No one wants to play Overwatch alone. Multiplayer games are all about playing with your friends. Day Z, Team Fortress 2, Counter Strike, ARK: Survival Evolved, and even Player Unkown’s Battlegrounds all have some sort of team communication to play them effectively. I’ve been playing a lot of Halo Online recently and although I play alone, it does get lonely at times. It would be nice to have a team again, like the good old days.

Overwatch is meant to be one of those games where team coordination is key. A good team will make a good win. “Don’t play a pub match. People suck” is what I was told by a close friend of the podcast. But he’s right. He’s absolutely right. I’ve played my fair share of pub matches in Overwatch. There is absolutely no coordination between team members and 9 times out of 10, the opposing team is usually prepared and well organized. After losing 5 consecutive matches, it’s usually on a sad note that we leave the night.

Split Screen Couch Multiplayer

I miss the old days of video games. I don’t mean that I miss the games from back then, they’re still around. I miss being able to sit on the couch with your bros, popping in a copy of Halo 2, and having the game just instantly working. I miss being able to push someone out of the way and tell them that they suck in person. (No, I’m not like that all the time, just with friends and family.) Goldeneye: Rogue Agent, Timesplitters 2 & 3, Star Wars Battlefront, are all games that I had fond memories of playing with. Best part is, these games didn’t require any extra updates. No Day 1 patches for us! Overwatch can still be played on the couch with your mates but you’ll all be in different places when the action goes down, a few seconds behind maybe. With couch co-op, you’re all experiencing the same thing together on one screen in real time. No lag, no wifi issues, and no reasons to complain about why that person shot you from across the map.

Internet Connectivity

With the introduction of more online multiplayer games, especially on PC, games are becoming more hacker friendly. What I mean by that is, more and more games are starting to allow hackers to come in and ruin the game for everyone. Back in 2015, I was really into ARK: Survival Evolved. My buddy and I started to build our base, capture our dinosaurs and eventually build better weapons. It came to the point where we didn’t fear T-Rexes, they feared us. We would run around, gather resources, and actively hunt down the most dangerous dinosaurs. But, we soon learned about a certain ethnic group on the server. They were known as the “hacker group” on our server. No one paid much mind until one day when my friend and I logged in. Our entire base was gone. Deleted from the server. Not by an admin, but by them. It turned out, we were impeding on their territory and they decided to remove every and all evidence of our actions. It’s frustrating to buy a new game only to have your experience ruined by more “experienced” players to a degree that hacking is involved. Even hackers can be organized. You can’t really hack in couch co-op. Your buddy might know some glitches you don’t but I don’t really consider that hacking.

All online games are different. But a vast majority of these games, GTA Online, Reign of Kings, ARK, Minecraft, they can all be played alone but having a team behind you to experience it can be fun. It’s like drinking alcohol. No one wants to drink alone. Drinking with friends is a much better experience than having a cold beer by yourself. If my friends stop playing a game, I stop playing that game. Multiplayers games are simply better with multiple people on your side.

In conclusion, I still love Overwatch. I love the quirky characters and cartoony weapons. I love getting that perfect Nuke launch with D.va’s mech suit and seeing everyone confused. Granted, I haven’t played it in a few months but I still think about playing it. That counts for something right? My friends and I always talk about playing the game but we never do anything about it. One of these days, that will happen.

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