Overwatch 2 has had a rough road following the early success of the first game. That game, which easily earned Game Informer's Game of the Year in 2016, started with such promise and a massive, enthusiastic audience, but following the 2019 announcement of Overwatch 2, support for the original Overwatch floundered, and so, too, did the community. Last year's release of Overwatch 2's PvE elements in its Invasion update pushed the hero shooter back in the right direction, but it didn't make the splash Blizzard had hoped for. With Overwatch 2 Season 9, which kicks off next week, Blizzard is making a ton of sweeping behind-the-scenes changes to make the game more approachable for players.
Players of all modes will notice updates to how moment-to-moment gameplay, encounters, and matches as a whole play out. Hit consistency is being improved, with projectiles growing in size; those characters that don't have projectile-based weapons or abilities and, therefore, receive no benefits from this change will receive additional balance updates. Those changes to non-projectile heroes will happen at a later date so the development team can assess how significant the projectile changes are in a live environment.
Additionally, all heroes will have more health starting with Season 9. Any hero with 150 to 175 HP will receive a 25 HP increase, while heroes with 200 to 300 HP will get an extra 50 HP. Meanwhile, tanks with 300 HP or more will receive between 75 and 100 additional HP at the start of Season 9. On top of that, all heroes can now regenerate health passively after five seconds of not taking damage, while support heroes can now start passively healing at two and a half seconds. To even it out, if a character is taking damage, the amount they heal while being dealt damage is reduced by 20 percent.
The ninth season of Overwatch 2 introduces massive changes to the structure of competitive play. First up, competitive ranks are receiving a reset, with all players getting 10 new placement matches to play through and calibrate their new starting rank. Starting with Season 9, rank is updated after every match, with a progression bar giving visual feedback for how much progress was gained or lost with each match. The best competitive players have a new rank to strive for: Champion. This top-tier ranking is only attainable by the best players in the world.
Competitive will also allow players to unlock Jade weapon variants by earning Competitive Points by playing in competitive matches. Season 8 Competitive Points are being turned into Legacy Competitive Points that can be used to unlock Gold weapon variants. At the end of 2024, all 2024 Competitive Points will be converted to Legacy Competitive Points.
Overwatch 2 – Season 9: Champions kicks off on February 13. Overwatch 2 is a free-to-play title available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, and PC.
The Sonic the Hedgehog Movie spinoff series, Knuckles, is premiering April 26, and ahead of its streaming debut, Paramount has released a trailer. The series officially takes place between the second and third movie and will apparently follow Knuckles (Idris Elba) has he helps Wade (Adam Pally), Tom Wachowski's (James Marsden) bumbling police partner, become a true warrior. The trailer also reveals the antagonist will be played by Rory McCann, who is best known for playing Sandor 'The Hound' Clegane in Game of Thrones, and features a two-thirds Human Giant reunion cameo with Rob Huebel and Paul Scheer. Curiously, they're sitting at an ESPN8 The Ocho desk, a gag born from the 2004 film Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story that eventually became a real thing.
Other interesting details from the trailer? Jim Carrey does not appear, nor does James Marsden, but both Sonic and Tails appear and are played by film voice actors, Ben Schwarz and Colleen O'Shaughnessey.
The series, simply titled Knuckles, will be six episodes long and begins streaming on April 26 on Paramount+. For more on the Sonic the Hedgehog Movie universe, you can read our review of the second film here.
Funimation and Crunchyroll, two competing anime streaming services, merged in 2021 and announced in 2022 that all of the content would eventually combine under the Crunchyroll banner. That event officially has a date, and it's April 2.
For Funimation subscribers, you will have to go through the process of merging your account before the April 2 date, and, frustratingly, any shows that were outright purchased through Funimation will not transfer to Crunchyroll. Just another reminder that when you purchase digital content, true ownership does not technically exist and you will always be at the mercy of the platform holders when it comes to access.
Crunchyroll subscribers do not need to make any changes, but the price of the subscription will rise to $100 a year soon. The merger officially going through does mean Crunchyroll will feature more content, but a price increase will always be frustrating.
Alongside this merger finally completing, Crunchyroll is also entering the video game space as a publisher. It remains to be seen what kind of video tames the anime company will help produce, but you can check out this package it sent over on Game Informer's TikTok account.
As a subscriber to both services who somehow has managed to continue to have a need for both (Outlaw Star is curiously currently only available on Funimation) the merger is bittersweet. I embrace the simplicity of one anime streaming service but don't look forward to paying more, and will forever be wary of mergers being a good thing.
Persona 3 Reload is finally here, and fans of the series have welcomed it with open arms, happily becoming reacquainted with the high schoolers who get magical powers from a shot to the head. Speaking of which, Persona 3 Reload has shot to the head of Atlus's ranking of fastest-selling games, shipping over a million copies worldwide in its first week.
Persona 3 Reload sold 1,000,000 copies worldwide within its first week, becoming the fastest selling game in ATLUS history! ?
— Official ATLUS West (@Atlus_West) February 8, 2024
A huge thank you to our community for your incredible support! We look forward to breaking more records with you. ? pic.twitter.com/C2abDAwCDs
Originally released on the PlayStation 2, Persona 3 was the first game in its series to define its modern formula, combining social responsibilities with dungeon crawling and a lengthy, emotional story. It's been re-released multiple times and was even ported to modern consoles last year, but even the upgraded versions don't hold a candle to the mind-bending masterpiece that is Persona 5 Royal. Persona 3 Reload closes that gap, however, introducing overhauled visuals and mechanics to bring the game that started it all up to the level of quality fans of the series have come to expect. If the sales numbers and our glowing review are any indication, the upgrade has been well worth the wait.
To put these numbers in context, here are some other games that have recently reached comparable significant milestones: Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth shipped 1 million copies as of Feb 1, Nintendo's quarterly report revealed Tears of the Kingdom has sold 20 million copies, and viral hit Palworld continues to smash record after record.
Have you checked out Persona 3 Reload yet? Let us know in the comments!