PREVIEW – The first beta of Firewalk Studios’ game took place during the second weekend of July, with PC gamers who pre-ordered and PlayStation 5 gamers who subscribed to PlayStation Plus getting to try out Concord before a second open beta follows in a week’s time. It’s already time to share thoughts, and it doesn’t look too bad.

The most divisive aspect of the game can lead to extreme extremes, but looking beyond that, the overall picture might be a little clearer.

No lack of speed

One of Concord’s strengths will clearly be its speed. The gameplay offers simple tasks, the weapons work satisfactorily, and the matches seem short enough that they won’t be nerve-rackingly long. If the game can maintain this for a longer period of time, it could lay the foundation for its future. The servers and performance didn’t seem too bad either, but this should be maintained during the second beta, because after that the audience won’t be as big during the 1.0 release, so maybe there won’t be the fear of “the server is no good – can’t play” that you see a lot. The maps aren’t bad either, and not just because it’s easy to learn what’s where, but also because they’re visually distinguishable. The audiovisuals are also good. Great animations (which is really important in first-person view), fair graphics, the sounds aren’t forgettable (although the maxing sound of the skill pickup, for example, is mixed quite loudly). And the interface is now completely subjective: for example, the vitality bar in the lower left corner was a bit too protruding. The last time something like that was used much was in PS1 games, and regarding health, it should be mentioned that HP does not regenerate, so you have to pick up pickups on the tlevels.

Since Quake III Arena and Unreal Tournament also had this approach, it can give the gameplay an old-fashioned flavor. The old-school effect is also noticeable in the fonts used, as they look a bit pixelated (but on purpose!). The movement of the characters feels a bit airy, but it doesn’t have a cartoony feel (Overwatch 2 went in that direction), and their skills and abilities are very different, so the developers have done a sophisticated job here as well. During matches, there will be a lot of sound effects and speech, so you’ll know who threw a grenade, who activated their ultimate, and so on. Currently, one of the game modes is Trophy Hunt, which is roughly Call of Duty’s Kill Confirmed, and Takedown is the local equivalent of Team Deathmatch. Later, Zone Control (rule the zone and keep the other team away), Signal Hunt (find the zone via the signals), Cargo Contract (roughly the payload of Overwatch 2), and Conflict (find the designated zone and defend it or defeat the other team) will also be part of the game. So there will be variety in terms of game modes, but for now we just have a little taste for the audience.

It’s not on the free model track

What needs to be discussed is the situation with the Concord model. It will not be a free game (like Overwatch 2 or Apex Legends), but it will cost $40. Because of this, many will write off that if it’s a pay-to-play game, it’s not worth paying attention to. But the cost of a free game should be taken into account. If a game is free to play, then more microtransactions will be needed, but in the case of a paid title, this can be reduced. However, there was a paid hero shooter that has since disappeared, LawBreakers. It’s not a bad idea to have a paid model, as long as it doesn’t force this and that and this and that microtransaction down your throat (every Electronic Arts sports game with an Ultimate Team mode is like that). However, another thing that makes you wonder is the number of games in the same genre.

Even in the case of the battle royale boom, there was one game that blew away the developers in about ONE MONTH (Radical Heights, and the same Boss Key Productions was behind it as LawBreakers), and there were a lot of people trying in a short period of time. Now, many developers and publishers are trying their hand at a different genre, but this time they want to take the throne of Overwatch instead of Fortnite. This is not a criticism of the game, but a food for thought: If there are X games, then a Y number of players have Z time for them. But if X is greater, then Z will be less, because people don’t have unlimited time and money. And therefore there is a more intense battle for players, which makes the issue of price important. It is possible that the downfall of Concord could be due to price, and while this is an extreme case, one can only speculate before the game is released, no specifics.

What could be improved?

In the beta, there is no possibility to learn through tutorials and practice your aim, but luckily for us, this shortcoming will disappear at launch. The interface could be more customizable, and perhaps the ability to adjust the field of view (FOV) could be important. For PlayStation 5 gamers, there seems to be a significant amount of aim assist, although it’s true that the DualSense controller doesn’t stand much of a chance against the standard mouse and keyboard pairing. The look of the characters is average at best, and at the moment they don’t even have much personality. This is essential in the genre, but Firewalk will make up for it in time. Some of the characters were pretty OP, so Star Child and Roka seem like guaranteed wins, and that would need to be worked on before the store version comes out. Possibly even the TTK (time to kill) could be a problem, but that might be too promiscuous a timeframe, leaning more in the longer direction.

Beta now than ever

The overall picture of Concord is relatively good. It is not possible to give a rating box at this stage, but I have a feeling that it will either be between 6.5 and 7, or 7.5 and 8. The latter if the other game modes are tightly paced enough… which they are at the moment, somewhat Battlefront style.

-V-

Publisher: Sony Interactive Entertainment

Developer: Firewalk Studios

Style: hero shooter

Release: August 23, 2024.