Back in May of this year we got our first look at Concord, a hero shooter developed by Firewalk Studios and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment. We were shown a Guardians of the Galaxy-esque rag-tag group of guns for hire who had a bunch of attitude and what have you. At first I had anticipated it would be some sort of adventure game based on what the cinematic was showing off, but they quickly stifled that line of thinking by showing off that it was a brand new competitive hero-shooter.
Right off the bat I had feared for the game’s success because there is an abundance of these hero-shooters out there. Overwatch 2 is a massive game with a very dedicated player base that built off of the foundation Overwatch had initially created back when it was released back in 2016. Almost a decade later these characters and the core gameplay are still cherished and beloved, even though there are many who disagree with a lot of the changes Overwatch 2 brought. Despite that game’s shortcomings, Overwatch 2 still continues to be a very popular game. There’s also the success of Valorant and Apex Legends, other giants in this genre. Basically, I instantly recognized that Concord would have to better or just as good as those games in order to maintain staying power. I got to play the beta before it went open and after it went open, and I have some thoughts.
Concord has a pretty major issue with its balance. There is an overall issue with the game and that is its time-to-kill. I’ll refer to that is T2K from this point. The T2K is much longer than any shooter I can remember playing in a very long time. Certain weapons feel like they do zero damage to enemy players, even when you are performing headshots. Pistols, for instance, are just unusable. There is a character named Vale who is a sniper and she can also place traps. A lot of snipers in shooters typically when in close quarters will take a shot with their rifle and then finish off the opponent with their pistol. Vale, or anybody else with a pistol sidearm, doesn’t really get to do this because it’s always just a better idea to try and use your primary weapon instead of ever swapping to your secondary. Vale’s rifle does a ton of damage, and has a useless secondary weapon. Vale is just one example. If a character has a pistol secondary, they never have a proper reason to change to it unless they likely want to lose a duel or the game as a whole. The overall issue with secondary weapons not being very good is that it inflates the T2K even further. I saw an AFK Star-Child, another character who has some problematic design choices. Using Vale’s pistol, it had taken me 20 or so shots to kill him. 30 seconds later he came back and blasted me with two shots when I was dead. That leads to another major issue I have with Concord – its character balance.
There are six different classes a freegunner in Concord can have: Anchor, Breacher, Haunt, Ranger, Warden and Tactician. Anchor specializes at being front and center, Breacher is someone who wants to rush into enemy lines, Ranger is long range damage and traps, Haunt is someone who can weave in and out, Wardens make for effective carries, and Tacticians are there to support. I had been reading and watching a lot online about the game to see if other people had aligned with what I had been noticing about certain characters, and it seems everyone is in agreement. There are some really excellent characters, and there are some really terrible characters.
The undisputed number one in the beta is IT-Z. She is so problematic for many reasons. First off, her mobility is unmatched. She has a very fast move speed, a great sprint, and the ability to toss an orb and teleport to where it had landed. Not only does she have great mobility that is likely to confuse players, but her dodge also creates a clone of her. She is extremely hard to pin down, and she’s also one of the few characters in the game that actually does a lot of damage, especially after you’ve supercharged her SMG with the most broken ability in the game. She is able to make healthbars go to zero faster than anybody else with zero counter-play. Let’s compare IT-Z to Lark, the worst character in Concord. Lark is a strange mushroom man who uses spores and fungi to fight in battle. He can place some spore traps around the arena and if enemies come into contact with these spores, they slow down and take minimal damage. His weapon also has a slow rate of fire, and does very little damage. That’s all Lark has in his kit. If you have a Lark player on your team, that person is likely trolling, and you’re almost guaranteed to lose. Speaking of trolling, another problem with the game is that if somebody leaves mid-match, they do not get replaced. If someone disconnects because they’re having a bad game, or they simply would rather go play something else, you’re screwed. You are without a teammate on your squad of five. And you better hope that nobody else dips, because your squad of five can turn into a squad of one against five. They really need to adjust some of this stuff.
I think the most egregious issue is that Concord costs money. I was able to play in the early-access beta. In order to be in that beta, you had to either be sent a code (thank you Sony) or pre-order the game. The open beta started on July 18, and closed on the 21st. Usually if a game has a closed beta, the numbers on that are going to be much smaller than they would be if the beta was open to the world. The problem for Concord, is that the numbers have gone down significantly after the beta has been opened up. If you look at the Steam numbers, at least where they’re at during the time of writing this, the peak amount of players playing at one time was 2,363. The amount of people playing 13 minutes ago, when the site last refreshed, was 1,001. This is a concerning issue for the future of Concord. The beta is free right now and accessible to anybody with a PS5 or PC. It hit its peak on day one of the open beta, and has not surpassed it since. The only way to play Concord after the beta finishes is to spend the money on the full game when it releases in August. If people aren’t playing the FREE beta, they probably aren’t going to be spending the money to play the game when it’s available.
To say the Concord beta performed poorly is unfortunately a major understatement. Characters feel slow, floaty, and useless in a fight except for the ones who absolutely break the game with their mobility and damage. T2K is so high that it feels like you’re shooting water guns at sponges. Players who leave the game mid-match don’t get replaced by other players who are actively searching for games, which makes finding games way longer than it should. I wish I could say I had a positive experience with the Concord beta, but there just isn’t any reason to recommend it in its current state over any of its contemporaries. I just keep asking myself the same question over and over – if people don’t want to play it for free, who the hell is going to want to play it when it’s $50?
