Concord was initially teased last year with a simple video that demonstrated a ship traveling through space. I think there was a hamburger involved. Anyway, after seeing this short teaser, I was honestly expecting to see a story-driven FPS – it’s a first-party Sony game after all – but maybe it would have been something like an MMO, a la Destiny. Regardless, I was on board for a new experience, but then I was somewhat surprised to learn that Concord is actually a 5v5 shooter.
And now that I’ve played it, I’m very glad that Concord really plans to keep up with its world lore and ongoing story, as some of my favorite FPS games like Overwatch and Apex Legends do so seasonally as well. Additionally, every season released will be free for all players who only need to purchase the game and enjoy future updates.
While I generally enjoyed the limited hands-on preview, I have a few concerns about Concord’s longevity and what it has to offer. Concord’s meat-and-potatoes formula is a fairly standard 5v5 setup, with two teams choosing their preferred hero before engaging in an objective-based teamfight.
During the preview, I was able to play three of the six modes that will be available at launch: Trophy Hunt, Cargo Run, and Clash Point. Trophy hunting was the only one that featured respawn in the match and was basically a killer confirmed team deathmatch.
Cargo Run, meanwhile, was a match for a life where the goal was to run to the center, steal a Blue Buddy package, and place it in one of two locations. If placed, the enemy team can go and stand on the pack to scatter it and take it back. Finally, Clash Point was a round-based, single-life game mode with the goal of controlling the only capture zone in the entire map multiple times to claim victory.
The single life modes were hard to warm up to while still getting to know the game, as failure obviously means you’re out of the action for a while. And while Concord is a pretty straightforward FPS, I have a major criticism just two months after its launch on August 24th: in the build I played, movement felt extremely floaty and took some getting used to. This is made worse by the fact that each Freerunner character you can play has a unique set of moves and skills they bring to the team, so every time you switch to a new character, you’re then trying to learn and configure your brain how they work. So you can imagine it gets a little disorienting.
And while Concord will be released on PC day and date with PS5, I was only able to review this on PS5 with a controller, so with that in mind, I’d say the movement is very reminiscent of Destiny and Halo. Again, it’s incredibly buoyant, which can be a fun element if done well. However, the way the visual build, light jumps, and hang times felt really didn’t match the amount of fast-paced combat that could happen at any given time in the matches.
While Halo uses a similar floating jump mechanic, the rest of the mechanics and gameplay in Halo justify this reasoning and don’t make it feel like an odd element. Grenades also feel light when thrown in the air, the various abilities in Halo have the same weight and cadence, and the pacing of the match reflects the balance between the core game mechanics. Players in Halo, even in competitive ranked matches, are healed over time after avoiding taking damage for a while.
Similarly, Destiny is a game that is more PvE related and therefore doesn’t need the incredibly fast mechanics that Halo or Concord need in PvP battles. Even in PvP battles in Destiny, the usual TTK is slower, as battles can drag out due to different class abilities allowing for slower or faster gameplay depending on how players choose to engage (ie. more direct or more reserved). Each class also has different movement options and healing abilities that ensure the pace of the match remains consistent throughout.
So the problem with Concord, at least in this preview version, is that it takes small parts of games like Halo and Destiny and mash them together in a formula that still doesn’t quite sit well with me. Concord actually uses the same type of evasion animation from Destiny that takes you out in third person. While I loved this element in Destiny, it doesn’t quite work in Concord because there’s a short but noticeable delay between the introduction of Dodge and the actual deployment. This can make or break your life, as timing is everything in the racing game and one hesitation, or simulated hesitation through delayed input, can severely penalize you.
Sony says there will be a total of six maps at launch, so perhaps some of the game modes will feel faster and more optimized on others when they’re spread out. But as it stands now, most of the maps looked very strangely warped. Some lanes were too long or large and barely rotated, while the second lane in another map would just feel too small and cause prolonged team fights due to its claustrophobic size.
Concord emphasizes its competitive nature and fast-paced battles. I like all of this, but I found that the race runs the risk of being unwelcoming to new players trying to learn the game because most of the game modes are focused on one life.
It’s important to note that even if you are an amazing player, Concord is not a game that allows for many 1v2 battles to be won. Unlike an Apex or Halo game where you can potentially outsmart your opponents and win in 1v2 scenarios, Concord is so strongly a team game that you cannot succeed if you are alone. While this is the point of team-based FPS games is quite punishing for modes like Trophy Hunt, where you’re encouraged to go out and kill for the objective.
Another reason why these two-way fights are impossible to win is the fact that each character in Concord has their own health pool and hitbox. This would be fine if these characters had your traditional classes, but Concord doesn’t use your typical class system. Usually each class has its own health stats that you can expect every character in that tag to have.
Looking at Overwatch for example, most tanks have a base health of around 525 to 700 (with combinations of shields or armor in the game for specific characters that have them like DVA and Reinhardt). In Concord, it was incredibly difficult to tell exactly what the health pool was for any of the classes, as nothing was really established with their system.
For example, 1-Off is a cute robot who vacuums garbage and is definitely a tank hero with his big build and clumsy movements and high hitting weapon that has 300 health. However, Teo, who is essentially a DPS that plays like your traditional ground soldier, without the tank qualities, has 220 health as the Concord Ranger class. But Roka, another character who is essentially DPS, is classified as Haunt and has 170 health.
What these unconventional classes mean is extremely confusing. In the preview, we weren’t given details about each class and what the terms meant, but it all feels a bit random when health pools and damage numbers vary so much, which splits the game balancing even more.
Overwatch also uses the system to ensure there is a roster for the allowed amount of characters of each class. Currently, Concord does not use such mechanics and allows players to use whatever characters they want, as these class systems are not traditional. While this is fun in theory, in my brief experience playing a racing game like Concord, it doesn’t work out very well.
Another reason why Concord is such a strong team game is that each character has their own movement speed and damage. It could be argued that this is an extension of the lack of clear classes, but I wanted to focus on this as its own balancing issue. Character DPS is quite important as you are allowed to have a team of whatever characters you want.
There were some decidedly “overpowered” characters in pre-release that you really needed on your team if you wanted to win, especially in Trophy Hunt. Let’s take a look at the Freegunner, Roka rocket launcher.
She is capable of dealing 43 damage with direct hits while firing rapidly and locating her target almost instantly. After doing a few backtracks, there doesn’t seem to be a real answer to what the Roka’s splash damage distance is and how much constant it does. So far I’ve seen it hit from a decent distance for 12 damage, then also hit for 27 damage closer to the target. Roka also has a total of eight rockets to use before needing to reload, so those numbers add up.
Comparing this to Overwatch’s Pharah, another character with a rocket launcher, she only deals 40 damage to an enemy when she is direct hit, with her splash damage being about half that. She also only has six missiles before needing to reload and doesn’t have any lock-on capabilities.
Obviously comparing these two games directly isn’t fair to either, but it’s important to note the difference between balancing. It’s entirely possible that over time Concord will be able to better understand how its balancing should be maintained. But as it stands now, I’m concerned about the more casual player experience and general accessibility.
The option to play cross-play with PC and PS5 will be available at launch, which is good news for players like me who have friends on both platforms, but it’s a double-edged sword. The preview build I played showed help for heavy aiming on controllers. It was most noticeable on Rocka, the rocket-firing hero, since her weapon locked on. I would find myself actually having to rip off my thumb to get her to turn away from the closest enemy I didn’t even want to target.
The other characters I played didn’t feature such an aggressive aim assist, but I could feel the magnetization there, which was a little disappointing and worrying given that the crossplay option will be enabled at launch. While yes, you could argue that on PC you can make faster motion corrections on the fly, the constant battle between the controller’s aim assist versus the keyboard and mouse movement just seems to get worse here.
Fortunately, Concord is still a few months away from launch – still a decent amount of time to balance and tune every aspect of the game, which always happens at this stage of the development process. Fingers crossed Concord managed to tighten up its floating controls and tackle its character balancing before it releases on August 24th for PS5 and PC.
