Grab a copy of Overwatch off a dusty GameStop shelf and rub it under the musky armpit of Guardians of the Galaxy’s Peter Quill and you might have something close to the feel of Concord. As far as competitive hero shooters go, Sony’s sci-fi contender plays it safe, with instantly charming characters rendered perfectly in stunningly beautiful cutscenes and ability-based PvP combat that never addresses why these characters are fighting each other when they’re clearly allies in said cutscenes. But just because it doesn’t offer much innovation doesn’t mean Concord isn’t a hell of a lot of fun to play. I still have plenty to see when it launches properly next month, but with 16 characters and four familiar game modes available in its pre-order beta last weekend, the vast majority of the 10-plus hours I’ve spent with it so far have been a sweaty, gun-toting good time.
You and your team will form a five-person team of super-powered characters, each with their own strengths, weaknesses, and special abilities, and then use them against an opposing team in a variety of classic game modes. These include a standard deathmatch mode, a “Kill Confirmed” mode called Trophy Hunt, an attack-and-defend mode called Cargo Run, and an area-control mode called Clash Point, none of which have a shred of novelty. But being overly familiar isn’t necessarily a bad thing if you have best-in-class shooting and awesome characters with compelling powers to back it up, and boy does Concord have both in spades.
Concord is wise to keep its weapon selection very limited, with only two options given to each character by default and no way to customize them. But the result is that each weapon feels incredibly responsive and finely tuned, and no two characters have weapons that feel the same. The old lady who controls the arena, Duchess, wields a devastating short-range submachine gun, while the sneaky and tactical Vale relies primarily on a long-range sniper rifle to pick off enemies from a distance. It doesn’t all feel perfectly balanced. Personally, I think most things should probably die when they take a sniper rifle shot to the head, and it’s a little weird that the character who uses a slow-loading missile launcher as his primary weapon doesn’t do more damage with it. But they’re all very enjoyable to use, and it means I’ve had fun even when I feel like something needs to be tweaked here and there.
Likewise, the abilities that complement these weapons are fantastic, diverse, have very generous cooldowns, and completely change the way combat plays out depending on which character you play as. The floating, fireball-throwing Haymar can blind opponents for a while and make them pay for staying in one place for too long, while the rampaging ogre, Star Child, can quickly close distances with his charge attack and smash the ground to deal heavy damage around him. Not all characters are as original, like Teo, the most generic soldier in the world, equipped with a smoke grenade and a frag grenade as his two powers, but these bland options are few and far between. Learning each character, using their abilities to counter your opponents’ team composition, and juggling the madness of the battlefield with top-notch gunplay was just as much fun in my first game as it was in my 30th, and I certainly can’t say I’ve felt that way about most hero shooters I spend time in.
One of the few new things Concord brings to the genre is how its competitive playlist works. Unlike the casual playlist where you can play any character you want (as long as someone else hasn’t already selected it), in competitive mode you’re not allowed to re-select the same character if you win a round using them. Since matches are best-of-seven, this means that winning a round will push you out of your comfort zone and use at least four different characters. Not only is this a good way to force people to master more than one or two options, but it also encourages communication with your team between rounds to ensure you have adequate coverage to implement the strategy you’re trying to implement as your options dwindle.
The other interesting aspect that Concord adds to the formula is character variants: slightly different versions of existing characters that have a unique perk and altered appearance, and can be unlocked by completing specific objectives during matches. For example, gunslinger Lennox can normally reload his weapon while dodging, while the variant you can unlock for him loses that ability, but gains more ammo for all of his weapons instead. The five variants available for each character so far mostly offer minor changes like this, but they definitely add a meaningful element to pursue that provides more options in combat. Perhaps more importantly, they also give you the ability to fudge the numbers a bit in the competitive playlist, as variants count as separate characters in your crew, allowing you to play the same characters across multiple rounds.
I also like how Concord is full of ridiculous terms in its “How to Play” tutorial section, like how it tells you whether certain game modes are likely to be sweaty by giving them a “Sweatstrum” rating, or how it explains that you can recharge your abilities with “Sloops,” aka “Skill Loops.” There may not be much story yet, but this game has charm coming out of its Martian ears.
There are still other things I didn’t get to play in this early beta, like the two game modes that remain locked for now, but Concord is already shaping up to be a heavyweight hero shooter that could easily compete with the giants of the genre. It doesn’t look like it’s going to bring a lot of new features, which is a bit of a shame considering we’ve played some excellent games very similar to this one before, but I’m encouraged by what I’ve seen so far and look forward to playing a lot more of the game when it launches next month.