First impressions: Concord - Firewalks first game might be a solid Hero shooter, but it's a massive risk not only for the developers but also the players.

 

Concord is a 5v5 hero shooter akin to games like Overwatch and Team Fortress 2. It boasts a roster of 16 unique characters, six game modes, and twelve levels. Concord aims to emphasize weekly story-driven content and lore. It was developed by Firewalk Studio, established in 2018 by former Bungie developers who sought to create their own distinctive hero shooter. Concord represents a significant venture for Sony, being the second title in their live service action game lineup following the acclaimed and financially successful Helldivers 2. The hero shooter market is saturated with excellent free-to-play titles, raising the question: Can a $40 hero shooter, eight years in development, carve out its niche in this competitive market, or is it doomed from the start?

After spending about 7 hours with Concord, my feelings are mixed. The emphasis on a $40 live-service model feels risky, making it a tough sell for most players. The game is short on modes, and the ones available lack inspiration. Matches often feel decided within the first minute, with few options to turn the tide. While not every hero shooter needs an Ultimate ability, Concord desperately needs a system or mechanic to make matches more engaging.

The game's approach to lore, with its supposed weekly cutscenes, is puzzling. The opening cinematic fails to make you care about or invest in any of the characters—they just exist in a world that feels like a low-budget knockoff of the MCU, complete with poor characterization and mediocre writing that attempts to mimic the MCU's humor, which never really worked to begin with. Maybe it's my ADHD talking, but reading page after page of text in the Galactic guide section is one of the most boring and pointless lore systems I've encountered in a game. Lore is essential for a game developer to create a framework for a character or world, but simply dumping it into the game and expecting players to understand or care about it is baffling.

If you like massive amounts of Wikipedia styled lore, Concord has you covered. 

Where Concord shines is in its first-person shooter gameplay. It’s fast, chaotic, and challenging. Despite some truly awful character designs, most of the characters play well and have distinct playstyles. For example, Teo appeals to those who enjoy Call of Duty-style FPS gameplay, while Kyps is all about stealth. There's a good variety in character gameplay, so most players will likely find someone they enjoy playing as.

Some levels have striking vistas but that doesn't matter if the levels aren't fun to play around in

However, the level design is lackluster. If someone asked me to name my favorite level, I wouldn’t be able to do much more than vaguely describe "the one with the crates and the glowing thing in the middle." Hero shooters succeed when you become invested not just in the characters but in the levels as well. Remember how exciting it was in Overwatch to play on a mini Las Vegas level or a deserted cowboy western level? Concord has none of that. Its levels are bland and uninspired, all feeling fundamentally the same, even if the color palettes differ. Like the characters, the levels seem to just exist without any continuity in art style or memorable locations. They all blend together, making it difficult to learn or distinguish one level from another.

The character design is just kind lame 

Matchmaking is also concerning. While Steam data should be taken with a grain of salt, as of this writing, Concord hasn’t even reached a peak of 1,000 players. Currently, only 248 people are playing on Steam. If you’re on PC and want to play against other PC players only, you’ll face match wait times of 5-10 minutes. You have to enable crossplay to fill player slots with PS5 players, but the low player count leads to matches where everyone has poor connections. From the recent players I’ve fought, most were from the US, and since I’m based in Europe, it results in a poor performance experience.

Most matches on PC are against PS5 players

On PC, the game’s performance is erratic. My 5900X with a 6800 XT GPU should be more than enough to run the game smoothly, but regardless of the settings, the game runs poorly, fluctuating between 150 FPS and 45 FPS within seconds. This sluggishness is one of the reasons I don’t want to keep playing it more right now. I haven't encountered any major bugs or glitches, and in general the game feels and looks like it's been launched in a solid state. Although, i did experience an fun little glitch where the game decided to unlock everything in the game. Unfortunately it was just a glitch and i ultimately did not have everything unlocked. 

The game is literally causing me motion sickness. I contacted Firewalk support, and they suggested that the issue might be related to region or server problems. Being in Europe, I’m consistently matched with players from the US, which could be contributing to the game’s sluggish performance.

Concord isn’t a bad game, but its pricing is way off for the market it’s competing in. The game modes lack excitement, the characters struggle to be likable, and the level design is bland. However, it’s a solid first-person multiplayer shooter with intense and occasionally excellent combat.

Given the low player interest, I can only recommend Concord to those who are okay with spending $40 and willing to take the risks mentioned here. I will continue to play Concord for at least a week or two, just to see where the game lands both with players but also to see how the completely nonsensical story might evolve, and will update my first impressions at some point.