Overwatch Christmas Update Is Overwatch Winter Wonderland; New Loot Boxes, Brawl, and More

As we reported earlier, the Overwatch Christmas update is now live. Dubbed the Overwatch Winter Wonderland, Blizzard outlined all the new additions to the game. At the moment the download size is 2.79GB on the PS4 and reportedly around 1.5GB on the PC. It will take place from December 13 to January 2.

Overwatch Winter Wonderland Christmas update - what’s new

• Loot boxes replaced with winter loot boxes. These will contain over 100 new cosmetic items. They can be bought or earned.
• Each winter loot box will contain at least one item from our 2016 Winter Wonderland collection—including profile icons, sprays, victory poses, emotes, highlight intros, skins, and more
• Contents of each loot box are random, you can unlock a variety of these customization options in the Hero Gallery throughout the event’s duration.
• Both Hanamura and King’s Row maps will be decked up in the festive spirit
• A Winter Wonderland event, Mei’s Snowball Offensive. It’s a new single-elimination brawl featuring 6v6 players.

(Also see:  Overwatch Review)

(Also see: Overwatch Christmas Event Starts December 13, Here's What to Expect)

Blizzard explained the details of Mei's Snowball Offensive as follows:

“In this brawl, Mei's Endothermic Blaster no longer unleashes a stream of frost or shoots icicles. Instead, it's been modified to fire a single, super-powered snowball. Taking down an enemy only takes one hit, but a miss can be costly. Once your weapon is empty, your enemies will have the advantage as you search for the nearest snow pile to reload, so don't forget to cover your retreat with ice walls and cryo-freeze to block their attacks—and when the battle starts to heat up, you can activate Mei's Ultimate, which turns her blaster into a semi-automatic snowball launcher, allowing you to fire continuously as your enemies scatter,” reads Blizzard’s post.

For what it’s worth, we found Overwatch to be one of the year’s best games. There are various heroes to choose from, near perfect gameplay, and the promise of extended support and free content, most of which Blizzard has made good on so far.