8/12/2017

The news just keeps coming from Overwatch, first we get the newest character Doomfist, the summer games return which also includes the ultra-addictive Lucioball mode, and now an announcement concerning new game modes with the addition of Deathmatch.

Deathmatch has been a staple of shooter games since their inception, but it somehow never factored in to the mega-hit shooter Overwatch, since it was more focused on teams attacking objectives rather than each other. The addition of the “Arcade” mode offers up a chance for the developers to tweak the game, and that’s exactly what they are doing here.

Announced in the most recent Developer Update, Deathmatch will be broken up into two forms, Free-For-All and Team Deathmatch. Included in this update will be a new Free-For-All map known as Chateau Guillard which is the family estate of Widowmaker. Past arena maps such as Echo Point will be tweaked for both modes as well.

One thing worth noting that was specifically mentioned in the Update video: during Team Deathmatch, if a Mercy decides to revive her fallen comrades before they respawn, that takes kills away from the opposing team, so expect a lot of Mercy play for Team Deathmatch.

Right now the modes are “coming soon”, after testing is done in the Public Test Region (PTR) but, if I were a betting man, I would say these modes would probably show up right after the conclusion of the Summer Games event or perhaps even around the time of a certain shooter sequel due out in early September, hmm.

Personally, I can not wait to see how these turn out since I have played Deathmatch modes in an unbelievable amount of shooters, sometimes even exclusively (see: Unreal Tournament games). Also, the fact that Blizzard is telling even more story with the setting of the new map is just telling me this isn’t just a throwaway thing for them.

Expect many livestreams of me playing Deathmatch on Twitch.