Ahead of its 23rd August launch, we finally got our hands on Concord, the live service hero shooter from Firewalk Studios. Sony’s big multiplayer gamble was not met with the best of first impressions when it debuted at State of Play, but now that we’ve had some time with the game, is this shaping up to be the next live service hit?
Confidence is the name of the game here, and despite the public’s supposed attitude towards hero shooters, Concord swaggers up with all the graphical and musical bombast you’d expect from a Sony first-party experience. We’re a sucker for some good UI and menu design, and Concord has all of that in spade, and there is a certain “big deal” energy about it all that we found infectious.
The beta includes access to three modes, four maps, all 16 characters, and a selection of unlockable cosmetics – none of which will not carry over to the full release. What we have here is essentially Team Deathmatch, Kill Confirmed, and a rounds-based Capture the Point mode. It’s nothing you haven’t played before, so where Concord tries to differentiate is in its characters and gameplay.
The first-person shooting is incredibly tight, and in places reminiscent of Destiny 2’s floaty gameplay – which is no surprise considering the ex-Bungie talent aboard at Firewalk. Across all 16 characters you have your typical archetypes of tanks, healers, aggressors, and support, but where Concord succeeds is in the gameplay loops you’ll find within each character.
Teo is all about using smoke bombs to reduce visibility and then using his scope to spot enemies and finishing them off with his cluster bomb. 1-Off sends his barrelling trash bombs to disrupt enemies, using his vacuum to protect the squad. Jabali is a frontline healer who can tick away at enemy health with his seeker rifle, heal the team with his healing aura, and deal decent damage with his hunter orbs.
The list goes on, but like any good hero shooter, the fun lies in playing your role and supporting your team – something that was surprisingly present across our randomly matched sessions over the weekend. Of course there will be favourites, like the high-damage Haymar or the self-healing Lennox, but it was nice to see such varied selections across matches, with no obvious frontrunners. Firewalk has seemingly produced a balanced roster of heroes that all have something to offer.
The most surprising aspect of Concord, however, is how it manages to strike a balance between a hero shooter with a long time to kill and rotating objectives and a arena shooter like XDefiant, where you are still able to wrack up impressive kill streaks.
It’s in that fundamental change that we think Concord could thrive, because it’s a defining gameplay loop we just couldn’t get enough of. Abilities recharge quite quickly and can be replenished after kills, so there is a far more dynamic feel to the battlefield. We are incredibly guilty of holding on to our abilities for the “right moment” in hero shooters, but here every moment is the right moment – and even if it isn’t, you won’t be penalised too much for it.
Health too is a big factor in all of this. Your health will not naturally regenerate, so instead you’ll have to visit one of the few health pick-up points, or rely on a healing teammate. It’s not something we were too keen on to start, but eventually it influences how you play, and adds another string of tension to Concord’s bow.
It’s a fantastic start to a game we here at Push Square are incredibly excited for, but after our time with the beta, there are still a number of things we’re unsure of. For one, if you played the beta you’ll have done a lot of levelling up, but it’s not particularly clear what it is that you’re levelling up for. Daily, weekly, and seasonal challenges dole out XP, which increases your profile level, but completing matches increases your specific character level, too. Cosmetics seem to be the focus, but if what we have here is a sign of what’s to come, it’s decidedly sparse. Thankfully there will also be Freegunner challenges, which can unlock character variants with differing passive abilities, which we imagine will be a nice reason to stay on for “one more game”.
Then there are the weekly vignettes. What we’ve witnessed so far are some high quality cutscenes that perhaps lack any defining traits. They are just sort of there at the moment, but we’d hardly expect to fall in love with these characters from day dot. We’re immensely interested to see how sustainable and how effective this approach to storytelling is, because from the little titbits we’ve had so far, Firewalk’s clearly trying to build an expansive lore.
Truthfully though, our biggest issue with Concord is that its current modes don’t last long enough to really get into the action. Both the TDM and Kill Confirmed modes only ask for 30 points on each team, and are often wrapped up within five minutes. Obviously we don’t currently have access to the full roster of modes, but we’d hope something more substantial is available upon launch. As it stands, its matches are too bitty, where just as things are really heating up, they’re over.
Concord is a delightfully vibrant and robust shooter that just about feels ready to go. Across the beta weekend there were no server crashes, laggy matches, glitches, or really anything of that ilk. It’s a polished experience that feels ready to join the Sony patheon, and one we think players should give a chance. Is it the most original take on the hero shooter genre? No, but its a polished and premium product that already has a solid foundation to grow upon. There are some questions we have that we suspect won’t be answered until the full release, and we’d love it to let loose a little more, but as it stands Concord just shot its way up to the top of our most anticipated.
