Overwatch 2 Hacked brings back some long-lost maps, and its best limited-time mode just got a chaotic buff

The Overwatch 2 mid-season update has arrived, and I can feel the call of my heyday with its predecessor, beckoning me back like a siren song. That’s because the new Overwatch 2 patch notes for Season 20 have dug the multiplayer game’s Assault maps out of cold storage for a fresh round of Quick Play Hacked. As if that wasn’t enough to put a smile on my face, Blizzard has given its excellent Spirit Showdown limited-time mode a spicy shakeup, and even delivered a Vendetta nerf among its many hero balance changes.

As a long-time veteran from the early days of the original, I largely understood the decision to pull Assault (often called 2CP by players) out of the game with the Overwatch 2 refresh. But gosh, my heart still aches for the glory days of those hard-fought battles on Volskaya, Temple of Anubis, and Hanamura (maybe less so Paris and Horizon). While they were technically available via custom games, now they’re back for a limited time in Quick Play Hacked: Assault, which is available through Sunday January 11 in 5v5, 6v6, and Mystery Heroes queues.

While I’d like to see it stick around for a little longer, there isn’t much time to wait before there’s another addition I’m very much looking forward to. Showdown Shuffle is an adaptation of the Spirit Showdown mode from last year – if you missed out on it at the time, you can think of it as a turbo-charged version of Mystery Heroes where your characters shuffle out more frequently, such as when you score an elimination.

In Showdown Shuffle, a stack of “wild modifiers” will rotate at random as the match progresses, so you’ll never know when things will be turned on their head. ‘Damage Pack’ causes health kits to buff your damage by 250% for a short while. ‘Mini Maxing’ makes everyone 50% smaller, and 30% more fragile. ‘Vampiric Healing’ stops passive health regen but grants everyone lifesteal. ‘Buff Hunt’ makes one randomly chosen player much more powerful – take them out to snatch the bonus for yourself.

There are plenty more of these to dig through, though I won’t spoil them all here. Showdown Shuffle will be live from Tuesday January 13 until Monday January 26, so we’ll have a full two weeks to enjoy it. As someone that just enjoys the frantic silliness encompassed by modes like Total Mayhem and Mystery Heroes, I’m going to have to dip into Showdown Shuffle – it’s exactly the kind of thing I want to see Blizzard experimenting with more in the Overwatch 2 Arcade.

On the balance side of things, we’ll start with buffs. Zenyatta’s Discord Orb is back to 30% damage amplification (from 25%), and as one of my favorite heroes I’m really hoping it makes him feel like a more viable pick. Both Symmetra and Zarya have a new ‘show weapon range indicator’ setting that will make it clear when your current target is in range of your primary weapon.

Among the rest of the cast, Roadhog’s Whole Hog gets more damage, Genji’s Shuriken ammo is back up to 30, Illari’s Solar Rifle has been made a little stronger, Moira’s Coalescence will generate faster, and Freja gets less spread on her crossbow’s primary fire along with a small damage buff to Take Aim that’ll help her deal with 225-health opponents.

Then there are the nerfs, starting with another chop to newcomer Vendetta’s overall lethality, with Blizzard focusing on cutting down some of her key damage breakpoints. The damage of Projected Edge, Whirlwind Dash, and her Raging Storm perk have all been slightly decreased, and Soaring Slice will now start on cooldown when you respawn (note that this does not apply when you are resurrected or playing Deathmatch).

Doomfist’s Empowered Punch now runs out if you don’t use it within 20 seconds, and his defensive Power Matrix has been scaled down slightly to roughly the size of his character model. For D.Va, the additional damage on the Extended Boosters has been hacked down to 40%. Ashe’s secondary fire now falls off at a slightly shorter range, and her Viper’s Sting perk only refunds one ammo instead of two to make her less overwhelming.

Bastion’s damage in Recon form has been lowered slightly to compensate for the recent increase to his fire rate, the radius on Venture’s Drill Dash has been reduced, and Lucio’s Soundwave has a longer cooldown (that means less getting booped). Symmetra’s Photon Projector balls are slightly smaller than before, and the shield on her Teleporter has been dropped slightly to make it easier to destroy.

Rounding things out, Blizzard is tackling spawn camping in Stadium. It’s implemented turrets outside of every spawn room across all Payload Race, Control, and Clash maps, which activate when enemy players come within a certain range. It notes that they’re “very tunable and we anticipate adjustments as we receive feedback on how effective they are.”

The Overwatch 2 mid-season 20 patch is live now. Blizzard warns that it includes a rebase to help bring down the overall size of the install, but this means you should “expect a much larger than usual patch size.”