It’s onerous to cease making Overwatch comparisons to Marvel Rivals, given how acquainted the latter’s upcoming Chinese language New Yr occasion seems. These of us who’ve been enjoying Blizzard’s hero shooter for the previous eight years have seen this all earlier than.
The Spring Competition, which begins on Jan. 23, introduces a brand new limited-time mode that’s mainly Rocket League with out the vehicles. It’s referred to as Conflict of Dancing Lions, and it takes place in an enormous enviornment with targets on both finish. Groups go a ball round and attempt to rating targets utilizing Black Widow, Iron Fist, and Star-Lord — in dancing lion skins, after all. Should you changed these heroes with Lúcio from Overwatch, you’ll simply have Lúcioball, a mode that has existed in that recreation since its first Summer time Video games occasion in 2016.
It additionally seems just like the Marvel Rivals heroes are getting dancing lion MVP animations similar to their Overwatch counterparts. Clearly, neither recreation invented Chinese language New Yr celebrations or the normal dance related to it, however the similarities between the occasions are onerous to disregard.
Overwatch goes larger with its Lunar New Yr celebration this 12 months partly as a result of it’s coming again to China on Feb. 19, by way of writer NetEase, no much less. In a submit final week on Xiaohongshu (also referred to as RedNote), recreation director Aaron Keller introduced a bunch of returning cosmetics and a complete set of Chinese language mythology-themed skins coming in its subsequent season.
However till then, it’ll be Marvel Rivals’ flip to have a good time. And even when the brand new mode performs nothing like Lúcioball, you possibly can guess persons are going to level out how blatantly it’s borrowing from Overwatch. That doesn’t make it inherently unhealthy, but it surely does make you marvel how a lot of the sport goes to be aimed instantly at Overwatch followers sooner or later.