YoIt’s fair to say that the video game industry is going through a period of alarming disarray. Studios are closing, development budgets are skyrocketing, and profitable genres are becoming saturated with mega-budget titles that seem entirely interchangeable.
Into this troubled market comes Concord, Sony’s new five-on-five shooter, the subgenre of online multiplayer shooters in which players control characters with elaborate special powers rather than identical special ops soldiers or space marines. Set in a war-torn galaxy controlled by an autocratic regime known as The Guild, the game puts us in control of a number of Freegunners, mercenaries who ply the space lanes in search of work while also spouting one-liners at each other in the game’s highly polished cinematics. In the game, however, what they do is fight.
All the standard hero shooter characters are present (vanilla soldier, floating witch, teleporting weirdo, sassy tank), but none have the immediate appeal of Overwatch denizens like D.Va or Mei. They do, however, bring plenty of variety to the combat zone. Lark is a strange alien fungus that plants spores that slow enemies while healing allies; Kyps is a stealthy assassin who can reveal enemy positions to his team; the bulky robot 1-Off throws explosive trash cans. I like the innate flexibility of these abilities and the way they stack up between characters. Duchess, who carries a submachine gun, can throw up a defensive barrier, which is useful for cover but also blocks off the opposing team’s objective points and can also be used to funnel enemy soldiers into ambushes. Daveers can bombard an area with a napalm-like substance called Burnite, which can then be ignited with incendiary fire from other players, doubling its effect.
The 12 launch maps are mostly hyper-colourful variations on the sci-fi industrial spaces we used to see in Quake. Spine Works and Sorting Hub are labyrinthine complexes, all interconnected by steel walkways, shipping containers, and box-like warehouse choke points. Water Hazard is an abandoned oil rig with the remains of a giant sea monster lying on the surface like some kind of nightmarish Lovecraftian sushi platter. My favourite is Train Trouble, a post-apocalyptic railway graveyard where Mad Max meets Tatooine.
When it comes to what counts – the excitement and tension of moment-to-moment team combat – Concord really does fly at times. Movement has that slightly floaty feel from Destiny, which works brilliantly on these extremely vertical maps, encouraging players to make use of double-jumps to make fights truly three-dimensional. Weapon feel is excellent – from shotguns to laser pistols, each weapon is solid and legible, and the audio and visual feedback perfectly conveys its unique capabilities. There are sublime moments, when your entire team is together and all of their abilities combine and explode in unpredictable ways, creating a euphoric shooter experience equal to your best moments with Overwatch.
But right now, the big question is whether it has enough to draw players away from Activision’s game, or Valorant, or Apex Legends, or any of the others. It’s very well made, but large parts of it are painfully familiar, not just in terms of character types or the anime-tinged visual aesthetic, but in structure. The game modes are all the standard types: There’s a team deathmatch, there’s one where you have to dominate three objective zones, one where there’s only one zone but it’s always moving, one where you have to collect tokens from downed enemies to record the kill. This is what we’ve been playing since Doom. Meanwhile, the dialogue and humor are the same post-Whedon wry detachment that Marvel and Netflix teen dramas have been force-feeding us for a decade. Oh, for the unbridled dark satire and anarchic teammate-killing mayhem of Helldivers 2.
The most interesting aspect of Concord is in the game’s “meta,” the strategic part outside of the main action. The game has introduced some deck-building elements, where you have to assemble your own team of characters, each with slight variations on typical abilities. These characters all have unique perks known as Crew Bonuses that add subtle boosts to your team’s health, armor, or firepower each time you play them in a match; these stack over the course of the fight, so if you’re playing with an organized team, you can work together to build up a formidable statistical advantage, like a good hand in Hearthstone. It’s an interesting idea, but in the chaos of public servers, where only a fraction of participants play as part of an organized team, it’s hard to know if it will have any effect.
Perhaps the bravest element of Concord is that it’s a premium-priced product, rather than a free-to-play “live service” release, so rather than the ubiquitous season pass model, any subsequent content will be free. It’s also overtly and loudly diverse, which will rub the types of players who enjoy modern online games the wrong way. ought It can be annoying because, frankly, this minority of misanthropic gatekeepers are ruining the fun for everyone else.
Ultimately, Concord needs time, space, and a healthy community to rise above its older, wiser competitors. Right now, as players are getting to grips with the place, it feels like a restless, disorienting place, but also, at times, incredibly fun. With its attitude, its detail, its elaborate backstory (explorable through a visual encyclopedia surely inspired by The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy), it seems like something the development team genuinely appreciates. Assuming the life support of publisher funding isn’t cut off too soon, there’s a chance it could find an audience who feels the same way.