Have you ever fallen in love?<\/p>\n
I did nearly a decade ago, with Overwatch, Blizzard\u2019s hero shooter of near-immaculate design. But that relationship sadly became strained, distant even, ever since its decision to move on from those initial glory days and reinvent itself as a sequel. Well, now Overwatch has gone and seduced me all over again, like a Hanzo scatter arrow delivered straight from Cupid’s bow. And it’s all thanks to one woman: the corporate villainess tank, Domina. And it has absolutely nothing to do with those thighs.<\/p>\n
This week saw the launch of a new era for Overwatch. Blizzard has ditched the \u201c2\u201d, implemented a long-overdue menu overhaul, kicked off a brand new, year-long story, and, crucially, added five brand new heroes to the roster. You\u2019ve got Anran, a fire-fan-wielding damage-dealer; Emre, a tactical operative equipped with more firearms than actual arms; Mizuki, a cursed ex-yakuza member with a healing hat; and Jet Pack Cat, who is, well, a cat with a jet pack. And then last, but certainly not least, is Domina, an incredibly destructive tank with a deadly pulse-action laser beam, explosive crystal bombs, and a giant extra pair of mechanical arms that erupt out of her shoulders. I think I love her.<\/p>\n
Vaira, if I should be so bold as to use her real name, is the sort of aggressive tank character that I\u2019ve always been drawn to in Overwatch. With nearly 300 hours clocked in dive tank D.Va alone, it\u2019s pretty clear that there\u2019s nothing more satisfying to me than launching a behind-enemy-lines attack on an objective and absorbing all of the opposite team\u2019s attention as I try to cause as much chaos as possible. Domina isn\u2019t a dive tank, though. Yes, she can cause huge amounts of damage like everyone\u2019s favourite South Korean mech enthusiast can, but if I were to compare her to anyone, it would be a powerful combination of the reworked Orisa and Reaper.<\/p>\n
Domina is a force to be reckoned with when it comes to taking the enemy head-on, thanks to a couple of skills that deter foes. One is a very large shield that looms high over her and her teammates. I have to say I was initially worried about this ability, since I still carry mental scars from that period when Overwatch was a complete shield-fest five or six years ago \u2014 never again do I want to see a Bastion and a Torbjorn turret sitting behind an Orisa and Reinhardt shield combo on that dreadful first Paris choke point. But Domina\u2019s force field has a fun wrinkle that plays tactically into both teams\u2019 approach, as squares can be punched out of it with a moderate amount of damage, creating literal windows of opportunity for those faced with it. It\u2019s a smart approach to shielding in Overwatch that, at least right now, feels balanced for both attackers and defenders.<\/p>\n
Then there\u2019s her sonic repulsors, a pair of energy blasts fired from the palms of her extra mechanical hands. They not only deal a bit of damage, but also boop people away from her. I\u2019ve already had maybe too much fun pushing players off the edge of Illios and Lijiang Palace\u2019s perilous points like a super-sized Lucio. Combine that with a crystal grenade that floats through the air towards enemies before detonating, and a laser beam that fires off a shotgun-like burst at the end of a trigger pull, like a devilish combination of Symmetra and Reaper\u2019s weapons, and you have a hero who can single-handedly run an entire match. I did tell you it wasn\u2019t about the thighs.<\/p>\n
Overwatch “The Reign of Talon” New Hero Images<\/p>\n
Look, I\u2019ll admit that she\u2019s probably too powerful right now and will, in all likelihood, be subjected to a nerf in the coming days or weeks. But while she\u2019s here in all her glory, I can\u2019t recommend Domina enough. <\/p>\n
That\u2019s not to say there isn\u2019t plenty of fun to be found elsewhere in Overwatch right now \u2014 this entire update is a genuinely incredible shift for a game that only a short time ago faced an existential threat, and it\u2019s inarguably more enthralling to play now than it has been in many, many years. That being said, I do still yearn for those glory days of 2017 to 2019, and find myself queuing to play its unranked 6v6 mode more than any other. It still feels the most balanced, satisfying way to play Overwatch, and if Blizzard was ever to fully revert back to the two tank, two support, two DPS team structure of old, I think Overwatch would truly own my heart once again.<\/p>\n
My beating chambers belong solely to Domina and her stacked set of skills.\u201c<\/p>\n
As for now, I fear my beating chambers belong solely to Domina and her stacked set of skills that simultaneously feel fresh, but also referential to the Overwatch of old. As I\u2019m writing this, I\u2019m counting down the hours until I can play as her again and send people falling to their doom down an Illios well, or imprison them in her explosive Panopticon ultimate ability. <\/p>\n
I can\u2019t help but smile when I see that Overwatch is benefitting from its highest concurrent player numbers in over a year, and feel happy for the developers who have worked so tirelessly to make sure this universe that people love so much will not die. This update has made me fall back in love with a game I once held closer to my heart more than any, and a large part of that is down to how fun its five new heroes (but mainly Domina, let\u2019s be honest) are. If Overwatch carries forward this momentum into the rest of 2026, it may become a problem for the rest of my social life.<\/p>\n
Simon Cardy is a Senior Editor at IGN who can mainly be found skulking around open world games, indulging in Korean cinema, or despairing at the state of Tottenham Hotspur and the New York Jets. Follow him on Bluesky at @cardy.bsky.social<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Have you ever fallen in love? I did nearly a decade ago, with Overwatch, Blizzard\u2019s hero shooter of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":468647,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[49,48,61],"class_list":["post-468646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=468646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468646\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/468647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=468646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=468646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=468646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}