Concord

It was a Fantastic Game, Beautiful World design, amazing gameplay. We will miss you.

There are a few obvious errors specific to Concord. It was a hero shooter, a genre with entrenched competition like Overwatch and Apex Legends, making it a tough sell. Its reach was limited to the PS5 and PC. Worse still, it was a full paid release in a space where free-to-play is the standard. But Concord’s biggest problem was that it was just fine. With generic characters and frustrating map design, there was nothing to make it stand out among so much competition. In the live-service space, where games are designed to **** up as much of your time (and money) as possible, being an average game isn’t enough. There’s only so much of both to go around, and pulling players away from their existing time sinks is not an easy thing. When you’re up against Fortnite, you need a hook.

I find it extremely odd that in a gaming landscape where every run of the mill shooter that chases trends, is riddled with shady money grubbing tactics, and hefty paywalls for content that should be free, it’s the first big budget game of its kind to avoid those errors that’s getting almost universally panned. But Is Concord a super unique game? Not particularly. Does it do anything incredibly groundbreaking? I don’t think so. But what I will say is it feels damn good to control, it’s moment to moment gameplay is fun and it looks great to boot. As someone who was less than thrilled seeing the reveal trailer, I knew the proof would be in the pudding as it is with any PvP type game. Gameplay is king. The beta was promising. I found it fun, but wasn’t completely sold on how it would feel in wide release. Took a chance on it because its price point was appealing to me. For context I’m someone who picked up Helldivers 2 for the same price assuming I’d get a couple weekends out of it at best and have since played over a hundred hours. All this is to say my expectation for how long I’ll stick with something purely multiplayer focused is always adjusted compared to a big, full priced single player game. So far the game is living up to my expectations in most areas, pleasantly surprising me in some other, with just some relatively minor gripes I would like to see addressed. Quick summary of the positives. Characters all feel useful. I’m not a big hero shooter person. Never got the hang of Overwatch or Apex. Even tried Lawbreakers when that was still a thing but it just didn’t do it for me. I think the issue was time investment and not really trying to main a character because I wanted to have a diverse roster of different play styles. A big thumbs up for me so far in Concord is that feeling of teammates taking the two characters you always go to first, and deciding to try someone you’ve only briefly look at. By the end of the game you feel like you’ve found your new favourite. Each of the characters feels distinct and important enough to contribute without the need for explicit roles. No tank? No problem. But taking one just means the ebb and flow of the match with tweak slightly. There’s a decent amount of customization options already and they are all free. Unlock paths are pretty well planned out, all based around XP progression. There is no battle pass or microtransactions. I believe they have stated there will be paid cosmetics eventually but as it stands, it feels like a feature complete game with stuff to play for. I likened the feeling to something like Halo 3 when talking about it with friends. Not necessarily the gameplay itself, but that’s how long it feels like it’s been since a game released and just felt like a complete thing, not shortchanged due to deadlines, no cut content repackaged as DLC to be released a month later. My negatives right now are that I would like to see things like play of the game playbacks implemented. I’d also like there to be a few more options on the main menu. Rather than having to click through several screens to just change someone’s outfit, I’d prefer the main menu to give you quicker access to those sorts of things. I’d like to see a better rotation of maps. Of the 12 in game day one I think I’ve only played on nice 7 so far. I’ve almost universally really enjoyed them, but one or two get repeated a ton. Like I said, relatively small gripes so far. If you see anyone using terms like “woke” or “DEI” they are obviously deeply unserious and deeply stupid people. A lot of the character designs in the game are straight off the cover of a 60s sci-fi novel and save for a couple of relatively generic looking ones, all look pretty cool. I don’t know what kind of tail the game will end up with. There’s a part of me that looks at something like Killzone Shadow Fall - albeit a very different game, but one that didn’t have massive numbers and was almost certainly not making Sony any new money post 2016, but was kept online for 10 years. At the same time I worry that if it doesn’t make the splash they are expecting - and god knows what their expectations actually are for the game, I worry they’ll cut support early. As it stands, I could see it becoming at worst a small community darling. At best, hopefully word of mouth and people actually trying the game could make it pick up steam. Hopefully that can wash the stain that loser, culture war bigots - and frankly critics alike, seem committed to hitting it with.

The game isn't a disaster, it's playable... when you are able to get in a game, because matching times are a nightmare. And Jesus, this is the ugliest collection of characters I've ever seen. I really don't like seeing any of them running around or posing. Who thought these designs were ok?

I want to like it. I want Sony to knock it out of the park with a live service with polish. They seem to have put together a great brand in "concord" and the graphic design and menu UI is great. The actual game? How did they make it so UN-fun? How did this cost all that money and take 8 years? Shocking release. Boring as hell. Not worth it even if its free.