Concord review: PlayStation's live-service experiment is just 'shooter design by committee'

It’s been hard to stay positive about Concord’s chances of success after a disastrous debut earlier this year, a beta that – while fun – struggled to capture enough players’ attention, and early access numbers that were worrying to say the least.

In fact, this review wasn’t ready last week because pretty much everyone that was already playing the game failed to find matches of its round-based mode, which is unlocked past a certain player level. That’s how rough it’s been out there. But hey, player numbers aside, is Concord actually fun and compelling as a competitive online shooter? Well, kind of. And that’s its biggest issue. Sometimes, everything clicks and results in something that might just have the juice needed to grow and evolve, but the true moments of joy are just far too rare.

Let’s address the elephant in the room first: Concord reportedly took eight flippin’ years to fully develop, which sounds absurd to me. Even at its best, and taking into account the lofty (and clearly unnecessary) production values on display, Concord isn’t huge. At launch, there are 16 characters, 12 maps, and 6 modes (in three totally separate playlists). On top of those, the ‘solo’ experience is limited to a practice range, a general tutorial, and five pretty basic time trials, all built with the same assets seen in the main multiplayer experience.

That statement clashes with the game we got, which isn’t meatier than a handful of F2P releases we’ve seen over the years in that same genre. There’s also the matter of all the effort, time, and money that were put into fleshing out all the characters, lore, and intricacies of the Concord universe. There’s an exquisitely well-presented Galactic Guide that updates regularly as you play; it’s jam-packed with stuff and walls of text that sci-fi sickos would appreciate... if this were a single-player odyssey (or at the very least, an ambitious co-op title). My personal theory? At some point, Concord was something else entirely, and it eventually got downsized into a by-the-numbers PvP shooter. The determined plan of having weekly high-quality cutscenes only reinforces that idea.

In any case, Concord is competent enough as a hero shooter. While I’m not as high on its formula as I was back in the beta days, a lot of iteration and internal testing clearly went into this game (eight years!) Each character is well-defined on a playable level, and the concept of stacking each one’s team-wide passives is an interesting twist that I wish played a larger role in team-building (Marvel Rivals is doing something far more ambitious with a similar idea).

However, I also agree with the sentiment that some characters who are meant to be more agile can often feel clunkier or heavier than they should, which is a shame, as gunplay is pretty damn solid across the board. I also believe the game feels better to play with the DualSense controller; PlayStation’s first-party PS5/PC releases do excel at making the most of the hardware, and Concord is no exception. Haptic feedback is great but not overdone, and I found myself sticking with it instead of disabling it right away like in recent Call of Duty entries.

The decision to take ultimate abilities entirely out of the equation is a bold one, adding more of a tactical, ‘work as a team’ feeling to the game, but it also causes the problem of snowballing being too strong unless the enemy team begins to falter on its own. It’s especially egregious in the TDM-like modes, where some characters are outright bad picks and it feels nearly impossible – even with a solid team build – to bounce back if the early-match performance isn’t there.

Maps, while visually stunning in most cases, are also a mixed bag. Some feel just right for the 5v5 size of battles and have arena-like layouts that work well, while others come across as remnants of old co-op maps reworked into PvP scenarios that are too big and lead to stray allies and enemies wandering aimlessly around. Given the development time, Concord often feels disjointed in spite of all the polish.

Perhaps the actual killing blow came from the characters themselves, which play well enough, but simply aren’t visually appealing in most cases, which is a huge problem if you’re trying to sell a hero shooter in 2024 (a daunting task in and of itself). This has nothing to do with whatever garbage the worst people we know are spewing out. Like 90% of the (admittedly colorful) cast lack distinct visual designs and feel like the result of focus-testing the game far too much. Ultimately, most Freegunners end up looking like aliens and humans that wandered into a cheap outer space thrift shop and came out wearing whatever. Sure, their Galactic Guide background info is cool and all, but most people won’t care.

When you’re in the middle of a match, all that mo-cap money and realistic lighting don’t matter. You won’t even notice them. You’ll notice the bland character designs though. A lot of work and care clearly went into them, but it feels like the whole thing was steamrolled by external input and market research based on information that last was relevant in like 2019.

Performance and graphics on PS5 are head-scratchers, too. 4K/60 appears to be the sole target, which is a strange decision given its competitive shooter nature. 2K (or even 1080p with upscaling) targeting 120 FPS seemed like a logical option to include, yet we’re stuck for now with an online game trying too hard to look realistic instead of as smooth as it can be (FPS drops do happen under certain circumstances). Along with a switch to a free-to-play model, I’m fully expecting a Performance Mode to come soon, too.

All these little flaws pile up the more you play Concord. There’s a good game under all the rubble and perplexing business decisions (such as not giving it out in PS Plus Extra), but why should you put up with all these frustrations when the game doesn’t a have distinct identity and there are better alternatives available for free right now?

Sure, Concord’s premium model over a nightmare FPS full of passes and paid skins sounded great on paper, but the package has to be enticing enough to warrant the purchase, and simply put, the juice isn’t there. A part of me wants it to find its audience and improve, but this is looking like another Suicide Squad situation.

Concord is out now on PS5 and PC. This review was written with a code provided by the publisher for the PS5 version of the game.