GameCentral reports back from a weekend of playing the Concord beta, but does Sony’s new live service online shooter offer anything new?
If there’s one thing that Concord’s controversial reveal made clear, it’s that it’s not looking to reinvent the wheel. Its unveiling had an unparalleled amount of negativity for a Sony exclusive, with complaints that both its gameplay and its Guardians of the Galaxy style characters appeared generic and uninspired. Having spent the weekend playing the beta it’s clear that these concerns are entirely warranted; the question is whether the lack of originality is so distracting that it ruins an otherwise competent online shooter.
Concord is not a difficult game to describe. Imagine Overwatch with different characters and you’re 80% there. However, the gunplay is superior to Blizzard’s game and while still not quite up to the standards of Destiny 2 it’s clearly looking to Bungie for inspiration in that regard. There is no unique selling point or gimmick with Concord though. There’s no big new idea to distinguish it from its rivals, just the fact that it’s well made and, to judge by the beta, refreshingly bug free.
Once you drill down into the details though there are some minor surprises, perhaps the biggest being that there are far more playable characters than the reveal implied: 16 in total and one of Concord’s most impressive achievements is that they’re all very distinctive, with some interestingly peculiar abilities.
In terms of personalities, the characters are as one-dimensional as they come, although there’s a promise of new cut scenes every week to flesh them out. The initial one for the beta wasn’t very promising though, with more sub-Guardians of the Galaxy style sassiness and no clear explanation of the setting. There’s a brief mention of ‘revolts’, and of being freerunners, but no real indication of what that actually means.
However, most of Overwatch’s storytelling didn’t even take place in the game, so that’s not a concern, and there certainly does seem to be a lot to work with in terms of the different characters.
A few are the usual tropes you’d expect to find in any competitive first person shooter, starting with the bog standard space marine Teo, who has a rifle, a frag grenade, and a smoke grenade. The sniper is Vale, who can jump vertically in the air and has trip wires she can attach to any surface. There’s also a tank (or anchor as the game has it – there are six class types in total) called Emari who has a minigun and a shield, although she can only use one at a time.
The other anchor is where things start getting weird, with robot 1-Off not having any gun, just a vacuum device that can suck or blow, as he uses it to collect detritus to create a ‘Trash Bomb’. Many of the characters don’t have a traditional weapon, with Daveers being one of our early favourites, as she shoots blobs of ‘burnite’ at people, before igniting it with a wrist dart.
Bazz uses only melee attacks and throwing knives, while Haymar’s crossbow is all but useless unless you charge it up by aiming downsights for a while first (oddly, she’s presented as one of the two main characters, despite being one of the hardest to get your head around). What’s immediately noticeable though is that even for those that do have ordinary guns, the time to kill for everyone is much longer than normal for an online shooter.
Without buffs, all of the weapons seem curiously underpowered, such that most of our initial success came from just punching people in the face. Whatever other games it copies from, Concord clearly isn’t interested in being a Call Of Duty clone, with almost every character having an interesting ability that isn’t directly related to combat.
Dunchess, for example, can create large, permanent walls to block movement and your line of sight – in fact, every object dropped by a character lingers even after they die. Kyps is a robot that can drop sensor drones and who turns invisible when dodging, while Roka, who is another of our favourites, can hover in the air for quite a while, as she fires (slightly weedy) missile at people.
The most popular character, based on how quickly he’s snapped up on the selection screen (you can only have one of each character in your team) is Lennox, but we don’t think that’s because he’s the most prominent in the cut scenes, but simply because he’s got two ordinary guns and can heal. Likewise, Jabail is another favourite because he’s a healer and has a simple-to-use rifle and heat-seeking ‘hunter orbs’.
The line-up is impressive, but it doesn’t really make much use of the sci-fi setting. Not only do we have no idea what’s going on, but there’s only a few aliens. Star Child, who talks exactly like Drax from Guardians of the Galaxy, is just a Hulk-like brute with a shotgun, but the other two aliens are two of the best characters, which makes you wish there were more.
It-Z is a very enthusiastic cross between a catgirl and Green Goblin that is basically Tracer from Overwatch, with similar teleport powers. Meanwhile, Lark is some kind of plant person, with the ability to set-up a teleportation spot you can return to after a second’s build-up – it’s just a shame her gun is so unsatisfying to use.
On a micro scale, Concord does have plenty of unique ideas but it’s a pity it’s all presented in such an anodyne fashion. The maps might be the worst culprit, as while they’re all very well designed the settings are so completely lacking in personality they could run for Parliament. It’s all just monochrome corridors, most of which don’t even look very sci-fi, with zero interactivity or sense of place.
The appeal of Concord depends very much on your attitude towards the genre in general but apart from the long time to kill the emphasis on dodging is interesting, with some characters also able to jump up to three times. There’re also health recharge spots in every map, that are fairly quick to use, and while none of this is even close to groundbreaking it is proof that the game is offering a slightly different flavour of competitive shooter to the norm.
If you excuse the lack of originality – and that is a very big if – then Concord is a perfectly enjoyable online multiplayer game. The most obvious problem, beyond the sense of déjà vu, is the balancing, which while hard to judge after just a weekend seems all over the place, especially in terms of weapon power and the amount of damage some characters can take.
Also, all the imagination poured into the character abilities has not been reflected by the game modes, which are as bog standard as you can get: Team Deathmatch and Kill Confirmed (both with respawns) and minor variations of King of the Hill and Capture the Flag (with no respawns). It must’ve taken all of five minutes to come up with that and while the beta implies there’ll be more modes in the final game there’s no guarantee there’ll be any more inventive.
The final problem is that, surprisingly, this is not free-to-play. It’s not full price either but has the same pricing structure as Helldivers 2. And given how well that did Sony no doubt feel it’s worth trying their luck again. They may well be right too, as the history of video games makes it very clear that, despite all the cries for new ideas, most people usually prefer something more familiar.
Concord is certainly that but judging by the beta it’s also entertaining and highly polished. Whether it’s appealing enough for people to want to dedicate time to remains to be seen, but it’s not the complete disaster that the initial reveal seemed to imply.
Formats: PlayStation 5 (reviewed) and PC
Price: £34.99
Publisher: Sony Interactive Entertainment
Developer: Firewalk Studios
Release Date: 23rd August 2024
Age Rating: 12
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