Last fall, the popular first-person shooter game “Overwatch” was taken offline and replaced by “Overwatch 2.” Following in the steps of the previous title, “Overwatch 2” sees players facing off in a variety of battles that can either have team-based objectives or be free-for-all deathmatches with a large selection of characters with unique abilities and movement. 

To put it bluntly, “Overwatch 2” is disappointing. 

It has done very little to differentiate itself from “Overwatch,” besides the inclusion of a handful of new characters and maps. When the game was announced, developer Blizzard promised a campaign/story mode, which would allow fans to dive into the world and lore that has been drip-fed to them through several different mediums over the years. At the time of writing, said campaign has not been released and there are very few details as to what exactly players can expect from it when it releases later this year. 

No one wants to admit it, but “Overwatch” is boring. The gameplay and objectives wherein just aren’t fun, and only a few characters are even exciting to control. Blizzard knows this, too. In the most common game modes, you must wait in a queue to play as characters in one of the three roles: Damage, Support or Tank, with Damage being by far the most popular. If you want to play a Damage character, your wait to join a match will be significantly longer. There are even “XP” incentives to pick one of the less popular roles. Players should not be punished for wanting to have fun. This is a problem that existed in “Overwatch” and has not been solved for “Overwatch 2.” 

The best change that Blizzard has made was making “Overwatch 2” free to play, moving the series to a “games as a service” model. Between this change and the inclusion of a battle pass for $10, “Overwatch” is headed in the same direction that most competitive online games have gone in the past couple years. Still, most cosmetic items are locked behind the $10 purchase, and battle pass progression and item unlocks move at a snail’s pace without it. 

“Overwatch 2” doesn’t feel like a sequel, and the gameplay is not engaging enough to draw players in and keep them there.