In August, Sony is releasing Concord, a new hero shooter that is very reminiscent of Overwatch. However, MeinMMO editor Dariusz thinks the game still needs to improve a lot before its release.
Sony is the publisher of a completely new game called Concord. It’s a hero shooter with a total of 16 different characters, all of whom have different weapons and abilities. The gameplay is very reminiscent of Overwatch, and not just because it’s colorful.
The abilities of the individual heroes could have been created by Blizzard:
You probably understand what I’m getting at. Here’s a trailer:
Sony shows first gameplay of the new PvP shooter Concord
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Last weekend, an open beta ran on Steam and PS5. So I tested the shooter for a few hours and got a first impression.
This isn’t going to be a detailed review, I just didn’t play the game long enough for that – but I didn’t want to keep playing either. After about 4 hours I had had enough and I knew: I wasn’t having fun in Concord.
Too fast release, even faster death
One of the biggest issues was performance. I played the Concord beta with friends and we all experienced FPS drops when there was a lot going on on the screen: when multiple heroes were spamming their abilities. These drops were so strong that the game would stall for a moment.
Spamming skills shouldn’t really be a problem. Overwatch and Valorant do it brilliantly. The last time I had FPS drops like in Concord was in Starfield when I entered Akila City on the highest settings. In a PvP shooter, that’s a no-go – especially since we’re not using outdated systems.
In my opinion, the release of the hero shooter comes too early, as the game will be released on PS5, Steam and the Epic Games Store on August 23rd. The performance in particular showed me that a lot still has to happen before the release.
If Concord doesn’t improve performance quickly, the shooter will die within a week – after all, the game costs a whopping 40 euros and Steam buyers can probably easily complain about the game within 2 hours.
The performance was bad, but I generally didn’t have fun
In Concord, no hero completely convinced me. There were three that I enjoyed to some extent. I liked:
That’s it. Of the 16 heroes, I thought 3 were okay. But none of them were as much fun as Ana, Soldier 76, Kiriko or Bastion in Overwatch. And those are just a few of the heroes that I find much more fun in OW2 than all of the heroes from Concord.
That is the hard truth. Concord will inevitably compete with Overwatch, whether they want to or not, and my first impression is that OW2 wins the comparison by a wide margin. Considering the purchase price of Concord, things are looking pretty bleak for the new title.
Concord wastes potential in gunplay
The game isn’t a complete disaster. The gunplay actually has potential. I enjoyed playing the soldier with the assault rifle because the weapon was actually fun. It has a good scope and kind of reminded me of Destiny when shooting. And if there’s one thing Destiny does really well, it’s the gunplay.
Concord could be so good if it relied much more on gunplayif they had more of these normal weapons in the game. Instead, they are very much based on Overwatch and have flying heroes with grenade launchers, throwing knives and slow tanks with shotguns and miniguns.
My review of Concord is of course extremely subjective and other players may like the gameplay, but I would have been happy if we had gotten more regular assault rifles, more Destiny gunplay and maybe the option to slide, rather than a second Overwatch 2.
If I want to play Overwatch, I play Overwatch and don’t buy Concord for 40 euros.