Live-service games are some of the biggest gambles in the AAA gaming space. For every Apex Legends, Fortnite, or Overwatch, another dozen rise and fall with the tide. Sony’s Concord ($39.99) is the latest to vie for your attention. Although it appears Overwatch-like in design, the 5v5 hero shooter has more in common with Destiny 2 and Halo Infinite, with satisfying first-person shooter mechanics and traditional Team Deathmatch and objective game types. But being reminiscent—and perhaps even too derivative—of those free-to-play shooters is to Concord’s detriment, as the game struggles to define itself within the genre or to warrant its price. Origin, Characters, and LoreConcord is a game that couldn’t have arrived at a worse time. The product of a prolonged development cycle of roughly eight years, Concord was met with a tepid response after its reveal during May 2024’s State of Play. “Games as a service” (or GaaS) business models are now the industry’s dirty words due to live-service games being canceled mere months after their release. As single-player games captured the attention of larger audiences, Concord’s intended base was less likely to invest their time and money into what appeared to be a cross between Overwatch and Guardians of the Galaxy.
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Yet here we are. The sci-fi-themed Concord arrives packed with rich, lengthy lore. It sees you play as one of the Freegunners aboard the Northstar ship, a crew consisting of a ragtag group of misfits, outcasts, mercenaries, and adventurers looking to build a reputation. Concord leans into the Guardians of the Galaxy vibes early on, with an opening cutscene filled with quirky archetypes and character designs that seem inspired by the MCU movies and the 2021 video game.
(Credit: Sony Interactive Entertainment/ PCMag)
Concord’s characters don’t inspire, titillate, or even look particularly cool. Coupled with Sony’s trademark hyper-realistic graphics, the characters’ lack of style and, well, character, clashes with Concord’s otherwise strong art direction. You can tell Sony threw money at this project. The game looks great, especially on our Alienware AW3225QF 4K QD-OLED monitor, which deftly contrasts the color palette against the inky blackness of space. It makes the bland character designs feel even flatter.
It’s a sinful case of pride to release a shooter with so much lore. I don’t even care about the lore in games I like, so my eyes rolled back in my head upon seeing textbook-length backstories for each of the 16 generic sci-fi characters. Concord also has weekly vignettes that expand the world and characters, but they’ve failed to capture my interest so far. However, it’s hard to come down too hard on the vignettes, because we’re only at week two of what will be months of story.
(Credit: Sony Interactive Entertainment/ PCMag)
Concord’s Classes and UnlockablesCalling Concord an Overwatch clone is disingenuous, though it’s an Overwatch-inspired title. Each hero serves a role—tanks, healers, and support—as you’d expect, but Concord stirs the hero shooter pot with the introduction of Crew Bonuses.Each hero has a cool passive ability that benefits the whole crew and can be stacked atop other members’ abilities. For example, a character with the Haunt Crew bonus grants improved squad mobility, while another with the Technician bonus delivers faster reloads. Concord has six bonuses spread across 16 characters, making the overall team composition an important factor.
(Credit: Sony Interactive Entertainment/ PCMag)
Similarly, each character comes equipped with a passive skill. In an unusual move, the passive character skills aren’t bound to the characters. By unlocking hero variants, you can have different character traits for the same hero. For example, Teo Variant 1 offers faster mobility, while Teo Variant 2 has additional ammo and grenades.I like the variants concept, as they demand different playstyles depending on the perk. However, the variants don’t look much different from one another. The two I unlocked were just color-palette swaps, which feels like another missed opportunity to add some seasoning to this sauceless shooter.Speaking of cosmetics, Sony plans to keep unlocks free, so Concord lacks a battle pass or in-game currencies. However, the easily attainable cosmetics are awful. They’re color palette swaps and tiny charms that you can barely see on your gun. That said, each character has one costume that looks significantly different from the others, but it’s locked behind a level grind. Completed matches level up your character and overall reputation rank, so you must commit to a Freegunner for a while before seeing interesting fits. You can’t track your unlocks, but you’re constantly being rewarded—even if the rewards aren’t the best.
(Credit: Sony Interactive Entertainment/ PCMag)
Satisfying Gunplay, Long Queue TimesMy gripes aside, there’s no denying that the action is pretty enjoyable. Guns and abilities pack a punch. The heroes are a mix of familiar and fresh abilities. 1-Off, the trash-loving robot, sucks up projectiles to build trash bombs for big damage. Lark, a living fungus, leaves spores behind to buff friends and harm foes. It-Z, one of my favorite characters, is an SMG-wielding lizard lady who gives herself a damage buff by bouncing an orb off an opponent and back to her. The 12 available maps are well-designed and attractive. I may have an issue with the character designs, but Concord’s levels, UI, and just about everything else look really good.The action is spread across three different game types with two different modes. There’s Brawl, your standard team deathmatch game type; Overrun, which hosts the objective-based modes; and Rivalry, the no-respawn mode that mimics Counter-Strike’s bomb-defusal mode. There’s also a firing range, solo training, and a time trial mode if you’re flying solo. Concord keeps you on your toes by cycling levels and modes each round.
(Credit: Sony Interactive Entertainment/ PCMag)
The Rivalry game type is Concord’s most compelling mode. Every time your team takes a round, it loses the winning Freegunner. This forces your squad to play other characters. You can customize a “deck,” building a custom roster of primary and backup Freegunners, including variants. This is a cool idea. Unfortunately, Rivalry mode has the longest queue times, with matchmaking searching for up to five minutes between games.Unlike Helldivers 2, which endured brutal queue times because of an unexpected explosion of success, Concord doesn’t have enough people playing. With a brutally low Steam peak player count of 697 players on launch day that makes Suicide Squad look like a smash hit, Concord’s launch attracted little fanfare. Bad actors on Twitter/X want you to believe it was Black Myth: Wukong’s launch or the inclusion of character pronouns that spelled disaster for Concord, but it’s simply a failure to read shifting industry trends.
(Credit: Sony Interactive Entertainment/ PCMag)
There’s always room for improvement, as even popular games like Final Fantasy XIV and Rainbow Six: Siege recovered from disastrous launches. Still, I wonder how much better things can get for the shooter unless Sony tosses it on PlayStation Plus or makes it a free-to-play title.On the upside, Concord will have at least two seasons of free content, with the first arriving in October. (It will include new maps, modes, vignettes, and characters.) Cross-Platform Play and PerformanceIn a nice touch, Concord offers cross-play and cross-progression between PlayStation 5 and PC. If you game on PC, you must create a PlayStation account to play, but syncing up with Sony players is seamless once you do. Concord runs well on PlayStation 5, delivering 60 frames per second for much of my playtime. Occasionally, the game buckles when too many visual effects pop off at once. Shortly after booting the game up, I noticed stuttering during cutscenes, but nothing game-breaking. Please note that Concord requires a constant internet connection and offers no offline mode.Verdict: A Bland Hero ShooterConcord is a decent shooter with rock-solid mechanics and AAA visuals, but that’s not enough to attract an audience to yet another live-service game. As is, it’s a fine release, albeit one that feels like it was pumped out of a boardroom algorithm. If you’ve got $40 to spare and aren’t hung up by comparisons to similar shooters (like the free-to-play Destiny 2, Valorant, and the upcoming Marvel Rivals), Concord is a fun time, flaws and all.Want in-depth video game discussion? Visit PCMag’s Pop-Off YouTube Channel.
PS5 vs Xbox Series X/S: We Review the Next-Gen Consoles
Concord (for PlayStation 5)
Pros
Fun gunplay and abilities
Cool mechanics add gameplay depth
Supports cross-play and cross-progression
Free content updates
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The Bottom Line
Concord is a hero shooter with satisfying gunplay and some good ideas, but it doesn’t do enough to stand out from the competition.
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About Zackery Cuevas
Analyst, Hardware
I’m an Analyst and ISF-certified TV calibrator focused on reviewing computer accessories, laptops, gaming monitors, and video games. I’ve been writing, playing, and complaining about games for as long as I remember, but it wasn’t until recently that I’ve been able to shout my opinions directly at a larger audience. My work has appeared on iMore, Windows Central, Android Central, and TWICE, and I have a diverse portfolio of editing work under my belt from my time spent at Scholastic and Oxford University Press. I also have a few book-author credits under my belt—I’ve contributed to the sci-fi anthology Under New Suns, and I’ve even written a Peppa Pig book.
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