Marvel Rivals: will this be the death of Overwatch?

The hero shooter genre has become an over-saturated minefield in the last eight years or so, with the biggest video game fail in recent history being Sony’s 2024, PlayStation 5 exclusive title Concord, a hero shooter that only lived for a meagre 12 days before the plug was pulled and a full refund was issued to all who purchased due to its significantly low active player base (its peak active players being only 697 by the end of its run). 

In 2016, Blizzard Entertainment launched a game that revolutionised the gaming industry as a whole, as it is the only hero-shooter to win the prestigious Game of the Year award. Overwatch set out to capitalise upon the highly popular Valve title Team Fortress 2 by building upon the popularity of online battle arena games which emphasised cooperation and teamwork.

I can recall installing the game for the first time and being greeted by an anthropomorphic Gorilla eating peanut butter, the style was intriguing and appealing. Overwatch's gameplay worked on a 6v6 basis, usually in a 2-2-2 manner (2 Tanks, 2 DPS, and 2 Healer) against another team of 6. I am using the past tense here because as of 2020, Blizzard decided to shut down the once prestigious title in favour of a sequel.

Overwatch 2 promised a focus on story missions, new maps, new game modes, and new heroes. When it was released, these missions were cancelled and the game became a sad husk of its former glory, counterproductively removing content from its predecessor and favouring a more profit-oriented focus with the introduction of a battle pass and charging unreasonable amounts for once-free cosmetics.

 In recent months, Marvel Studios announced its plans to create a hero shooter with its IP. Unlike Blizzard, NetEase, the creators of Marvel Rivals, decided to stick with the traditional 6v6 format. This led to many previous, disappointed Overwatch players migrating to Marvel Rivals regardless of whether they care for the Marvel IP or not. I have played both quick play and competitive Marvel Rivals and in its current state, it blows Overwatch 2 out of the park.

Despite the game obnoxiously cramming Marvel characters and lore down your throat, the character roster is well-balanced (for now) and team compositions aren’t as black and white as in Overwatch 2 due to the game not featuring any sort of restriction on how many roles a team can have in contrast to Overwatch's ‘role queue’. I find that the game's budding community support, fan content, and memes remind me of early Overwatch's Hay Day with montages, in-jokes, and sharing clips of players' massive ults consistently appearing across my social media.

 In conclusion, I think that as a replacement for Overwatch 2, Marvel Rivals definitely holds strong as my current hero shooter of choice, however, it won’t compare to the early days of Overwatch 1 and I don’t think it ever will.