I’ve always thought there was something presumptuous about hero shooters.
Concord review
Sure, Blizzard got away with it back in 2016.
Second, Overwatch was a masterclass in mascot manufacture.
Sadly, neither of these things are the case with Concord.
In its broad strokes, Concord is a thoroughly adequate multiplayer shooter.
But from the moment the character select screen opens on your first match, something feels off.
Frankly though, I think the problem with Concord’s characters can be more acutely diagnosed through their names.
Overwatch is a useful reference point here.
Even Overwatch’s less determinist names are carefully selected.
Now compare these to Concord’s names.
Teo, Roka, Haymar, Jabali, Daveers.
But when it comes to heroes, it’s not exactly Spider-Man).
Not all the names are quite so terrible.
But most of them are just vague and distinctly unheroic.
Nominative determinism might be poor writing practice in a literary novel or an RPG.
One of Concord’s heroes is simply called ‘Daw’.
That’s not a name, Firewalk!
Between their limp names and weird looks, Concord’s heroes just come off as a bit lame.
This is deeply unfortunate, because some of them are pretty darned fun to play.
Roka, for example, quickly became my first choice.
IT-Z has a delightfully devious ability to create a clone of herself while teleporting to another location.
One of the most interesting characters is Lark.
From a mechanical perspective at least, these characters feel like they’ve been thought about a lot.
There’s also a lot of scope for shaking up a fight by changing characters mid-match.
Yet not every hero is quite so well thought out.
None of it really fits.
My least favourite character is Teo, a bog-standard soldier who wields an assault rifle and throws grenades.
He feels like the product of a memo from corporate that read “Must addCall of Dutycharacter.”
I really hate it when games like this pander to the CoD crowd.
Take their blasted M4A1 away and make them bloodylearn.
Of the 16 available heroes, 10-12 of them are mechanically interesting to play as.
Roughly half of those are appealing characters.
It may seem unfair to fixate on these more aesthetic issues.
But they’re impossible to ignore because they’re a fundamental part of Concord’s USP.
Or at least, the closest it gets to having one.
Without a banger selection of heroes out of the gate, there’s little else to set Concord apart.
The available game modes are all perfectly entertaining, but none of them are especially original.
The maps, too, are functionally fine, but thematically sterile considering how colourful the game is.
Robot Ruins is probably the most interesting, with the map scattered with the wreckage of giant automata.
Out of everything I saw in Concord, this is the design decision that annoyed me the most.
You have theinfinite canvas of the universeto paint on, and you build a map aroundshipping crates?
Concord 2 accessibility options
Subtitles on/off toggle.
High contrast text on/off.
Voice chat speech to text.
Weapon bob strength adjustments, auto move toggle, recentre camera option.
Adaptive trigger resistance (DualSense only), spoken dialogue to controller vibration option (DualSense only).
Feedback options for weapons and abilities, pickups, interact prompts, UI navigation, etc.
I suspect, therefore, we are yet to see Concord at its best.
There is also potential in the wider universe Firewalk has established.
There are also hints at the fringes of its animated map of interesting events to come.
The question now, given Concords allegedly poor uptake among players, is whether well get to see that.
I for one hope we do.
Concord may be a flawed game, but it is far from a hopeless one.
A copy of Concord was provided for review by Sony.
