A month has passed and once again I return to Concord. I was pretty optimistic when I previewed the open beta back in July primarily because not only because it looked like an interesting new Hero Shooter, but I realized I hadn’t played a really solid FPS in quite a while. I was initially drawn in by Concord’s unique style and eclectic cast of characters.
But as the hours went on and matches were both won and lost, I noticed my excitement waning at an exponential rate. Concord definitely isn’t a bad game but so many of its good ideas are trapped within a genre that never lets them spread their wings and take off.
The story, such that there is one, is essentially a group of outlaws participate in mercenary “missions,” but not before contacting their local government and filling out the proper paperwork—there’s a whole bit in the intro cinematic about the gang waiting for approval on their Freegunner status and the idea of outlaw bureaucracy made me chuckle.
As far as I can tell, the “story” mostly exists as justification for the gameplay which is fine; not every game needs to have a story. However, for a game so clearly inspired by Guardians of the Galaxy—demonstrated by both its cast of characters coupled with the game’s intro cinematic and debut trailers—it’s a bit of a shame they opted not to really flesh out its unique worlds or characters.
“…despite their visual and theoretic uniqueness, characters in Concord all feel more-or-less the same, despite their different weapons and abilities.”
Although, Concord does have weekly “Vignettes,” which I assume means a single story cutscene will play for that week—which seems to be the case based on my experience while playing for review. While this does go some of the way to add a bit of narrative, it feels somewhat scummy to tie it to the live service model. Concord could have had an interesting narrative to experience, instead, it’s just another reason to log in once a week.
On the gameplay side, Concord is what I would call “theoretically interesting.” During my preview, I was enamoured with all the different characters and their unique abilities. But the more you play, the more it starts to become apparent how hollow the gameplay really is. Much of what I said in the preview is true—Concord is a fun enough FPS. There’s enough variety on offer that fights feel chaotic and intense.
But it almost feels like in service to the sense of individuality it wants to have Concord sacrificed meaningful mechanics and structure that years of excellent FPS games have established. One thing that initially intrigued me was how none of the characters have roles in the same way Hero Shooters like Team Fortress 2 or Overwatch do.
Instead, characters have theoretic roles—Anchors are more tanky while Wardens are long-range combatants. Initially, this seemed like a good idea, that way no player has to be forced to learn every character nor be forced into a role if their team is too unbalanced. Furthermore, teams will get different bonuses depending on which roles are being fulfilled.
“Concord definitely isn’t a bad game but so many of its good ideas are trapped within a genre that never lets them spread their wings and take off.”
However, this also means, that despite their visual and theoretic uniqueness, characters in Concord all feel more-or-less the same, despite their different weapons and abilities. I noticed this the most with the character of Vale—a Warden utilizing a long-range sniper rifle. In most shooters, I prefer to utilize long-range weapons and I figured having a sniper is always a net positive for the team.
However, Vale’s rifle is pathetically weak, dealing maybe less than a quarter of an opponent’s health with a body shot, and maybe less than three-quarters if you can land a headshot. Furthermore, considering every character has different health values, it’s hard to know how much damage a shot is going to do depending on who gets hit.
This is compounded by the fact that Vale can only fire a single shot before reloading and her side-arm is a dinky pea-shooter that does next to no damage. So even if you hit an opponent with the rifle, they’ll almost always kill you unless you happen to have another teammate with you—and even then it’s a crapshoot. And this isn’t just a problem with her, every character feels like a bit of a guessing game as to whether you can take them out reliably.
This problem extends to Concord’s levels as well which, despite looking beautiful and featuring a wide diversity of landscapes and intricate arenas; are all more or less designed for close-combat skirmishes. One level in particular was in the half-destroyed remains of an alien palace. A lot of the level had easily accessible battlements and towers that would be perfect vantage points for sniping.
One of Vale’s abilities is a super high jump that can be used to access vantage points, so naturally I used this in conjunction with the standard double jump to try and perch myself on high ground. Imagine my disappointment when an invisible wall pushed me away from landing on a perfectly flat surface. That’s when I realized almost all of the seemingly accessible higher ground was blocked by invisible walls.
Vale’s secondary ability is trip trip-mines which would make sense defensively if the game gave you any place to take a sniping position, but even when used by enemies, these trip-mines can be seen from a mile away with massive red cones highlighting their range of sight, so they’re little more than minor inconveniences.
It left me with an incredibly hollow feeling. Here I am as a player who enjoys using long-range characters and long-range weapons, being presented with a game that offers almost no incentive to do so. She has all the restrictions of a sniper with none of the benefits. Hope you like sniping from the ground in the middle of massive shootouts against guys armed with machine guns and explosives because she has all the restrictions of a sniper with none of the benefits.
Naturally, I decided to try my secondary character type: stealth. But even this was a fool’s endeavour. The only character with stealth: Kyps—a robot lady in a stylish suit—is hilariously useless, or at the very least not well thought out. While her dodge makes her invisible for a few seconds, her abilities are a throwable that reveals enemies’ locations, and a second throwable that disrupts abilities and shields. Her main is a silenced triple-shot pistol that does no damage.
You’d think a character with the ability to turn invisible would be built like a glass cannon, maybe having an assassination move—maybe it isn’t an instant kill, but it could do a ton of damage—or something that gives them an edge to being invisible and skulking around the battlefield. But again, there’s almost no incentive to use a character that can turn invisible.
The more you play, the more you start to feel like certain character’s abilities just don’t make sense. Another character I started to like was a super-quick, knife-throwing diva named Bazz. She had a super quick sprint, three consecutive dodges, a powerful stab attack and a shuriken that could debuff opponents. But for some reason, her combat trait was revealing nearby enemies while crouching—a movement that grinds her pace to a halt. It kind of feels like that move should’ve been Kyps’ and Bazz should’ve gotten invisibility.
But like I said, despite all their different abilities all the characters start to feel more or less the same because the game only really presents you with one way to play as them—just group up and run down the middle, gun’s blazin’. Players tend to default to the easiest characters to use because there really isn’t any incentive to strategize.
Every match ends up feeling like a brainless gunfight where, despite what character you’re playing as, you’re just running around looking for someone to shoot. You’re not really rewarded for thinking on your feet, navigating the battlefield and looking for advantageous positions—you just run around looking for someone to shoot, and hope your teammates are there to finish what your pathetic gun started.
The only other way Concord offers some form of customization is cut off at the knees by its live service design. Players can unlock “Variant” characters which are effectively the same only with minor changes to their passive abilities or Combat abilities. You’d think unlocking these would be as simple as just playing a character you like since, alongside your Account Level, every character has levels that increase with repeated use.
“Concord is a game that’s fun for a little while but the longer I played, the more I wanted to play something else.”
Instead, players need to complete Variant jobs that require a ludicrous amount of grinding, or potentially get them at random through account level-ups. Not to mention switching between a variant isn’t as simple as pressing a button during combat, instead building a whole new crew—which only unlocks at Level Seven—and selecting that before matchmaking.
And supposedly, all these elements in Concord were inspired by Deck Building Games, but I honestly can’t see how. There is an element of randomness to Deck Builders, but players actually have control over how they build their deck and knowing when to hold onto something useful and when to play it is a big part of the strategy. But potentially having a mildly different character to slot into a group adds little to nothing to a match when the level and game design don’t really require using it.
And I think it deserves special mention, but I have a particular gripe with this game for NOT. HAVING. GYRO. AIMING. I don’t understand how in 2024, a game PUBLISHED by Sony would not include one of the fundamental components of its controller. It would have gone such a long way to making the frenetic shooting feel so much better and give players added accuracy. Is it really such a difficult addition? I dunno, maybe it’s in the roadmap.
Concord is a game that’s fun for a little while but the longer I played, the more I wanted to play something else. It’s got a decent foundation, but nothing of substance was built upon it. I can’t help but feel that with a clearer focus, or maybe a different development direction this game could’ve been something really special. Instead, it’ll likely end up as yet another Hero Shooter that people forget about in a month.
