Blizzard is going back to the roots of the shooter genre for the latest addition to Overwatch, its team-based hero shooter. The publisher announced today that it is introducing a deathmatch mode where the only objective is to get more kills than the other team. This gametype is live now in the Arcade menu on the public test region servers. It should hit the live servers soon.
I decided to test out the new mode for ourselves, and you can see the results for yourself in the video above. As you might expect, death match is a lot of fun in Overwatch. The mode comes in two flavors. Four-on-four team deathmatch and an eight-player free-for-all. These modes definitely feel a bit more skillful in terms of your ability to shoot and kill your enemies. That’s opposed to the objective-based modes that you’d find in Quick Play and Ranked, which employ more strategy and teamwork elements (a different set of skills).
While this is definitely just a diversion from the core Overwatch experience, it is a welcome distraction. Deathmatch had its time in the spotlight more than a decade ago in shooters like Quake and, more recently, Call of Duty. These days, developers try to keep multiplayer shooters as entertaining as possible for as many players as possible by offering up other ways to contribute beyond merely shooting someone else first.
At the same time, deathmatch didn’t suddenly lose all of its appeal, so it is nice that players can get some of that action if they want from one of the best online shooters in years.
