We’re on an Overwatch roll lately, with the big Looking for Group feature gathering glowing praise and with Symmetra being heavily reworked it’s safe to say the landscape of Overwatch has changed dramatically, and now we also got a new hero.
We’ve been getting cryptic tweets about it for some time now and people mostly figured out the idea—Hammond is a hamster who received the same gene therapy that made Winston super smart, but unlike Winston who’s mostly laid-back and gregarious with sudden bouts of primal rage, Hammond is a little, mean, thrill-seeking furry ball of sugar addiction. He’s also very good at building mech-suits from literal scrap.
Mechanically Hammond plays somewhat similar to D.Va, when you press shift Hammond will become a ball and move quickly around the battlefield, while pressing left-mouse button will fire a grappling hook anchoring you with the wall. If you gather speed you can ram your enemies for massive damage, while your shield, which gets stronger the more enemies are nearby, will protect you from damage while you ram into them and deploy a minefield with your ultimate.
Getting used to the wrecking ball mechanics will take some time, but with correct positioning and team-work, it can be truly devastating. So yeah, a very good and fun addition to Overwatch with a reasonably high skill ceiling and strong theme. Also those cheeks are super pinchable and the mech-suit translating what the hamster says with deep voice is awesome.
Hammond is available for test servers for now, but he should join the others soon enough.