Given how popular Overwatch has become, even in its early days, it shouldn't come as much of a surprise to hear that there are multiple competitors trying to take a piece of Blizzard's cake. The first of these to arrive, at least to my knowledge, is Paladins - a team based shooter from the developers of Smite, Global Agenda and Tribes Ascend.

With that introduction out of the way, let's now play a little game. I'm going to show you the most recent trailer for Paladins, and what I want you to do is to try and spot as many Overwatch inspired characters as you can. Here's a hint, there's a lot more of them than you think:

So we have a medieval techno-knight that carries around a giant blue shield; a short but bulky engineer that shoots molten lava and builds turrets; a character that flies around and shoots rockets from above; a sharpshooter that can either shoot his revolver normally or "fan the hammer" for a big burst of damage; a character that throws around ice and is able to cryo-freeze herself - and the list goes on. While none of these characters are a straight up copy of their Overwatch counterparts, you must admit that the similarities are a bit too 'in your face' to simply ignore.

Hi-Rez is obviously stating that their characters have been inspired by previous FPS classics, some of which ended up influencing Overwatch itself, but to be perfectly honest none of this really matters. The characters, be they a copy or not, should be judged solely by their own merits in their own game. So, is Paladins any good?

Well, according to the various user reviews I've read online, it does appear that Paladins is a pretty damn solid game. Its still missing a lot of content and polish, it is in a state of open beta after all, but there is definitely a potential for greatness here. As you might imagine, its still nowhere near as good as Overwatch, but it does have one rather important edge over Blizzard's juggernaut - its completely free!

If you would like to learn more about Paladins, or if you would just like to download it and see what all of the fuss is about, I would recommend you head over to the Steam page. Have fun!