Marvel Rivals’ Chinese New Year event can’t escape the Overwatch comparisons

It’s hard to stop making Overwatch comparisons with Marvel Rivalsconsidering how familiar the latter’s upcoming Chinese New Year event looks. Those of us who have played Blizzard’s hero shooter over the past eight years have seen this all before.

The Spring Festivalwhich starts on January 23, introduces a new limited-time mode that’s basically Rocket League without the cars. It’s called Clash of Dancing Lions and it takes place in a large arena with goals on both sides. Teams pass a ball and try to score goals with Black Widow, Iron Fist and Star-Lord – in dancing lion skins, of course. If you were to replace those heroes with Lúcio out Overwatchyou would have just done that Lucioballa mode that has existed in that game since the first Summer Games event in 2016.

It looks like it too Marvel Rivals heroes get MVP animations with dancing lions just like theirs Overwatch counterparts. Obviously, neither game invented the Chinese New Year celebration traditional dance connected, but the similarities between the events are hard to ignore.

Overwatch is going bigger this year with its Lunar New Year celebration, in part because it’s coming back to China on February 19, via publisher NetEase no less. In a message Last week on Xiaohongshu (aka RedNote), game director Aaron Keller announced a number of returning cosmetics and a slew of Chinese mythology-themed skins coming in the next season.

But until then, it will remain that way Marvel Rivals’ turn to celebrate. And even if the new mode doesn’t play at all like Lúcioball, you can bet people will point out how blatantly it borrows from Overwatch. That doesn’t necessarily make it bad, but it does make you wonder how much of the game will be aimed squarely at the players. Overwatch fans in the future.