Week two of Overwatch’s 10-year anniversary celebrations kicked off with more challenges, loot boxes, and a gamemode for us to try out. Instead of the OG mode that players got to check out last week, this time we’ve got a play on Mystery Heroes, the mode where each player gets a random hero when they respawn.
This version, called Mystery Showdown, is slightly different but just as chaotic. There’s a little less uncertainty as you first pick a role queue, meaning there’ll always be one tank, two DPS, and two supports in a team, and instead of swapping heroes when you die, you swap heroes when you get an elimination, or three assists as a support. Or, as I found out, until the game mercy swaps you if you’re particularly awful at a hero and are incapable of getting elims or assists.
While I have enjoyed my fair share of regular Mystery Hero games, I wasn’t prepared to enjoy this mode quite as much as I did. Largely because of how hilarious it is to change into a hero you’ve never played before in the middle of a huge teamfight during overtime.
I found myself in the middle of a ball of chaos several times, as I’d be gearing up to use a D.Va bomb against a whole team only to accidentally get an elim mid team fight and suddenly switch to Winston, with no bomb to use or clue as to what I’m doing.
I’m largely a support main, thanks to a time before role queue, but I still pride myself on knowing enough DPS and Tank heroes to role fill where needed, or at least I thought I did. Playing this mode on either of these two roles made me appreciate just how many heroes are out there and how little I know about them.
I understand the concept of plenty of heroes, but executing those skills is harder than it looks. Picture this: we’re in the middle of a fight on payload, the enemy Orisa uses her ult and pulls my entire team into her AoE attack, but I’m playing Symmetra and I know I can teleport my team out of here, I just need my synapses to connect fast enough.
I place one teleport down and then the other, and then, we all die to the ult anyway. Turns out my synapses did, in fact, not connect fast enough and instead of placing the second teleport outside the range of damage I just TP’d us all back into the same ult. Whoops.
Aside from humiliating myself for most of the matches Mystery Showdown is a chaotic yet incredibly fun mode which showcases all the weird and wonderful heroes and abilities Overwatch has to offer. It feels like the right way to celebrate 10 years of Overwatch.
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