Overwatch 2 is now in the throes of it’s 19th seasonal update, and with the spooky time of year comes a spooky set of activities for the discerning hero (or villain).
Haunted Masquerade is the both the name of the season AND the title of a brand new Halloween game mode:
In The Haunted Masquerade Teams don the mystical masks of each other’s Heroes to gain new buffs and abilities, remixing the expectations of all. Imagine the horror of a Juno with Mei’s ability to freeze – delivered by ballistic Martian missiles, Or a Mercy with the ability to cast Torbjorn’s overload buff on her friends. Terrifying stuff.
There is also the recurring trend of bringing back past events, with the Halloween Terror game modes returning – so strap in to Junkenstein’s Revenge and defend the haunted castle from waves of zombie Omnics (Zomnics) and Junkenstein’s unholy boss creatures. You can also play the pseudo narrative adventure follow, Wrath of the Bride, once more.
That’s three spooky game modes on the docket for all who jump in during the season of scares.
Aside from the theme of frightening fun, there are also a breadth of usual Seasonal goodies – with Lifeweaver receiving a mythic character skin in the guise of a magical druid, Kiriko getting a mythical weapon skin that turns her kunai and healing tickets into glowy blue doovers and another big-arse shake up to the Stadium format.
It seems that every season release brings further adjustments to the mode, with Season 19 prompting the developers to state: “Stadium has been out long enough for people to understand it, so we are tightening some stuff up to make it more engaging.” The biggest change here is a push to a Best-of-5 format. Each Stadium round now has more player power packed into it, so things get wild even quicker. More power choices mean characters are shifting their builds much faster, and the ability to counter-build is somewhat diminished. Online discussions are mixed, with many feeling the Season 18 Stadium changes didn’t fully settle (which saw the mode acquire a ‘draft mode’ tacked onto the front). Now, the community is trying to get into the groove of these more dramatic changes.
But, if there is one thing that the Overwatch 2 team has demonstrated, it is a willingness to make quick changes where appropriate, so if the Stadium changes are too controversial, we may see mid-season shifts to the mode once more.
For now, players can avoid the mode entirely and concentrate on all the spooky Halloween modes to pass the time.
Have you had a chance to leap into the Halloween havoc of Season 19? Tell us all about it in the comments, or on our social media.
Known throughout the interwebs simply as M0D3Rn, Ash is bad at video games. An old guard gamer who suffers from being generally opinionated, it comes as no surprise that he is both brutally loyal and yet, fiercely whimsical about all things electronic. On occasion will make a youtube video that actually gets views. Follow him on YouTube @Bad at Video Games
