Concord Closed Beta PS5 (First Impressions)
Concord is the recently announced, online, multiplayer hero-shooter by Firewalk Studios and published by Sony. This weekend, ahead of the August 23rd release a short beta for pre-order customers took place.
My first impressions of the Concord beta weren’t great. In fact, they were bad. I initially chose to take part in the beta on the PC version via Steam. The game didn’t work on PC until toward the very end of the beta. Within 30 seconds of launching, it would crash straight back to the desktop, with nothing but a generic Unreal Engine error.
The issue was widespread, reported en-masse on Steam and X (formerly Twitter), with seemingly no acknowledgment from Firewalk or Sony. Thankfully, the PS5 version seemed to be largely unaffected, so the vast majority of my time with the beta took place on that platform.
The Concord beta featured several modes of play, ranging from a bog-standard Team Deathmatch style mode and Trophy Hunt, Concord’s equivalent of Kill Confirmed. To no respawn, objective-based modes that took place over several rounds.
All of the 16 heroes were available during the beta. The characters are all visually distinct from one another and have mostly unique abilities and weapons. There’s a little overlap with some, but no two heroes are alike. Each hero fills a battlefield role based on their characteristics. Some are damage-soaking sponges, designed to fit into the tank position. Others are better at harassing the enemy, as well as straight-forward damage dealing, heavy hitters.
Each team of five can only have one of each hero, so as with other shooters of this type, it’s important to take note of your teammate’s choices and pick accordingly to employ the most effective team synergy possible.
This is all going to sound very familiar to anyone who’s played Overwatch, or pretty much any other team-based hero shooter for that matter.
As for the gameplay itself, I’m a little mixed on it. Weapons generally feel nice to use. They mostly all have satisfying sounds and animations and typically have some impact when fired. On the other hand, I felt like some of the abilities that each character has were a little bland in this respect and while integral to the gameplay, didn’t feel that fun to use most of the time.
There are exceptions, of course. Roka, the character I ended up using most throughout the beta, uses a rapid firing, missile launcher for a weapon and is paired with a jetpack and ground blasting move as abilities. The latter felt fantastic when used, diving bombing your character into a group of enemies, inflicting big damage, and causing carnage.
Movement speed is surprisingly slow. Characters feel very heavy and sluggish, even when sprinting it feels like everyone is running through tar. I adjusted to this throughout the weekend, but it didn’t feel great at any point. It wasn’t an issue at any point when playing the game, it just seemed off, as if the game should be faster.
Maps feel like they’re designed with higher mobility than exists, too. The maps available during the beta were all relatively uninspired and boring boxy layouts connected by narrow corridors. None were particularly visually interesting, which is a shame, because Concord is fantastic in that department. Both of a character design level and just the overall level of fidelity. It’s a very good-looking game, that also ran perfectly on PS5 and never dipped below 60fps as far as I could tell.
It’s going to be interesting to see if anything changes when the game is released at the end of August. It may sound like I’ve been quite negative on Concord after the beta, but I’m cautiously optimistic about the full game. A few small tweaks could transform it into a powerhouse of the genre.
If you’re interested in checking out Concord for yourself an open beta takes place on PC and PS5 from July 18 – 21 and the full game is set to release on August 23rd.
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