Concord’s first beta weekend is now over. The hero shooter is the first from new PlayStation studio Firewalk, and has been getting a taste of those who pre-ordered the game or subscribed to PlayStation Plus ahead of its release next month. While I doubt it’ll resonate, I was seriously impressed by PlayStation’s latest foray into its much-maligned live service strategy.
Of course, Concord follows the resounding success of Helldivers 2. Like many other curious gamers, I dove in to see if the PlayStation could crank out a series of addictive multiplayer titles. With trepidation, I booted up the game, but a few hours later, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Concord leans into the hero shooter genre with tight mechanics and an interesting cast of characters.
At first glance, Concord appears to be a simple amalgamation of Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, Destiny’s Crucible, Overwatch, and Valorant. Rather, I’d say it cherry-picks the best aspects of those games, creating something that feels greater than the sum of its parts. Destiny’s signature floating shooting mechanics lend themselves well to the map design and introduce a verticality to each gunfight. Many heroes—or “Freegunners” as they’re labeled in Concord—have perks and abilities familiar to Valorant, requiring their frequent use to control the battlefield with a time-to-kill more akin to Overwatch’s.
I really enjoyed the few hours I spent playing over the weekend. Moving in and out of hot zones to heal in a moment of respite makes for tense duels, while open central locations lead to frantic team-to-team clashes. Coordination with your team is key; lone wolves will be taken down with little trouble, with rare exceptions.
Unlike other games in the genre, where you typically play as a single character, the game rewards active hero switching. Playing as one character in a match then applies its advantage to any other character you select later. Start as Jabari with reduced recoil, and that same advantage will transfer to any other Freegunner you choose later in the same match. Likewise, play as a character who reloads while dodging, and that advantage will be added to all future choices as well. It’s a clever system that rewards switching characters and experimenting with different combinations.
Since the game encourages you to switch characters, head-to-head matchups are constantly changing, which affects your strategy as a team. Adapting to your opponents’ actions and which part of the map draws the most combat factors into your decision-making. In one match, a Roka (the airborne, rocket-launcher Freegunner) got 24 of the 30 kills required in a match, but we pivoted and still got a win by holding them off with the shield-wielding Emari.
You quickly unlock the ability to customize your 12-person crew, assembling a different roster with variants of the same character if you’ve collected them. Lennox was the first character I unlocked a variant for, with different perks for each. I could play Lennox twice in a match, but still add different perks to my pool for the duration of the game. It’s a system poorly explained by the game, which is devoid of any playable tutorial at this point.
The heroes themselves are all pretty unique, with the typical range of offensive, defensive, and healing archetypes. There are 16 in total, an almost overwhelming number at first. You get used to them pretty quickly, but a training area to experiment in, or at least a reminder of their abilities on the pause screen, would be a welcome addition. There would also be an in-game scoreboard, though it was a bit refreshing not to worry too much about my stats mid-game.
Playing with your team in a single match keeps each game feeling fresh despite the limited maps and modes available in the beta. In the beta, there’s only one playlist of team deathmatch and kill confirmed (or Trophy Hunt as they call it), and another with search and destroy and hardpoint-like modes. The latter two offer no respawns and prevent you from re-selecting the same character after winning a round, making for competitive matches.
The maps themselves are again very much the stuff you’d find in Destiny’s Crucible or Overwatch and Valorant, with a variety of different sci-fi styles giving each one a unique look. Each has different focal points, but otherwise maintains a cohesive three-lane design with plenty of flanking opportunities. There’s often a bit of verticality too, reinforcing the need to work as a team to cover all angles. Opponents can be quickly taken down with a coordinated pincer movement flanking both sides.
My gripes with the game are mainly with the spawns as they currently exist and the movement of some characters. Staying with your team is vital, which is difficult if you get killed and spawn on the opposite end of the map from your allies. As a tank, you move incredibly slowly, making you an easy target to take down if your teammates are taken out at the wrong time and leave you exposed. A few tweaks to tank spawns and movement speeds wouldn’t go amiss.
Otherwise, the balance seems pretty solid at the moment. While I did encounter Roka absolutely dominating a match, my team was able to counter and contain her on numerous occasions. I’ve heard others complain about other characters, which might actually indicate that the balance is pretty reasonable. It seems to me that, played well, every Freegunner can be useful.
Performance-wise, the game is also pretty well done. The environments are adequately detailed and the visuals are vibrant, all without any slowdown in the 60 FPS managed on the PlayStation 5. There were some connection issues, my friends list refused to load and some button presses in the menus seemingly refused to register, but that’s all very forgivable in a beta assuming everything is ironed out by launch.
I can’t wait to see how the game’s world will be expanded upon at launch. Perhaps even more ambitious than games like Overwatch and Apex Legends, the Firewalk team has committed to weekly cinematics expanding the game’s storyThe game’s two cutscenes are gorgeous and well-written, borrowing heavily from the tone of Guardians of the Galaxy, but weren’t enough to captivate me at this point. Humor and set pieces may add some short-term appeal, but the sooner we see drama and character development injected into the game’s narrative, the more compelling it will be.
Unfortunately, there’s nothing to set up each match to feel part of the world, other than text stating that you’re playing a rival team. The same cutscene playing over and over again when loading into a match would get tedious, I know, but I felt like it was a missed opportunity to ground each session in the world.
The beta also didn’t provide much in the way of progression, with the level cap set at 14. XP is awarded for completing daily and weekly missions, with larger event-style challenges tied to bigger rewards like character variants. Cosmetic unlocks aren’t necessarily tied to the characters you’re playing as, making it a bit difficult to get different skins and accessories for your favorites. It’s a common formula, but no less annoying.
All in all, at this point I’m wondering if I’d recommend Concord at $60. It’s hard to tell based solely on the content available in the beta, but I’m optimistic. could at launch. More modes, deeper progression, a fleshed-out story, spawn adjustments, character mobility tweaks, and a final polish all seem feasible. The game isn’t far off the mark, and the end result would be a polished, feature-rich experience that would be worth the price and my time.
As for who I might recommend it to, Concord should appeal to a wide audience. The game feels much more accessible to those who have tried hero shooters before but were intimidated by the complexity of the meta. The core mechanics of hero shooters are still there, but switching between characters creates a different rhythm that I think will appeal to most players. It’s well-rounded, well-polished, with a generous assortment of unique but balanced characters.
But I’ve been there before. Lately, The Finals and XDefiant have been taking up a good chunk of my time before being pushed aside in favor of the latest hot game. I think Concord has a higher quality than both of those games, but only time will tell if it has the traction that surpasses them. We’ll have to wait and see, but in the meantime, sign me up for more.