I was pretty much set on never playing this. I reeeeally hate American-style CG, so all the videos they did turned me off, and the whole vibe just wasn't really something I was into. I also got bored every time I watched footage, even including last night and today. I figured this would be one to just say fuck it, I don't like it. I hate TF2, which kinda ruined the team-based FPS thing for me, so this seemed like one I just wouldn't bother with.
But EVERYONE LOVES IT. I haven't seen a single person say anything bad about it, they're all just totally effusive. It got to the point where I was almost getting angry, like jesus, WHAT is it people like about this stupid game so much? I made a dumb impulse purchase and bought it, because it was just killing me. I had to know.
Turns out it's pretty great. Not perfect, definitely has balance issues, and some of the characters are lame (some are just way deeper mechanically than others; and some abilities require skill to use while there are others that REALLY don't) ... but it's fun. I actually like the character designs, it turns out, even though I wasn't fond of the art style as much. I hate the music and turned that off after about a half hour. Played for several hours and started to fatigue for sure, but never really got bored. It does suffer from some of the same stuff I don't like about what modern team-based shooters have become, but it also does a lot of other stuff right that makes up for it.
It's probably not going to be something I spend a ton of time with in the long term, but I had enough fun that I'm sure I'll get my money's worth out of it. It is indeed a good game like everyone says it is. My curiosity has been sated.
EDIT - Have you guys tried all the characters yet? I kinda jumped around and found characters I like from each group, and there are definitely characters that feel awkward to me or I don't care for. But it surprised me too that even some of the slower characters can be fun. I thought for sure that I'd stick to the ultra-fast ones, but there's really just so much variety. Mei is really awesome, and I love Pharah. Those are probably my top 2. Ice-walling dudes is great fun (I especially love putting one right behind some poor sucker and trapping him so the team can finish him off), and Pharah's rocket launcher is awesome. Though she needs to be able to stay airborne more than she can. The weekly brawl seems to halve her cooldowns, and holy shit, it was so much more fun just being able to stay up and rain death on everyone. Wasn't having as good a time with her in the vanilla modes.
Actually, mobility is my biggest complaint with this game. Especially coming straight from the new Doom, this game just feels kind of slow and there aren't really many ways to escape a bad situation for a lot of characters. If you get caught in a hail of turret fire, you can pretty much just accept death if you don't have a shield or dodge move. Being much more used to FPS games where skillful use of movement can get you out of a bad situation, it's tough for me to swallow the deliberate feel of something like this. It's not BAD at all, necessarily, just doesn't offer the same freedom of movement I instinctively crave from having played so much Quake and UT.
