Overwatch’s new map, Busan, is now live

A couple of weeks ago, Blizzard released an Overwatch animated film for D.Va titled “Shooting Star.” It was an origin story that showed us how D.Va became the hero she is in Overwatch. Additionally, it was also a way for Blizzard to announce that a new map was coming. Today, that Busan map is now live on every console for everyone to play. Busan is located in South Korea, the home country of D.VA., and in the game, it’s a control point map. Like every control point map in Overwatch, this will have three distinct locations: Sanctuary, Downtown, and MEKA Base.

Sanctuary takes place up in the mountains of Busan amongst the temples. The design is reminiscent of Hanamura where the control is located in the center of a temple with a drum placed in the middle. The control point of the sanctuary is quite small, so leaving the point will be fairly common. The center of the map is surrounded by walls and other temples, which makes this map very suitable for characters that can easily flank the enemy team.

Pharah will be very useful on this map as it’s very open, making it easy to stay up in the air as well as easily dive bomb with your ultimate and catch the opposing team off guard. When it comes to tanks, Wrecking Ball can be utilized very well, as there’s a lot of points he can grapple to and swing around. His minefield ultimate will also be helpful to create choke points.

Downtown is the map that will take place in the city of Busan, just like the Numbani map. The control point is fairly large, so expect some serious fights to take place there if the game reaches overtime. The tall buildings make it suitable for characters like Widowmaker and Hanzo to hide and pick off targets. The map also favors DPS characters that can flank. If you’re a Mcree main, you can pull off a surprise High Noon by taking the routes that go behind the control point. Behind the point of control, you’ll see a train that zooms by at high speeds. It’s an open space that allows you to boop players off the map, and of course, if you can time it right, you can push them right into the passing train to get some decent highlights. Tanks should do fairly well as the control point has enough space to successfully launch your ultimates.

Lastly will be the MEKA base, which is where D.VA resides. This map will remind you of Horizon, as it has multiple levels that you can take. You can either get to the high ground, which is perfect for Mcree, Widowmaker, Hanzo, and Soldier 76. Or you can take the fight on the base level with any tank, Reaper, or Doomfist.

There’s a lot of tight corridors throughout the map that makes it very suitable for Junkrat to spam with his bombs and traps. The corridors are a bad place to be if a Hanzo or Roadhog Ultimate goes off because space is limited. There is an area of the map where you can knock off players, but don’t expect to use Pharah, as there’s not a lot of open space for her to fly. From time to time, you’ll find barriers that pop up from the floor in the control point, which can either save you from a D.Va or Reaper Ultimate or totally ruin it for you by saving the opposing players.

The few games I’ve played on this map, I found that I did my best playing Pharah. It was easy for me to easily surprise the enemy team and spam them with rockets all while easily flying behind or diving down buildings to hide from hit scan characters. When it came to the MEKA map of Busan, I switched to either Junkrat or Brigette and waited for the enemy team to bottleneck themselves down a corridor, so I can inflict high amounts of damage to get multiple kills.

Overall I’ve enjoyed the new map. It’s bright and colorful and has a lot of vantage points. If you’re a seasoned player who knows how to utilize the role of the character you choose, you should do fairly well with this new map.