We Have Headlines?

I haven't done one of these since 2019. I kind of fell off gaming a bit around that period but that's fine, it happens. These days I normally don't care to share my thoughts on betas and pre-release builds as I haven't felt the need to express them but that changes today with Concord. The epic Sony published hero shooter made from some of the minds behind Destiny. Where are my fellow Conbros at?

But in all seriousness the game didn't really receive much positive reception with its full reveal during the PlayStation State of Play livestream earlier this year. I think it comes down to the way it was presented. A 5 minute CGI trailer of a bunch of uninteresting looking sci-fi characters getting into a bar fight and escaping on a spaceship just isn't very compelling. It doesn't help they were doing that patented "Marvel dialogue" that people don't quite favour much these days. Playful banter is seen as old hat these days and no longer charming. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBnStS9d2xg&t Now the gameplay trailer itself looked fine. I thought if nothing else it would be a solid enough shooter and now here we are with an early access beta (that's now open to most people with a PS+ subscription) and yeah I was right, it is solid. For comparison's sake it would be like a mix between Overwatch's heros with different abilities and the multiplayer for Destiny in how it feels and controls along with similar looking map design. It has a few modes which are ones most will be familiar with. You got Team Deathmatch, Kill Confirmed and that Counter-Strike type elimination mode, all in but name and yeah, it's alright. The characters control well enough and the abilities are solid. My personal favourites were Lennox for his gunslinger revolvers, Duchess for her abilities to create walls and Emari for being a real solid tank with shields and a minigun.

But the game is missing that special sauce, you know? Something to truly elevate it as a competitor in the hero shooter genre. It's lacking that special substance to make it unique and quite frankly it lacks character. It's going for this 1970s sci-fi aesthetic with some modern day flair and while the worlds look pretty, the character designs come across as mostly boring. The most interesting looking character is a mushroom spore flinging guy called Lark and they're just a human with a mushroom cap as a hat. Where's my truly horrific mushroom man?

I might be harping on the character designs a tad too much but that's just because they're a pretty important aspect of the genre. A cool looking character is what drives people to buy skins and various outfits for their favourite hero. It doesn't help that the marketing is really pushing these characters to be instantly likeable with promises of new cutscenes every week which sounds cool on paper but with what little I've seen, it's not very enticing. The robot is "quirky" type stuff and I say that as someone who is a big sucker for quirky robots. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jqQJhjf_3o I've heard the argument that this game would have been received better if it was released a few years ago but I don't buy it. MAYBE before Overwatch came out but even then Battleborn came out just before it and that game is long dead and I thought that game was actually pretty fun and comparatively more unique than Concord. Even their generic soldier hero, Oscar Mike was a hilarious dude bro. Battleborn had unique characters and was going for more of a first person MOBA where you would level your character up during your match. Concord is just a finely tuned shooter. Solid but not memorable.

I'm coming across as bashing the game a bit and I want to reiterate that I think Concord overall is fine, I had an alright time with it and some of the characters were indeed neat to play with but it's just not worth the $59.95 AUD asking price and I say that as someone who paid the same price for Helldivers II (love that game by the way). It's sad to see Concord have this fate because the foundation is solid, maybe they will wow everyone at release or post release but I doubt it. If this game still interests you though then go dive right in and I hope you have a fun time with it. Personally I'll be picking up the new Astro Bot game instead.

Concord is releasing on 23/08/2024 for PC and PS5.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2443720/Concord/