PlayStation's hero shooter has more in common with Call of Duty than Overwatch.
My eyes were wide and WASD fingers nimble as I booted up Concord's closed beta this weekend. I've had my eye on Sony's new hero shooter since its big reveal last month. While a vocal contingent quickly decided that Concord is anOverwatch clone wearing Guardians of the Galaxy cosplay, those brief glimpses of gameplay got me excited for what looked like a crisp, arcadey FPS from ex-Destiny folks.
And hey, I wasn't disappointed. Concord is very fun so far. I played seven hours of the beta and was impressed by developer Firewalk Studios' strong FPS fundamentals—Concord's guns feel tremendous across the board (especially Lennox's revolvers), every hero I've played has a fun hook I don't instantly recognize from other games. Maybe best of all is that the whole roster is just there from the start. The closed beta is over now and I'm really eager to get back to it when the open beta begins July 18, but I have a few doubts, too. Some takeaways after seven hours with Concord:
Concord's roster of heroes—with their varying sizes, species, and backgrounds—might give the initial impression of an Overwatch also-ran, but their similarities end once you get past the heroes themselves. In reality, Concord has more in common with modern arena shooters like Call of Duty, XDefiant, Destiny 2's Crucible, or even Halo.
That's made clear by the handful of modes playable in the beta—a grab bag of FPS favorites like team deathmatch (Takedown), Kill Confirmed (Trophy Hunt), Search and Destroy (Cargo Run), and a elimination take on King of the Hill called Clash Point. It's smart to stick together as much as possible, but unlike Overwatch, you're not encouraged to stay in one massive "hero clump" to have any chance of winning fights. You don't always spawn near teammates in Concord's multi-laned or bowl-shaped maps, and some heroes work best as lone wolves.
Concord - IT-Z"
Concord is much more of a "shooter" than a "hero" game. Other than a few tank-shaped heroes who struggle to compete without a teammate around, every Concord character can hold their own in a fight. There is no "Mercy" who's basically useless when the rest of the team dies—the two Concord heroes with group healing, Daw and Jabali, also have wicked powerful guns.
Concord is only Sony's second simultaneous PC/console launch after Helldivers 2, and while it plays well on PC, it took some tweaking to get there. The whole game felt off for my first few matches and my framerate was all over the place (RTX 2080 Super, 1080p). Turning off motion blur (curse you!) and setting everything to medium cleaned things up dramatically.
Its mouse and keyboard controls are also awkwardly mapped from the PS5 controller scheme by default. One example: you dodge roll by double-tapping sprint (mimicking the double tap of circle on PS5), despite an abundance of unused keys below WASD that could do the job. It's an awkward command for a maneuver you're meant to pull off in the heat of a fight. Thankfully, you can quickly remap it to a single tap of a more sensible button.
This is kinda cool: You can unlock "variants" of Concord heroes that have the same abilities, but a unique perk that changes their playstyle. The one available in the beta for Lennox, the green guy who looks like Cousin Richie from The Bear, swaps his default perk that reloads his guns after rolling with double the magazine size for both of his pistols.
Variants are their own hero slot, which looks weird on the roster screen, but that plays into Concord's "crew builder" system. More on that below.
One of the most unique aspects of Concord is also its most bewildering. By default, you can pick from all 16 heroes in a match, but you can also build a custom roster (a "crew") and use some of those slots for hero variants or even multiple copies of the same hero. That can matter in Concord's round-based modes as you're locked out of playing a hero once you've won a round as them. You could choose to exclude heroes you don't like and add five copies of Lennox to your crew, ensuring you can play your main throughout the whole match. That's somewhat interesting, but it's not at all intuitive and I question how much it'll really play into strategy.
Worse is that the crew system makes a lot less sense in a respawn mode like Trophy Hunt or team deathmatch. There's no point to adding multiple copies of a hero to your crew when there's no lockout mechanic, and the game even suggests that you equip a default roster with all heroes when playing these modes. If that's the case, then why are you able to screw yourself over in the first place?
I'm simply in love with Concord's guns. They look incredible, sound really cool, and animate beautifully. Unsurprising for a team of Bungie vets, but Concord is especially masterful at reloads—I adore the clockwork crank of Haymar's hand crossbow as she loads another firebomb into its breach, marvel at the way Duchess replaces the side-fed magazine of her futuristic WW2 SMG and then turns it like a key to lock it in place. I also can't help but grin every time Emari unexpectedly reloads her minigun by replacing the entire front barrel assembly of the gun instead of a more conventional drum magazine.
Not since my first days with Overwatch in 2016 have I been this impressed by the variety and personality of weapons in a hero shooter. Some of Concord's guns are really out there, like a spore launcher whose pellets aren't so much bullets as they are creatures that fly toward enemies with a mind of their own, or 1-OFF's vacuum that sucks up bullets and spits them back out for low, consistent damage.
Some of my favorites so far are just really well-executed versions of guns we've all played with before. Lennox's two revolvers riff hard on Destiny's hand cannons and Hunt: Showdown's vintage six shooters. DaVeer's goopy launcher is like the TF2 Demoman's remote mines and grenade launcher in one gun. The strike of Vale's sniper rifle can be heard across the map, and leaves an intimidating smoke trail just like in Halo or Valorant.
Concord - KYPS"
Concord has a dodge button that's genuinely useful, but I don't like that using it zooms the camera out to third-person. I know that occasional perspective shifts are a Destiny/Bungie staple at this point, but I'd love the option to stay in first-person at all times in Concord.
I ended up sticking mostly to Concord's respawn modes this weekend, and that's because its elimination modes move way too slowly right now. There are just way too many pre-round steps. Every round has a pick phase where each player picks one at a time in order, followed by a loading screen, then an intro cinematic, then a countdown. I like to think I have a high tolerance for this sort of thing with my 2,000 logged hours of Rainbow Six Siege, but Concord's sluggish transitions wore me down quick. This is a fixable problem, so I'm curious how quickly Firewalk will be able to respond to feedback just a month before Concord's launch.