Firewalk Studios and Playstation Publishing LLC have created the newest game to enter the scene with Concord. Concord is a first-person, team-based shooter and Firewalk Studios should have lots of experience in this department with their leadership team helping make titles like Call of Duty, Destiny, Apex Legends, and other well-known titles. MKAU Gaming was lucky enough to get some BETA Access and needless to say we dove head first into the title.

I was quite impressed that there is a storyline to this game in which each week you will learn more about the crew of the Northstar and journey further into the tales of Concord. These are little cinematic vignettes that will keep giving you more and more narrative and will explain more about all the characters and their stories. I’m not going to dive into the storyline, you can experience it for yourself.

Being a team-based shooter you have the selection before deploying of selecting the character that feels right to you, with a good choice in the BETA it was good to cycle through a couple of different operators to see who I meshed with. I was using Teo who is classified as a Ranger and uses a Guard Rifle and Handgun as his weapons, while also being able to utilise Smoke Grenades and Gluster Grenades. He has a special ability of “Rapid Reposition” which gives you increased mobility for brief durations. I also didn’t mind using Star Child who is more like your common tank build, he is known as a Breacher and uses a Skullbreaker Shotgun and has a special ability of “Diamond Dodge’ which gives you a short burst of Diamond Skin whilst dodging so more or less you are bulletproof.

There are currently sixteen operators you can pick from and hopefully more are planned for down the track. Each operator has their own weapons and special skill sets so it’s a matter of testing them all and finding who you mesh with. Each operator can be customised to your liking, as you progress through the levels you will unlock items, cosmetics, and other special abilities you can use along the way.

Whilst progressing you can also unlock Freegunner Variants which as the word suggests unlocks different variants that will also have different base abilities which you can learn and master over time in the game.

There were six game modes that I could see in the BETA weekend not all of them were unlocked and others you unlocked when you hit a certain level, but they were all game modes anyone who has played shooters before is well used to. The first is Takedown which is more or less like TDM, you run around killing players on the opposite team and whoever has the most at the end wins.

The next game mode is Trophy Hunt which is a little like Kill Confirmed, when you kill enemies they drop a token, and the team with the most tokens at the end wins the game. The third game mode is Area Control which is like Capture, you run around and there are three locations you need to capture and hold, and the team with the highest points at the end wins the game.

The fourth game mode is Clash Point, there is one point on the map that a team will need to hold and keep the enemy team away from for the longest time to win. Fifth you are looking into Signal Chase, which is a game mode where the location moves and each team will need to run to it and defend it. Last but not least is Cargo Run which felt like Capture The Flag, you need to extract valuable cargo or you can try and steal the enemy’s cargo so you can win in two different ways. They have confirmed there are more modes coming post-launch but this is what you will see at launch.

I loved how simplistic the controls were, for someone who is normally an Xbox player jumping into this title on the PlayStation 5 I was a little worried, but I slid straight into the title with no concerns and unlike some titles, there was not that much going on that it was overwhelming, it was quite easy to pick up on the title and for anyone who has played an FPS game before you will slide straight into the title.

It’s a super nice change of pace having games with simplistic controls and just being able to chill out a little in the game and run and gun like anyone who plays shooters likes to do.

I mentioned earlier there are cinematic vignettes you get to watch that look brilliant and feel like you are watching a movie or TV series, the developers did a fantastic job making all the characters look alive and that realistic you could touch them. When you jump into the game it has that super-realism cartoonish feel to the whole thing, kind of like something you would see from Paladins or Overwatch with the character models and the environmental aspects feeling more fine-tuned and realistic.

The first thing you get to hear is the cinematic and the voice-acting and I will stand by what I said before, the voice acting is like something you would see in a movie or TV series, the immersive values in the emotions in their voices and wanting more, but we need to wait weekly for that. The in-game sounds are what you would expect with gun sounds, grenade sounds, and sounds of me dying all the time. The audio was not over the top and didn’t get annoying or repetitive which I’m starting to find in more and more games which was good.

The developers have confirmed from day one you will have the sixteen-strong lineup, six different PVP modes, and twelve maps from the launch with regular post updates, which will bring more free-gunners, game modes, maps, and the weekly cinematic vignettes at no additional cost to the player. I’m not a huge fan of these types of games, but I’m super keen to see how well Concord goes as it did drag me in a little with how simplistic the gameplay was.

Written by: Hayden Nelson