It was inevitable. Overwatch simply had to be one of the first games I fired up on my PlayStation 5. It ran pretty well overall on my PS4 and it (naturally) plays even better on PS5. But there’s one major issue that has hampered my experience so far.
Even though I mostly tend to play Overwatch on PC these days, PS4 was where I started my journey with the game. I’ve plugged endless hours into my accounts there over the last four years. So, I’m pretty familiar with the mild performance issues on that console.
Frame rates sometimes suffered when there was a lot of action going on. Load-in times were often slightly delayed, and character models could take several seconds to appear after you select a hero. Those are minor quibbles, but annoying nonetheless.
The PS5 fixes all of those. It takes a couple of seconds to load into a map with your hero model in place. That means you’ll have more time to prepare your defensive setup, score baskets on the dropship or smash up the Hanamura arcade.
Faster loading is super helpful for Mystery Heroes (my preferred game mode) too. Knowing what hero I’ve spawned in as helps me to quickly figure out the best way to approach enemies or the objective. For such a fast-paced game, a few seconds extra to formulate a plan can make a world of difference.
I put general performance to the (extremely unscientific) test in some of the Workshop modes, where things can get bananas. Even with dozens of Moira orbs bouncing around in clone wars/boss battle games, the frame rate seemed just fine with no noticeable drops. There’s a satisfying snappiness to the menus as well that I don’t recall from Overwatch on PS4.
The gameplay is smoother — although the PS5 version doesn’t have a frame rate counter like the PC edition, it feels slicker. There are improvements to the visual acuity, perhaps thanks in part to HDR.
Overwatch doesn’t make full use of the DualSense controller’s capabilities, at least not yet. The vibrations are bog-standard, albeit more intense, and there’s no resistance in the adaptive triggers. It remains to be seen whether Blizzard will patch in support for the triggers and haptic feedback, though I’d imagine that Overwatch 2 will take advantage of those. I’m looking forward to feeling the tension in Hanzo’s bow, for instance.
There is, however, a serious problem when it came to the DualSense. Over four or so hours of Overwatch testing, the controller became completely unresponsive three times. The first time, after activating Ana’s beach ball emote in the spawn room, Overwatch glitched out. I had to watch helplessly as Ana spun in place, trying frantically to take back control before I was booted for inactivity.
Even after I timed out and landed back on the main Overwatch menu, there was nothing I could do with the controller. I couldn’t turn it off by holding down the PlayStation button, and my attempt to switch to my other DualSense did diddly squat. Restarting the system was the only way to re-sync the controller, which I could do by pressing the console’s power button or connecting to the PS5 through the Remote Play app.
Thank goodness I wasn’t testing out Overwatch in competitive modes on PS5 — I’d have lost a ton of SR from being booted for inactivity and put myself at risk of a lengthy ban. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to capture video evidence of this glitch because the share button was just as useless as the rest of the controller.
The few proper PS5 games I’ve had a chance to try (Astro’s Playroom, Bugsnax and the built-for -PS5 version of Fortnite) all run perfectly fine for me with no DualSense issues.
Sony has recommended using a DualShock 4 for backward compatible PS4 games on PS5. However, my partner and I had zero problems while using DualSense controllers to play Overcooked (the original PS4 version, not the remaster) for three hours. So, while it’s not entirely clear whether this bug is on Sony’s or Blizzard’s end, I certainly have my suspicions.
I’ll try playing with a DualShock 4 to see if that makes things any better. Hopefully, the latest PS5 update will improve things as well.
Still, it absolutely stinks to have a shiny-but-ugly new console, and to not be able to properly play my main game on it with the latest controller. Maybe I’ll be hanging on to my PS4 for a while longer after all.
