Overwatch’s Junkertown map up in time for free weekend

Blizzard’s Overwatch [official site], aka The Shooter You Dumped So You Could Play Destiny 2 But Who You Still Text When You Are Drunk Thus Revealing Your True Feelings, is now sporting its new Junkertown map. It’s the dusty map they announced with an animated short about the grenade launching Australian hero Junkrat. It looks neat. But more importantly, some massive changes to angelic healer Mercy and Dew-glugging gremlin Dva have also been crammed into this update. All this has been on the testing server for a while but today the rest of us plebs can enjoy. In fact, I’m going to go and take a look at it now.

It’s good. I didn’t get a chance to Mercy up and revive people one by one with her re-jigged healskills. But Dva’s new micro-missiles are fun to launch at a group of confused enemies, even if they aren’t very strong. It’s also hugely satisfying to fly and shoot her main cannons at the same time. Snipers freak out a bit at that. If you want a full list of the hero changes, read the patch notes, which also include a handy addition for tanky Reinhardt players – you can now rotate your camera while you hold up your big shield, allowing you to see what your idiot team mates are doing behind your back.

As for the map, a single playthrough as the attacker isn’t enough to understand the ins and outs, but I warmed to it surprisingly fast. There’s a lot of open ground and high points for sniping at fleshy attackers but to compensate there’s an underpass near the final point that’ll keep the defending team on their tippy-toes. I like it. These escort maps do follow a vague formula – winding path, large gate, flanky tunnel – but it does mean you spend as little time as possible learning the layout.

Junkertown and the accompanying hero-tweaking has been added in time for the upcoming free weekend, running from September 22-25. If you’re new to Overwatch, or even just returning after an absence, we’ve listed some things you can try. They are all legitimate tactics.