Overwatch‘s Newest Hero Shows Blizzard at Its Most Cringeworthy

I don’t love Wrecking Ball, also known as Hammond, also known as Overwatch’s latest hero.
I’d like to love Hammond, but ultimately all this character feels like is a return to the most cringeworthy aspects of Blizzard’s history of worldbuilding. Hammond feels like little more than a Cow Level, or a Whimsyshire, or a Crabby, except this time you can play as him and we’re supposed to find this, I guess, hilarious?
Blizzard isn’t exactly a stranger to putting jokes in their games, but something about Hammond feels… out of place. I actually like his design as far as the game goes—adding a physics-based, erratically-moving character feels like exactly the shot in the arm that recent changes to favor precision and skill lack. He’s fast and versatile, exactly the sort of design that I fully expect to be nerfed into a hitscan cannon character in the next few months as higher-level players complain of imbalance.
All that stuff is fine. I like that, even. What bothers me about Hammond is that he is feeding into the worst parts of the already-shaky Overwatch lore. The game’s in-game history and character dart between the poignant and the goofy, feeling more like a Marvel team-up film on steroids than any sort of believable world.