Concord: Guardians of the Galaxy meets a next-gen Overwatch?
A technically solid, well-made hero shooter that has potential.
When Concord kicked off Sony's last State of Play recently, reception from the team on DF Direct Weekly was hardly positive. The presentation opened with a pre-rendered CG video with a level of graphical quality that far exceeded what was realistically possible from the final game, while Concord's actual gameplay reveal also struggled to escape comparison with Overwatch. That said, we did want to get to grips with the game and a recent beta has given us the chance to do exactly that: to sample both PlayStation 5 and PC versions ourselves - and it's fair to say we're more upbeat on its prospects now. There's no doubt this is a well-made game, but is it a must-play? We're still not sure.
In the video embedded below, you'll see that both John Linneman and Tom Morgan put in a good number of hours with the game on PS5, and across two PC setups. This is a current-gen exclusive, and with that in mind it opens up opportunities for developer Firewalk Studios to truly push the visual bar. Also to its credit, the game is based on Unreal Engine 5, but in order to maintain both image quality and a good grip on 60fps performance, it appears the engine'most cutting edge technologies are not deployed this time.
Micro-geometry with Nanite definitely isn't used, while the real-time global illumination offered by Lumen is also absent. In fairness, with this style of game, high-end tech is hardly essential and Concord's approach to 'baked' (ie pre-calculated) indirect lighting and shadows still impress. Visually, there's strong art direction here: Concord looks good, it has character, and does go some way towards delivering the kind of Guardians of the Galaxy meets next-gen Overwatch developer Firewalk Studios is aiming for.
The bright, vibrant style is directly inspired by Overwatch, but by virtue of UE5, it pushes significantly further: physically-based materials shine in Concord, while character rendering looks first class, backed by superb animation and some exceptional facial capture. This is important as Concord is very much a character-based game and seeing those characters interact so convincingly in cutscenes only adds to its appeal.
Other elements in the presentation also stand out - such as the seamless transitions that presumably cover level loading, along with effective use of motion blur. This is restricted to the view weapon and characters only, which is as it should be in a competitive-focused game. Another plus point? We've railed against the presence of intrusive stutter in Unreal Engine titles, but whether it's shader compilation issues or traversal hitching, the good news is that Concord is free of both problems.
In terms of image quality, Concord delivers a native 1440p resolution on PlayStation 5, scaling up to native 4K - as we'd hope for a UE5 title that isn't employing its most demanding signature features - while deviations from the target 60 frames per second are minimal and rare (55fps at worst). On the PC side, ramping things up to ultra-quality doesn't seem to deliver to be particularly onerous on the GPU side (we tested at native 4K, albeit on RTX 4080 and RTX 4090 systems). However, there do seem to be strong demands on the CPU and it required frame generation to reach a desired 120fps.
In combination with frame-gen, all the standard spatial/temporal upscalers are there: Nvidia DLSS, AMD FSR and Epic's own TSR. That said, it's a shame that the game seemingly doesn't support HDR on PC - with a game as vibrant as this, it's an unfortunate omission. On the plus side we can confirm the game does engage HDR on PS5.
All told, Concord is shaping up nicely. The beta only delivered four different maps, but still provided a healthy sampler for the game ahead of its August 23rd release. Even our very own John Linneman - hardly a fan of live service titles or 'hero shooters' like this one - enjoyed his time with the game.
However, there are still concerns with Sony's approach to the live service model. Much like Helldivers 2, Concord is not a free-to-play game despite widespread assumption to the contrary. At £34.99/$39.99 it's obviously cheaper than Sony's typical triple-A fare, but the point is that the game is going head-to-head with titles that are free-to-play - Overwatch 2 being the prime example. Whether the game has the quality or the depth to warrant the price-point remains to be seen, but the technical foundations seem sound at least. If there's more to report on this, we'll return to Concord closer to its August 23rd release date.