Overwatch's murderhamster Wrecking Ball has rolled out
All I wanted was to push your load, all you ever did was wre-e-eck me
Wrecking Ball, Overwatch's new 'hamster in a heavily-armoured ball of robodeath' character, today launched properly in Blizzard's FPS after almost a month on the test servers. Oh sure some will tell you how "cute" Hammond is, but I'm not remotely surprised he's a monstrous murderer. Have you never seen a hamster eat its own babies? Have you never had an escaped hamster get inside the walls then, several days later, see it emerge fangs-first through drywall? Augh. Horrible little mogwai. Anyway. Overwatch has one of those now. God help you if he escapes inside your computer.
Story-wise, Hammond is a supersmart hellbeast who escaped from the Moon then found a career as a mechwarrior. Why would you trust this lump of teeth, hunger, and automatic assault cannons?
In-game, he translates to a tanky fella who can use his mech to slam the ground and launch nearby enemies, shoot faces off, deploy a shield which gets stronger if more enemies are close, deploy mines, roll into a ball to whizz around, and shoot a grappling hook which he can use to swing round and round and round like a wrecking ball and whack enemies as if this murder is all just a lark to him.
"His high pitched squeaks juxtapose wonderfully with the deep robotic booming of his mech, and the sight of his little paws at the controls is inevitably adorable. He yawns, he sneezes, he wriggles," our Matt observed when he met the wee devil and fell instantly in love. "It's an excellent piece of character design, but I'm not writing about Hammond because he's cute. I'm writing about him because his abilities easily make him my second favourite hero in the game."
Good luck with that, pal.
Blizzard plan to offer yet another free weekend trial of Overwatch this week. It will begin at 7pm on Thursday the 26th (that's 11am Pacific) and run until 7:59am on Tuesday the 31st, played through Blizzard's Battle.net client. That's more to celebrate the Grand Finals of Blizzard's first Overwatch League season over the weekend but sure, let's give this cannibalistic mechwarrior more of an ego boost, what could go wrong?