Sony PlayStation’s 2024 State of Play opened with a first comprehensive look at Concord and its gameplay. It’s crucial for me to add context here: I’d never heard of Concord before the showcase, or if I had, what I’d heard or seen hadn’t been memorable enough to stick in my memory. I didn’t realise right off the bat that it was part of PlayStation’s slate of live-service titles, which set me up for a day-ruining disappointment.

The opening cinematic immediately grabbed my attention. The decidedly Guardians of the Galaxy-inspired dynamic and characters made me sit up straight the moment they started talking to each other. It felt very obviously derivative in its character design and humour, yes – on Twitter, people were jokingly calling it ‘legally distinct’ Guardians of the Galaxy – but I was looking at a cinematic that put an Asian woman front and centre, made me chuckle, was well-acted and visually beautiful, and even looked a little like Star Wars, which I always love.

But something started to feel off just a minute and a half into the trailer. It was clear that two teams were competing for the same objective, securing something called a ‘Blue Buddy’. As a firefight started between the two teams, one character launched herself into the air and shot a member of the other team. It began to dawn on me that this wasn’t a heist game like I’d initially suspected, but a shooter. That’s fine, I reassured myself – I was invested enough in this story to at least give it a shot, as long as the story was good.

And then the gameplay trailer started to run, and I realised I wasn’t looking at a single-player game at all, but a 5v5 team shooter Overwatch-like. This is going to sound very dramatic, but I felt something inside me crumple. I’d just seen the first new IP to intrigue me in a long time, allowed myself to get excited about it, and then realised that it was just Overwatch with extra steps. Some of the maps we saw characters fighting on even looked like Overwatch maps, with some of their skills looking eerily familiar.

I’ve done my time in Overwatch. Like countless others, I’m trying to free myself from the clutches of endless live-service games. Who even wants this?

I couldn’t wrap my mind around it. It felt like Sony was laughing in our faces - mine specifically. To offer me a setting that actually piqued my interest and then reveal that I could only learn about them through ‘brief cinematic vignettes’ that premiere weekly in-game made me want to scream into a pillow.

Does the game look fun? Sure, I guess, but you know what would have been way more fun? This same premise, but with a single-player story campaign that gave me a reason to care about these characters and see them grow, without having to lock myself into yet another live-service game that will probably try to sneakily take my money. I had no expectations of Concord, and didn’t even know it existed, yet somehow it still managed to be the State of Play’s biggest disappointment.

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Concord

FPS Systems 3.0/5 1.0/10 OpenCritic Reviews Top Critic Avg: 64/100 Critics Rec: 23% Released August 23, 2024 ESRB t Developer(s) Firewalk Studios Publisher(s) Sony Interactive Entertainment Engine Unreal Engine 5
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WHERE TO PLAY

DIGITAL

Concord is an upcoming FPS from Firewalk Studios, part of the PlayStation Studios family. A PvP multiplayer title, it is slated for launch on both PS5 and PC in 2024.

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