Last Friday I shared with you the first episode of my new weekly video series, Hearthbrawl, where I go over the week’s Tavern Brawl on Hearthstone, showing you some of the best and worst games I played while completing quests.
But as I worked on that video I realised that it’s not just Hearthstone that has a weekly brawl mechanic with crazy combinations that lead to some fun and chaotic moments. Overwatch has one as well and it’s a mode I’ve been enjoying a lot lately.
So, in my never ending quest to create even more fun content for The Mental Attic’s YouTube channel, I’m starting yet another weekly series, Overbrawl—yeah, my imagination isn’t that good when it comes to creating catchy names, sorry. Much like the Hearthstone series, I’ll play a few matches of the weekly brawl and show you what happened.
The good thing is that Overwatch matches are fairly short so I can cram a few matches into a single video without having to juggle things around too much—on the second episode of Hearthbrawl, I had to speed up the match footage 500% to keep it watchable.
The downside though is that Overwatch Weekly Brawls aren’t nearly as crazy as Hearthstones’ are, often just restricting you to a set number of heroes or maps but rarely changing the rules of the game altogether. It’s still in its infancy though, so there are many opportunities for it to pick up and become something as random and crazy as those we see in Hearthstone.
In fact, many people have suggested some mechanic changes that would make the game very interesting, such a friendly fire. Can you imagine that? Ever swing of your hammer as Reinhardt can help your opponents instead of hindering them because you wiped out your own team. Ultimates become that much more dangerous, and Reaper can certainly make everyone Die, Die, Die! I would play the crap out of that, man!
That isn’t to say some of these character restrictions don’t make for some fun moments. There was Super Shimada Bros., where the matches were only Hanzos and Genjis, or that week where you could only play as Soldier 76 with half health. Those led to some crazy situations, such as five Genjis running around with their swords unsheathed or those where ultimate gauges load in mere seconds and people just unleashed them at the very first chance, without even considering the strategy.
It may still not have the same randomness potential as the one in Hearthstone, but the Overwatch weekly brawls shake the core gameplay just enough to create some wonderful gameplay moments. Just on this first episode, I had a team of four Reinhardts and two Anas, with my teammates dubbing our composition “Team Grandparents,” referring to the characters’ age.
So without taking up more of your time, here’s the first episode of Overbrawl!
