This past weekend we got our hands on Concord through the Closed Beta. This was a chance for us to experience the game first hand, check out the gameplay feel, the characters and the modes. Today I’m going to dive into my first impressions of Concord, and let you know what I thought about it, plus I’ve got some feedback for Firewalk Studios

Without any delay, lets dive into the Concord Beta.

Gameplay

The most important thing about these games is how it feels and the gameplay. I’m happy to say the game feels good, the gunplay feel is nice, and the traversal around the environments is quick and easy depending on your character. The gunplay feels snappy, plus the new control scheme is easy to understand and get to grips with.

I tried out every character during the beta, just to get a sense of the different characters plus their unique weapons and playstyles, then I went back and focused on a few I enjoyed the most. It’s quick to get into games, the HUD is clean and simple to understand, plus when you’re loading into matches you can pull up an info card related to weapons and abilities.

Weapons feel great, there’s a nice kick to the Hand Cannons, Auto Rifles, Pulse Rifles and even the rocket launchers or grenades. You can feel the pedigree in the developers and the experience they’ve had working on some of the top first person shooters in the industry. The foundations are solid, now they just have to build something on top to really help the core mechanics shine.

Gunplay is great fun right off the bat. However, Firewalk are doing some interesting things here with stacking buffs across characters. In other games like Overwatch you may want to main a certain character, here in Concord it feels like the developers want you to rotate around the characters, and perhaps not have a main, but a main group of characters you play often. For example, each character has a perk, it might be something like increased reload speed or increased weapon range. When you die, and you decide to pick another character, you’ll get another buff and these stack over the match time. Therefore players are incentivised to use multiple chaarcters. I do think this is a nice idea, and there’s a group of characters I like playing as, however, I don’t think it’s explained very well, and it could do with a tutorial.

Characters

There are loads of characters to choose from in Concord that cater for all types of players. I started out with Lennox, he’s got a couple of hand cannons, he can heal on command plus he has a grenade. Teo is your standard first person shooter character with an auto rifle. Star Child is similar to The Incredible Hulk, although he has a shotgun, and can run into a group of players and slam into them. Emari is plays the Tank role, she has a mini-gun plus can apply overshields to teammates and use a literal shield.

Vale is a Sniper with a jump ability to get her quickly into the air, then she can take precise sniper shots. Then you’ve got more interesting picks like Lark who appears to be some sort of Alien who uses plants to his advantage. For example, you can place down an item, then teleport back to it if you get in trouble. Itzy is a fast character with a SMG, plus her abiltiies include a teleport and a decoy dodge. I didn’t get as much time playing as her as it was towards the end of the beta, but she really stood out to me as one of the best.

This is just a selection of the characters, but theres a good amount of characters here, plus variety and going between them wasn’t too difficult. My favourites coming out of the beta include Lennox, Haymar, and Teo, and Itzy but I am sure that will shift over time. I didn’t think it was hard to learn new characters, it felt like a quick process because they’re not super in-depth. You have a weapon, sometimes a secondary weapon, two abilities and a dodge and that move set works across multiple characters, you simply have to adjust slightly.

One thing I’d like to see would be speeding up the big characters. They are too slow at the moment, and if you die you respawn back across the map away from the action and it takes an age to get back to help your team.

Game modes

I spent a lot of time in the non-competitive playlist playing Takedown and Trophy Hunt. These were the most fun game modes for me. Takedown is your standard Team Death Match mode, then you have Trophy Hunt which is similar to kill confirmed, or Survival from Destiny 2 where you have to kill an enemy and then pick up a tag. There’s a competitve playlist too which included Clash Point and Cargo Run. Clash point is where you have to defend a particular zone, then Cargo Run is similar to something you’d find in Overwatch. These are the game modes I would expect from a game like this and I like the variety of competitve and non-competitve.

One game mode that is missing in the Beta is a training mode, or any tutorial. I think there are plenty of good ideas here, decent character designs and players would really benefit from a tutorial or training mode or shooting range. While the characters are striking, they don’t communicate to me what they do with the short time I have to select a character, so it’d be good to try out a character in training before going into a match.

I would like to see more communication to the players about the features in the game. How the characters work, what weapons they have, abilities, how does the stacking perk system work, how does the crew builder work, what about the variants? These are all solid ideas, but if people don’t know about it, they aren’t going to use the features, and if they don’t use the features then they may enjoy the game less, and become less likely to come back and play again and again. Firewalk is going to want weekly active players, and for that they’re going to have to explain the benefits to the audience, and get them to the fun quickly. I understand that for the beta gameplay, maps and characters was most likely priority, but now I’d like to see some added extras to help players understand what Concord is and how it differentiates itself from the competition.

Maps

We had 3 maps to play on during the beta. All we maps had good sightlines, there was good verticality on the maps, plus there were central zones where the action took place. The maps are well designed, although the stand out map for me was the one with the ball in the middle. Nothing here that blew me away, but all maps were servicable, and I’m looking forward to what else the team has in the locker.

Progression

As you play you’ll earn experience points to level up. As you unlock levels you’ll get cosmetics, plus you’ll open up new game modes. It’s fairly standard progression for a first person shooter. I would say that I found the progression quite slow, so it’d be good to see Firewalk make this feel more rewarding. There is definitely potential here, but it’s too slow as of the beta for my personal preference.

Narrative

A lot has been made of the vignettes. I found the production value and the writing to be pretty good. At the end of the day I think it all comes down to the gameplay. If the gameplay is good, then I am going to want to get invested in the characters. Thankfully the gameplay is fun, so I am looking forward to where this story will go. People have been quick to dismiss the narrative in Concord, but I think if Firewalk can get players hooked on the gameplay, fans are going to want to find out about the characters. I’m looking forward to where this could go as I think the production value was high and there’s good potential here.

Price

The price point is an interesting conversation. Personally, I don’t mind paying the $40 to get the game – you get all the characters, maps, modes and everything, then you level up your battlepass for cosmetics. There are benefits to paying for the game, this is going to keep the majority of cheaters away, plus you can focus on the cosmetics. While $40 isn’t a major issue for me personally, the expectation of the audience is something different given the majority of FPS are free to play

I do think this is going to be a barrier to entry for a lot of players, and games like this live or die by their player count. Steam numbers were only just over 1000 for the beta, and you could point to this being a PlayStation 5 game and the majority of players being there. However, a large part of the success of Helldivers was down to the PC players, so ideally you want to entice as many players in as possible.

I like the game, the gameplay is fun, and I could see this going on to find an audience. However, you want to remove as many barriers to entry as possible in a game like this. Convincing friends to pay $40 may be a little much at this point, especially when you have other free games out there like Apex Legends, Destiny 2, Fortnite, Overwatch 2, Valorant and The Finals.

For me the priority needs to be the player base and getting as many players in the front foor as quickly as possible, and getting them playing the game. If that means changing up the pricing strategy, then so be it. If this game launches with a lacklustre player base then it’s more likely to go the way of Suicide Squad, rather than Destiny 2 or Apex Legends.

Improvements

I’ve mentioned these points throughout, but I’ll summarise here again.

• Speed up the bigger characters, they are too slow. The speed of all the characters could go up a notch. Itzy feels really good and fun, that’s the level of fun I want to feel from the characters
• Explain the features better – the stacking perks system is really good, and a nice innovation, but it needs to be explained through a tutorial, the text descripion isn’t enough
• Progression is slow, the game needs to feel more rewarding
• Add a training mode or shooting range
• Aim assist is very strong, tone that down a bit on console
• Consider the price point and what this is going to mean for the player base
• Sell the unique benefits to us players more – Crew Builder is a great idea, it just needs explaining

Let me know in the comments what you thought of the Concord beta and if you’re more or less likely to buy the game when it comes out in August.