Overwatch Heroes: Tracer

"Cheers, Love! The cavalry's here!"

Anyone who's played even 5 minutes of TF2 will know the scout when the see it. And Overwatch's plucky Brit is no exception. Tracer seems to inhabit the role of harassment and generally being an annoying little shit.

Real Name: Lena Oxton
Age: 26
Occupation: Adventurer
Base of Operations: London, England
Affiliation: Overwatch (formerly)

Story: Lena Oxton was formerly the youngest pilot ever to be inducted into Overwatch's experiment flight programme, and you can probably already see where this is going. In the first test of an aircraft called 'The Slipstream', the teleporting ship malfunctioned, and disappeared, leaving Lena presumably deceased.
Several months later, she returned. But, Lena suffered from 'Chronal Dissociation', effectively a ghost of time, phasing in and out of reality for hours or even days at a time. It wasn't until a Scientist named Winston (who we'll see later) created the Chronal Accelerator (the blue glowy thing Tracer wears) to allow Lena to remain in our time, but also manipulate her own timestream to speed up or slow down herself. And now, with Overwatch gone, Tracer is now trying to do the right thing, and help people after the Omnic Crisis.

To be honest, I'm quite impressed. You'll see all the Heroes have their own backstory, which is a lot of work Blizzard have gone too, which suggests they're very invested in this game. So, let's do a rundown of Tracer's kit and abilities.

Health: 150 (lowest in the Game so far)

Pulse Pistols: Tracer's primary weapons. Unlike the Scout's scattergun, these simply spray bullets in a short range, having to reload very often as Tracer goes through Ammo like nobody's business. With limited effective range and takes hits like a damp biscuit, Tracer's going to be left high and dry with her fancy little pistols. But, that's where the rest of her kit comes into play.

Blink: Tracer can store up to 3 charges of Blinks, allowing her to zip forwards. Unlike in the cinematic trailer, Tracer can only bounce around on the ground. I have a feeling, like the Scout's double jump, this will be the staple of Tracer, and often keeping an eye on your Blink charges will most likely be the difference from being alive to being a pile of bullet-ridden mush. Ideally, you'll probably want to Blink into combat to close the gap, spray and pray, then Blink out again, rinse and repeat. Or, combine with Tracer's next ability.

Recall: Tracer simply jumps backwards in time, restoring her health and ammo to what they were about 3 seconds ago. I kid you not, this is not her ultimate. While it has a longer recharge of about 10 seconds, this will most certainly be the real life-or-death decider for Tracer. Blink into a room where the entire enemy team is? Simply rewind, and run away to go pick a fight with something more your size, say a flower, or a damp paper bag.

(Ultimate) Pulse Bomb: Everyone needs some explosions here and there, and Tracer is no exception. Tracer's pulse bomb is thrown at a short range, and can stick to players or the map. After a brief moment, kaboom. Tracer's pulse bomb is certainly powerful, especially in the right hands. In a recently uploaded Gameplay Preview, Tracer Blinked into a small crowd, emptied her pistols, chucked in a pulse bomb, then Recalled away as they got turned into red mist. Similarly, I believe in the Gameplay Trailer, a Tracer lobs a Pulse Bomb onto the payload cart, stopping an offensive team right in their tracks.

Joking aside, Tracer is a very powerful Hero, especially in the new Gameplay Preview. While not applicable to most teams, I feel our plucky little Brit will see a lot of play by most people at the start of Overwatch. But, in the hands of a Veteran, I also believe Tracer will be a force to be reckoned with.

Gone Girl

If you haven't seen it, Gone Girl is a film. It stars future Batman, that guy from How I met your Mother and Lady Penelope from the new Thunderbirds are Go!. And after seeing it not an hour ago, I firmly recommend it.

It gave me the biggest film boner ever.

Synopsis: Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) is a writer, married to another writer, Amy Dunne (Rosamund Pike). One day, Amy disappears, and an investigation is launched into her disappearance. The story of their marriage and lives is shown from different perspectives and through flashbacks, allowing the audience to piece it together for themselves.

The Good: Firstly, the acting is excellent from everyone, which is actually a pretty big achievement considering Tyler Perry absolutely kills it in this movie. Personally though, I found Carrie Coon as Nick's sister as my favourite character and actress in the film. With a less dependency on fancy shenanigans, the firm focus of Gone Girl is on the people, which is one of it's greatest strengths. It's interesting to see Nick as an 'eye of the storm' character at the beginning, and later develop. Similarly, it's fascinating to see Amy's side of the story as well. But Gone Girl's greatest asset is the mystery offered by the plot, and allowing the viewer to piece the story together for themselves. Now, I despise predictable TV or Films, and going into Gone Girl completely blind, not knowing much even as the film progressed, I found immensely awesome, though I have a feeling it will rightly piss some people right off. And while not a technically challenging film, the screenplay is very nice, all well shot, and the unspoken interactions are just as important as the spoken ones.

The Bad: Due the global Film industry having not created the perfect film yet, and the closest we've got to hypothetical film perfection is in three films, one about prison, another about a playboy/ninja with a leather fetish, and the Mafia. Unsurprisingly, Gone Girl is not any of the above, even though it gains the arbitrary rating of 'very good' on my scale of...stuff. The main hurdle is one of basis, as the film deals with difficult subjects such as women and feminism, through domestic abuse, murder, blood, and a lot of other stuff most people would consider 'kinda gross'. If you're willing to accept that, then there's very little else to complain about. Gone Girl certainly isn't a technical masterpiece, but that's also a strength, and there's a scene towards the end with questionable levels of personal hygiene, but you'll probably see what I mean when you see it. But the biggest gripe is mainly one of pacing. You see throughout the film, time passing in hours and days, but the timespan gets bigger, into weeks, as the film ties up in the last ~45 minutes, which suggests they realised they're wasn't quite enough content to fill it out. On the whole, the film is fine, but in the last ~30 minutes (as a certain main character shows up again, you'll know), the film is just KA-THUNK. Timing stops completely, and the last 30 minutes is a horrible slog.

Overall: Yeah, it did good. I would certainly recommend Gone Girl. If you can get around the nasty stuff and the frankly bladder-busting duration, Gone Girl is an excellent film, that deserves a lot of credit for being pretty good. But remember, you may never be able to watch Gone Girl again, as you won't be able to bask in the glorious mystery of the plot.

8.5/10

Why you should be (over) Watching Overwatch

For those of you who don't know, Overwatch is a new team-based FPS, being made by Blizzard. Yes, those guys who did World of Warcraft, Heroes of the Storm and Starcraft. Currently, there is no actual release date, but there is a confirmed Beta start in 'Fall 2015' (or Around September for non-Americans), as Blizzard like to do their stuff in the Autumn such as Blizzcon.

So, let's draw some lines. Overwatch has a very unique, clean, almost Pixar-esq Artstyle, similar to another first person Hat Simulator we all know. As many people are already making the comparison, we're going to contrast Overwatch's Heroes with the Mercenary's in Valve's Team Fortress 2. Now, we don't have much in terms of visuals for Overwatch as it is in a pre-Alpha state (though looks very polished), and much of this will be speculation, based on short videos and the steadily growing Gameplay previews being put out by Blizzard. But I suppose I should start with some background.

Overwatch's story is relatively simple. In the future, Humanity has had great success in making robots to do jobs and fight wars. However, shit's got a bit Terminator up in here, and the Robots have had an uprising called the 'Omnic Crisis'. In response, Overwatch, a global peacekeeping force, was created to stop this crisis, and recruited many heroes and champions to fight the Robots. Eventually, the Robots were defeated, and Overwatch was disbanded. Many Heroes in Overwatch served this peacekeeping force during the crisis or afterwards, and are merely continuing their duties to the world, but not employed by Overwatch.

While there are some similarities to Team Fortress 2, there are some great divides. Yes, they both have a very different artstyles from the brown corridor norm, and are class based. And that's about where the similarities end. Firstly, Blizzard have said they want a focus on changing Heroes rather than loadouts, like in TF2. But the main difference is probably that we've only seen 6 v 6 matches, and that might be all we see when Overwatch is released (for now, lets presume it is). Yes, many things in Overwatch seem OP, but for a very good reason. There's only ever 6 people on a team, so everyone has to pull their weight. In TF2, teams are commonly 12 or even 16 people on each team, so if there's a few noobs who have no idea how to play, the other 9 or 10 people will cover for them.

Another key difference is abilities. Each Hero has 3 Abilities: A 'basic', a 'not so basic' and an 'ultimate'. While many people will despair over the lack of Ubercharge in Overwatch, what's important to remember is that effectively everyone has their own Ubercharge. Which, unlike TF2, allows each Hero to pull their own weight and make no class entirely necessary. Also, an interesting note, is the Ultimate ability. It charges on damage dealt (or damage dealt by healing target for healers), but doesn't go away if you die, only if you change Hero. So even if you suck balls at Overwatch (which we probably all will at the start), you're going to be popping an Ultimate. And I also like the fact that each Hero has a loud Audio cue when popping an ultimate, so your enemies know when to shit themselves when you bombard the living daylights outta them.

But, what's speculation without detail? Let's do some breakdown of Heroes in Overwatch.