I mean, in fairness, Overwatch was basically Blizzard repurposing assets from a cancelled MMO project into a Team Fortress 2 clone.
Marvel Rivals IS an Overwatch clone, but thats ok. Lots of great games were Doom clones, Halo clones, Final Fantasy clones, Dark Souls clones, etc.
Beyond the appeal of the Marvel license, I think the reason Rivals is hitting so hard is because it’s filling the void Overwatch left open when Blizzard got fixated on turning Overwatch into a competitive e-sport. The early days of Overwatch were messy, experimental, funny, low stakes fun.
Thats kinda what Rivals is. There’s no role queue, you can switch characters at respawn as many times as you like during a match, etc. It feels free and chill. The kinda game you laugh when you screw-up and die instead of feeling anxious that you let your team down and now the push got stomped, and oh god am I gonna hear it now…