Concord
Firewalk Studios
Join the crew of the Northstar and assemble your team of Freegunner space outlaws for thrilling 5v5 PVP modes across the galaxy. From powerful mystics to skilled gunslingers and helpful healers, each Freegunner brings their own unique skills that cater to a wide-range of playstyles!
Concord is a brand new 5v5 hero shooter releasing on August 23rd, we’ve had the chance to play both open beta and giving us a great impression of Firewalk Studio’s upcoming game.
You’ll join the kick ass crew of the Northstar to become a space outlaw Freegunner. This quirky team of mercenaries travel across the galaxy in search of high-stake jobs and compete with other Freegunners. Concord will have an ongoing narrative that will be updated weekly through cinematics that show the characters outside of the gameplay, and you’ll discover each character own backstories and personal character arcs.
There are 16 playable characters at launch, and more are expected to be added later. Each character brings unique skills and abilities to the game, with gunslingers, healers, robots, mystics and more to create custom squads of Freegunners. Players can swap between characters between rounds, and some modes let you swap on respawn too. Completing matches will give you XP and eventually allow you to unlock unique modifiers to customise your playstyle further. It also unlocks new character cosmetics, backgrounds, game lore and more. Concord lets you customise characters to suit your preferred playstyle.
Pros
16 quirky lovable heroes
Characters customisation options
6 modes at launch
Respawn and no-respawn gamemodes
Developing story with weekly cinematics
Cross-play with PC and PS5
Cons
Needs a PSN account
High time to kill
$40 price point
Concord is a 5v5 focused PVP game with six modes to move between, and the developers will probably be making changes after release, too. One confirmed mode is Cargo Run, a no-response mode where teams must retrieve and plant the Blue Buddy robot package delivery system and then protect it from the rival team to win. There’s also a respawn-based mode called Trophy Hunt, where players need to take down specific enemy team members to earn points for the team.
Every game mode is slightly different, and the difficulty level varies naturally. However, the number of game modes does split the player base quite a bit, so waiting times during open beta could be high at certain times of the day. It’s unclear how this will affect Concord at full release in August.
Concord offers progression even if you lose a match. Playing and completing the daily or weekly challenges from the Job Board will allow you to unlock new items for characters and narrative content. Every game offers rewarding progression, which makes casual play much more enjoyable. At the same time, Concord’s gamemodes should appeal to competitive gamers too!
In conclusion, after the playing both beta test weekends I’m pleasantly surprised. Queenie and I are both hoping Concord will win over its free-to-play competitor hero shooter games. Firewalk Studios have already taken onboard community feedback of removing the battle pass system and Concord will be receiving plenty of post-launch updates that will add new maps and abilities to the game along with new characters and brand new cinematic storylines each week – but will it win over the PSN account protestors?