Concord First Hands-On: Plenty of Balancing Left to Go, and Not Much Time – IGN

While I enjoyed my time in the limited hands-on preview overall, I have several concerns for the longevity of Concord and what it has to offer. Concord’s meat-and-potatoes formula is a pretty standard 5v5 set up, with two teams choosing their preferred character before diving into an objective-based team battle.

During the preview, I was able to play three of six modes that will be available at launch: Trophy Hunt, Cargo Run, and Clash Point. Trophy Hunt was the only one that featured respawns in the match and was basically Kill Confirmed team deathmatch.

Cargo Run, meanwhile, was a single-life match where the objective was to run to the center, steal a Blue Buddy package and plant it at one of two sites. If planted, the enemy team could go and stand on the package to diffuse it and take it back. And finally, Clash Point was a round-based single-life game mode with the objective being to control the only capture zone in the entire map multiple times to get the victory.

The single-life modes were tough to warm up on while still getting to know the game, as failure obviously means you’re out of the action for a bit. And while Concord is a fairly straightforward FPS, I have a core criticism a mere two months from its August 23 launch: in the build I played, the movement felt extremely floaty and required a bit of time to get used to. This is exacerbated by the fact that each Freerunner character you can play has a unique set of movement and skills they bring to the team, so each time you swap to a new character, you’re then attempting to learn and configure your brain to how they work. So you can imagine that it gets a bit disorienting.

And while Concord will be released on PC day and date with PS5, I was only able to preview this on the PS5 with a controller, and so with that in mind, I’d say the movement is heavily reminiscent of Destiny and Halo. Again, it is incredibly floaty, which could be a fun element if it is done well. However, the way the preview build felt, the feather-light jumps and hang time really did not match the amount of fast-paced fights that could occur at any time in the matches.

While Halo does utilize a similar floaty jump mechanic, the rest of the mechanics and gameplay in Halo justify that reasoning and do not make it feel like the odd element out. Grenades also feel light when lobbed through the air, the various abilities in Halo all have the same weight and cadence to them, and the match pacing reflects the balancing between the base game mechanics. Players in Halo, even in competitive ranked matches, do heal over time after avoiding taking damage for a while.

Similarly, Destiny is a game that’s more PvE related and thus does not need the incredibly snappy mechanics that Halo or Concord need in PvP fights. Even in the PvP fights in Destiny, the usual TTK is slower since the fights can be drawn out due to the different class abilities allowing for slower or faster play, depending on how players choose to engage (i.e. more directly or more reserved). Each class also has different movement capabilities and healing abilities that ensure match pacing stays consistent throughout.

So the problem in Concord, at least in this preview version, is that it takes little pieces from games like Halo and Destiny and mixes them together in a formula that doesn’t quite come together for me as of yet. Concord actually utilizes the same type of dodge animation from Destiny that pulls you out in third person. While I liked this element in Destiny, in Concord it doesn’t quite work because there’s a brief-but-noticeable delay between your input of the dodge and the actual deployment. This can make or break your life since timing is everything in competitive play and a single hesitation, or simulated hesitation through the delayed input, can punish you greatly.

Sony says there will be twelve total maps at launch, so perhaps some of the game modes will feel better paced and optimized on the others when spread out. But the way things stand currently, most maps felt very oddly misshapen. Some lanes were too long or big and barely saw rotations while the second lane in another map would just feel entirely too small and cause prolonged team fights due to its claustrophobic size.

Concord touts its competitive nature and fast-paced fights. I love all of that but found that the competitiveness risks being unwelcoming to new players attempting to learn the game because most of the game modes are single-life-focused.

It’s important to note that even if you are an incredible player, Concord is not a game that allows for many 1v2 fights to be won. Unlike a game of Apex or Halo where you can potentially outsmart your opponents and win in 1v2 scenarios, Concord is so heavily a team game that you’re not able to succeed if you’re on your own. While this is the point of team FPS games, it’s pretty punishing for modes like Trophy Hunt where you’re encouraged to go off and get kills for the objective.

Another reason these lopsided matchups are impossible to win is the fact that each character in Concord has their own health pool and hitbox. This would be fine if these characters had your traditional classes, but Concord doesn’t utilize your typical class system. Usually, each class has their own health stats that you can expect each character in that label to have.

Concord Gameplay Trailer Screenshots – State of Play 2024