort of gravitates towards people. So yeah. I noticed that a little bit cool. Should be interesting to see. May 24 worldwide release. And the good folks at Blizzard. Let us know if you're going to pick that up yourself on XBOX ONE or PLAYSTATION 4, or if you're holding out for the PC version. Let us know in the comments below! Mike, you've played all the games. Peter, we're not going to talk to you at all for the first 20 minutes of this show, probably. I'm just window dressing, then. How do you feel about overwatch? I'm intrigued by it. I usually don't get into competitive shooters, but I do like the personality of the game. And having played a little bit of it, I think it was Pac Feast last year, I enjoyed it, but again I was going up against people who were seemingly really good. Right. Despite it just being an event demo, which kind of curtailed my enjoyment a little bit. So we'll see like it'll depend if Feel up to snuff when I try to play the game. Right. But I'm curious. I definitely want to give it a shot. That will be interesting one, because it's like, a month after Gears of War, if you don't get in straight away, then suddenly everyone's figured out everything, like all online shooters. Sort of. I got into Titan Fall long after the fact, and I was able to adapt to that game pretty well. But I don't know if that's going to be the same case with Overwatch. Because it seems to be far less forgiving than something like Titan Fall I was telling Chris earlier today, I love this. I am really enjoying [INAUDIBLE] quite a lot. Yeah. Like more than I've enjoyed an online shooter in quite a while. Like I feel like Growing up in Counter Strike and Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament and all these games, I've got kind of bored by most first person shooters. Yeah. But there's something about Overwatch. I think it's just a strategic variability that happens. Kinda like the first time I played Team Fortress and you're like yeah, there's like a- Right. Couple of these ones, except instead of being whatever, eight characters, I forget how many in TF2, maybe nine. There's like this massive battleground, 16 I think maybe, in Overwatch, or maybe a bit more, or actually- 21. 21? Yeah. Yeah, it's really interesting, mashing them all up. I'll be curious to see what you think about Doom 3 multiplayer cuz I've played that and it was really fun. It definitely recalled something like Quake 3. Yeah. I actually need to play that because I've been super down on it since watching the trailers. It comes across, maybe it's just the marketing but It comes across like they don't know why Doom was good. I don't know how I feel about the single player. Multiplayer was definitely good. I went in there kinda with a lukewarm anticipation. I just kept getting back in line, kept doing it so. Cool, all right. We'll see how that pans out.>>Sweet, looking forward to it. [MUSIC]