Concord review - An interstellar crash and burn

Ever since its reveal, PlayStation's Concord has not received the warmest of reception from gamers. From the bizarre character designs to bog-standard gameplay, early impressions suggested that developer Firewalk Studios's 5v5 FPS multiplayer was certainly never going to win any awards for the "most standout new game of 2024".

While I do not enjoy being the bearer of bad news, I fear that the general consensus about the game has been right. Here is our full review of Concord following its launch on PS5 and PC.

Become one of the Freegunners in Concord

The humor just doesn't stick (Image via Sony Interactive Entertainment)

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Before we dive into the disappointing aspects, let's start from the top. What is Concord? It is a sci-fi multiplayer game inspired by iconic media franchises like Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy. This influence is pretty evident from the get-go as the players are greeted by a lengthy intro cinematic cutscene detailing the premise of the title.

As a hero shooter, the game aims to lend life to its characters. While the crisp presentation partly succeeds at this, the poor attempts at humor and forgettable writing do not; which is a sign of things to come.

Players will play as one of the Freegunners - mercenaries across all corners and variants of the universe - who compete for dominance in heated skirmishes across various maps.

There are a total of 16 heroes in Concord, each with unique weapons, abilities, and passives, and each encompasses the familiar Tank/DPS/Support role. That said, players expecting the complexity of Overwatch heroes should temper their expectations; each hero only has two abilities and one dodge, the latter of which is finicky to pull off on PC in the heat of combat as it is tied to the sprint button.

The game boasts a diverse cast of heroes to choose from (Image via Sony Interactive Entertainment)

That said, my go-to pick was Haymar, the sharp captain of the Freegunners who wields a crossbow and can launch a wall of fire. She is easily the most mobile Freegunner of the bunch and also one of the easiest to use, so expect to see at least one Haymar in a match. As for the gameplay, this aspect is well done too; the developer Firewalk is made up of talent across various iconic studios, such as Bungie and Respawn.

As a result, the gunplay and movement will feel most reminiscent of Activision's Destiny games. Combat and the sound design that accompanies it is crunchy, no matter which of the varied game modes players choose, like capturing the most tags from downed foes or holding capture points.

The TDM mode in Concord (Image via Sony Interactive Entertainment)

Next are the character designs. Some heroes are just outright better than others while some feel super-frustrating to use. As a Widowmaker fan, the first hero I tried in my debut match was the sniper-wielding Vale. Unfortunately, not only are most maps unintuitive for a sniper due to the right angles and short corridors, but her main gun's damage is also shoddy. What is worse is that it is a single shot, requiring reloading after firing each bullet.

Unlike many other heroes, she does not have good mobility and while she does have a sidearm to help her deal with closed-range situations, that might as not exist due to the horribly low damage it dishes out. This makes her a sitting duck when caught. Another example is IT-Z who wields an SMG and can teleport by launching an orb; think Sombra's Translocator from Overwatch, except it moves slowly and bounces around so it can be hard to hit it right in the heat of action.

On the flip side, there are some fun picks. Lennox is a revolver-totting gunslinger who deals consistent damage while also being able to heal himself. As a whole, the characters are a mixed bag and it is hard to shake off the feeling that Concord was designed with playing on a controller in mind.

A tangled mess of progression and balance

These lore entries also grant XP (Image via Sony Interactive Entertainment)

Concord goes further downhill from there. Let's start with its obvious GOTG influence; multiplayer games with lore aren't uncommon these days, with Apex Legends and Overwatch being prime examples. Unfortunately, after the initial cutscene, Concord prefers to relegate its world-building to heavy text expositions under the Guardian's Guide tab of the main menu.

This is the perfect way to turn players away from learning more about your game's lore. This is because outside of this, the game does nothing to acknowledge any sort of character lore or interactivity - like Overwatch character banter during matches. Like many elements discussed thus far, this is another in the list of half-hearted aspects of Concord.

On the bright side, this is a paid game so it does not feature a shop or microtransactions of any kind. Even a Battle Pass is nowhere to be seen. Instead, players complete challenges via in-match objectives (like doing a specified amount of damage or healing) as described on the Job Board, and these, in turn, grant cosmetic rewards as players earn XP to finish those "Jobs".

Users will also earn skins for completing matches and while they are nowhere as spectacular as some Overwatch skins, each hero's parts like armor, weapon charms, etc can be customized. Concord goes a step further and introduces a mechanic called Variants; these are the same heroes fans will become familiar with but boast slightly different perks.

Challenge complete (Image via Sony Interactive Entertainment)

The elephant in the room is the fact that obtaining each Variant requires grinding a ton of XP. Making matters worse, these Variants cannot simply be equipped on the character selection screen; players must set up a roster under the Crew Builder option. This is where the most unique yet wasted aspect of Concord comes in: Crew Bonuses.

Setting up a Crew will generate different bonuses depending on the members in the crew and swapping characters in a match is a good way to mixup and stack these bonuses. This is also why Concord brings up the character selection menu each time you die. However, this mechanic is too tedious for the average casual player to care about and will be brushed under the rug in favor of traditional run-and-gun methods.

Even if players do find a hero they want to stick with, most matches will boil down to running around as headless chickens for the most part. Concord only has a few support-class heroes and without role selection included, there will be matches where your team will not have any means of healing outside of the stationary healing spots located around a map.

The health pickups are on cooldowns and without any auto-HP regen mechanic, many TDM (Team Death Match) maps turn into a slog.

Graphics, performance, and sound

Concord runs on Unreal Engine 5 (Image via Sony Interactive Entertainment)

For all its issues, Concord is a pretty-looking game with a vibrant color palette and detailed character models and environments. It's just a shame that character designs range from forgettable to downright ugly. 1-Off looks like a walking trashcan with a vacuum gun while DaVeers has a see-through bucket on their head. At least the sound design is crunchy, as players blast their guns and abilities into each other.

The maps, while well-detailed, can be far too big and devolve into a jumbled mess of boring corridors and hallways. When it comes to performance, however, things simply jump off a cliff. Concord was reviewed on a PC, more specifically a laptop, with the following specifications:

CPU: Intel Core i7-12650H
RAM: 16 GB
GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti (8 GB)
SSD: 1 TB

I'm not sure if this is just my rig, but I could not for the life of me even get close to a stable 60 FPS - this is despite running it at 1440p at the Low preset with Nvidia DLSS Performance mode active. Rather, average performance hovered around 30-45 FPS, with sharp dips into the low-mid 20s whenever a lot was going on, like multiple explosions or effects. Given Concord's multiplayer nature, I had a miserable time playing it.

No matter what resolution or graphics settings I set it to, the performance did not improve to a noticeable degree, and updating the drivers did not help either. This same system is more than capable of holding a rock-solid 165 FPS on Overwatch 2 at the same resolution while the latest Unreal Engine 5 talk-of-the-town Black Myth Wukong has no issues hitting 60-70 FPS at 1440p High with FSR and Frame Generation.

Concord is also a UE5 title, so this is just an embarrassing turnout. Making matters worse, two of my colleagues couldn't even log into Concord as proceeding past the PSN Login screen was met with an "Oxygen 5" connection error. This is the Digital Deluxe Edition of the game which granted 72-hour early access before launch so I have no clue what's going on.

It should also be noted that a PlayStation account is required to play Concord even on PC, so this will likely be a dealbreaker for many PC players.

In conclusion

There are more downs than ups for Concord to be a recommendation (Image via Sony Interactive Entertainment)

Contrary to popular opinion, Concord does have some good things going for it; unfortunately, they are all quickly engulfed by the quicksand that is a weirdly balanced and designed roster, bland maps, a convoluted Crew system, and an uninteresting progression system. The rough PC performance has been a woe for many players since the beta a month ago as well and it is disheartening to see it rear its head still.

If these issues persist post-launch, I fear Concord is done for; not that the hefty $40 price tag of the base game didn't threaten to do that already. After all, why would anyone spend 40 bucks on a mediocre package when superior free-to-play multiplayer shooters such as Overwatch 2, Apex Legends, and Counter-Strike 2 dominate the market right now?

In fact, Blizzard's 5v5 hero shooter just entered its Season 12, while NetEase Games is prepping for the launch of Marvel Rivals later this year. Concord hasn't even had its Season 1 yet and I already feel like the game will not be able to bear the grunt of its mishaps on top of the weight of its competition. That is unless PlayStation puts this half-baked turkey back into the oven to let it cook further.