Overwatch

Overwatch is five against five, each player picking a hero from a roster of forty-odd, split into tanks, damage and support. Objectives are simple: push a payload, hold a point, escort the robot. What makes it work for a friend group is the role system. The person who cannot aim can be a brilliant Mercy or Lucio, keeping four people alive and feeling like the reason the team held. The person who can aim gets to be the hero. Nobody is carried in silence.

Blizzard moved the game to free-to-play in 2022, dropped the “2” from the name in 2025 and has since added Stadium, a round-based mode with a third-person option and a build system, alongside rotating six-a-side playlists for groups who want the older shape. Quick play matches are fast to find at any hour, and a full stack of five gets its own queue in competitive so that organised groups play organised groups.

Cross-play spans PC, PlayStation, Xbox and Switch, and a single Battle.net account carries every unlock between them. Console players are matched with PC only when they choose to be, which keeps aim assist arguments out of the group. Voice chat is built in with separate team and party channels, so a group of three can talk privately while playing with two strangers.

The shop is the reason the score is not higher. Every hero is free, which is the right decision, but cosmetics are expensive, the seasonal pass expires, and in 2025 the game brought back crates with unrevealed contents as rewards for play. They are never sold for money, which is the line we care about, but they are there. Set the group rule that nobody buys anything for a month and the game costs nothing at all.