Try your hand at CTF Blitz in the Overwatch Lunar New Year event

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The Overwatch Lunar New Year event is back for 2020, celebrating the Year of the Rat with a new game mode called CTF Blitz. It's Capture the Flag—the "CTF" part probably gave that away—but the flags are much closer together than they usually are, in locations that are normally used for overtime rounds. Because of the increased action resulting from that tighter proximity, teams will need six captures to win, rather than the usual three.

Weekly challenges are back for the LNY event, giving players the opportunity to win a trio of Epic skins by winning nine games per week over the three weeks of the event. Check 'em out:

Ancient Chinese Bronze Winston (week 2):

Papercutting Wrecking Ball (week 3):

There will also be four new Legendary skins available during the event—Opera Brigitte, Face-Changer Sombra, Mask Dancer Moira, and Samul Nori Lucio—plus three more Epic skins, and various icons, emotes, and sprays. Cosmetics from previous Lunar New Year events will also be available for purchase with Coins, at a discounted price.

The Face-Changer Sombra skin sounds particularly interesting: Based on the Chinese dramatic art of bian lian (face-changing) in which performers wear vividly-colored masks that they change instantaneously over the course of a performance (here's an example of the real thing on YouTube, and it's straight-up amazing), this skin has six different masks that change periodically, in a specific order, over the course of a match. You can see it in action in the trailer above.

The Overwatch Lunar New Year event for 2020 is live now (or will be very soon, depending on what sort of kickoff troubles may pop up) and runs until February 6. Details are up at playoverwatch.com, and you can see some of those new cosmetics below.

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.