Grab a copy of Overwatch from 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 what Concord has to offer. As far as competitive hero shooters go, this sci-fi contender from Sony plays it safe, complete with instantly adorable characters portrayed in drop-dead gorgeous cutscenes and skill-based PvP combat that never delves into why these characters are fighting each other when they’re clearly allies in the cutscenes. But just because it doesn’t offer much innovation doesn’t mean Concord isn’t fun – I put over 40 very enjoyable hours into this sweaty shooter, and its class-based gunplay is underwhelming. That rock-solid foundation certainly takes it pretty far, but with only a few average game modes and no killer features to shake up the genre, it still has a lot of growing to do during its live service development.
You and your squad form a five-person team of superheroes, each with their own strengths, weaknesses and special abilities, and then use them against an opposing team in a series of formulaic game modes. These include a standard Deathmatch mode, a “kill confirmed” mode called Trophy Hunt and a zone control mode called Clash Point, to name a few – none of which have even the slightest hint of novelty. But over-familiarity isn’t necessarily a bad thing when you’ve got top-notch gunplay and great characters with compelling powers to back it up, and boy does Concord nail both.
Concord wisely keeps its weapon selection very small, with each character only having one or two options by default and no way to customize them – but the result is that every single weapon feels incredibly responsive and finely tuned, and no two characters have weapons that feel remotely similar. The old lady who controls the arena, Duchess, carries a submachine gun that’s devastating at close range, while the sneaky and tactical Vale relies primarily on a long-range sniper rifle to take out enemies from afar. While not all of these larger-than-life brawlers appealed to me immediately, like the cleaning robot 1-Off and his vacuum-based weapons that push and pull enemies as well as gunfire across the map, or Bazz and her knife throwing and close-quarters techniques, over time I was able to appreciate and even develop an affinity for this incredibly balanced and diverse character roster. All 16 options are really useful once you get the hang of their tricks, and it’s a lot of fun to combine them with the four other characters on your team to serve a specific purpose, whether that’s as a charitable support character, a DPS king, or a damage-absorbing tank.
Likewise, the abilities that complement their weapons are fantastic, varied, and have very generous cooldowns, completely changing the flow of combat depending on the character you’re playing. The floating, fireball-throwing Haymar can blind enemies for a period of time, making them pay for standing in the same place for too long, while the raging ogre Star Child can quickly close distances with his attack and smash the ground around him to deal heavy damage. Not all characters feel so original, for example Teo is the most generic soldier in the world, equipped with a smoke grenade and a cluster grenade as his two powers, but these boring options are few and far between (plus they serve as an easy starting point for newbies). Getting to know each character, using their abilities to counter the enemy’s team composition, and controlling the chaos on the battlefield with top-notch shooting skills was as much fun in my first match as it was in my 30th, and I certainly can’t say I’ve had that feeling in most hero shooters I’ve played.
You’ll also need to get familiar with the roster, as one of the few innovations Concord brings to the genre is how the competitive playlist, called Rivalry, works. Unlike the casual playlists, where you can select any character you want (as long as someone else on your team hasn’t already selected them), Rivalry cleverly doesn’t allow you to select the same character again if you win a round while using them. Since games are played in best-of-seven mode, that means that if you win a round, you’ll have to step out of your comfort zone and use at least four different characters. Not only is this a nice way to force people to master more than just one or two options, but it also encourages communication with your team between rounds to make sure you have the cover you need to pull off the strategy you’re trying as your options become increasingly limited.
This choice is supported by another interesting feature in Concord’s character variants: slightly different versions of existing characters that come with a unique perk and altered appearance that can be unlocked by completing certain objectives during matches. For example, the gunslinger Lennox can normally reload his weapon by dodging, while the variant you can unlock for him loses that ability but gains more ammo for all of his weapons. While each variant mostly offers only minor changes, they definitely offer a worthwhile hunting option that provides more options in combat. Perhaps more importantly, they also give you the opportunity to fudge the numbers a bit in Rivalry, as variants count as separate characters in your crew, and thus let you play as the same characters in multiple rounds.
With 16 likeable characters at its core, you’d think the story would be a major focus, but unfortunately this is one area that leaves a lot to be desired. With only two cutscenes to flesh out small bits of the story, Concord’s strategy is to slowly feed players short story snippets over a long period of time, aided by the Galactic Guide, a map full of nodes where you can read about the locations and characters. I spent quite a bit of time scrolling through this extensive library of short descriptions, and while much of it is well-written, it’s a pretty poor substitute for in-game storytelling that I fear won’t come often enough to keep me hooked. Great characters squandered by a complete lack of narrative is basically a hallmark of the hero shooter genre by now, but it definitely doesn’t get any easier to swallow this particularly bitter pill. If developer Firewalk sticks with expanding the galaxy over time, this could become a major draw, but right now it’s extremely thin and also has little to do with the PvP action you spend all your time on, and it’s quite a waste of a cast that has a lot of potential.
Concord’s game modes are also much less inspired than its characters. Of the six modes currently available, none possess more than a modicum of originality. Signal Hunt, for example, is a king-of-the-hill mode where you fight for control of a point on the map until it moves somewhere else, and Area Control is, well, a zone control mode where you fight for control of three static zones. While none of these boring ideas are particularly offensive, it certainly highlights a major problem with Concord: the lack of a signature game mode that sets this hero shooter apart from the other options out there. Love it or hate it, Overwatch’s take on the iconic Escort mode made it a key selling point (even if that idea was admittedly borrowed from Team Fortress 2 before it) – while Concord has a handful of the world’s most generic modes that I understood from scratch and that bored me even before I played. That’s a pretty big mistake for a hero shooter that already lacks opportunities to stand out.
The 12 well-designed maps are much better than the boring game modes, though, and I really enjoy running around the arenas of Concord, which feature plenty of zigzags, cover mechanics, and complex paths that require getting familiar with the map, as well as some routes that only more mobile characters can easily reach, as most levels reach fairly high elevations. On the water-soaked planet Leviathan, you’ll fight inside giant dead sea creatures in the Water Hazard map, and fight your way through maze-like corridors in the Shock Risk map, while on the dying planet Akkar, you’ll blast enemies to bits while dancing around the skeletal remains of a long-forgotten kaiju. My only issue, really, is that some of these areas are a bit bigger than is necessary for a 5v5 fight, and that means it can take quite a long time to get back into action after each respawn. Other than that, I had a lot of fun figuring out the best paths and team strategies for all areas.
One thing that’s still missing, although developer Firewalk has said it’s coming, is a cosmetics store, where you’ll have to spend real human currency on skins and various digital trinkets as usual. This is pretty standard these days, but as always, the question is how much love to give to people who prefer to earn cosmetics by playing, as many live service games lock the majority of their cosmetics behind a paywall, leaving those unwilling to spend the money to starve. Since this store is apparently only being added with the first season, I don’t know how that will turn out yet, but for now, it’s nice to just unlock cosmetics by playing matches without being pestered by players in obnoxious skins they spent a lot of money on.
