Author: Game Infliction

Valve is finally ready to take the wraps off Deadlock, its not-so-secret multiplayer game that thousands of people have been playing for weeks.

Throughout August, Deadlock has slowly been gaining attention and player population via a system of invites, with existing playtesters able to invite their friends. As a result, it quietly amassed thousands of players, reaching over 18,000 concurrent players mid-August and climbing to a peak of over 44,000 players earlier this week.

At the time I’m writing this, I’ve put about seven hours into World of Warcraft: The War Within – basically every moment between when it unlocked and when I could no longer keep my eyes open. And that’s very early to say anything definitive. But… I have a very good feeling about this one, you guys. From the story, to the environments, to the new features, this is World of Warcraft firing on all cylinders. I’m not utterly blown away or anything that hyperbolic, but compared to the last three expansions’ launches, the warm glow of new adventure is hitting different this time.

I’ve been taking my sweet time – relatively speaking – so while some bedlamites had already hit 80 inside of a couple hours, I logged off for the night at level 73. That pace allowed me to collect three of my new Hero Talents for my Marksmanship Hunter, and I chose to go with the night elf-themed Sentinel over the tortured soul, Sylvanas-inspired Dark Ranger. I’m not super thrilled with these talents yet; we’ll see how it feels at 80, but I’m not getting the sense of a significant change in my power or my playstyle with each level like I’d hoped.

I do like that The War Within doesn’t add a bunch of new buttons to my hotbar, though. Part of why I picked Sentinel over Dark Ranger is that the latter makes you incorporate a new attack into your rotation, and I like that I have the option not to have to worry about that.

Setting the Stage

If you missed the big announcement last BlizzCon, The War Within is intended as the first part of a trilogy of expansions that aim to tell a larger, complete story. This is something WoW has never done before, and I’m pretty excited about it. Without spoiling too much, the first hour of the story definitely feels like we’re going full speed ahead into something sweeping and epic. Some major sacred cows in the lore are actually on the chopping block (not literally – Baine is fine, don’t worry). And Xal’atath is a compelling new nemesis – not just because she’s a hot goth mommy.

I mean, it’s partly that. But it’s not just that.

I’ve only seen the first of The War Within’s zones, the verdant and picturesque Isle of Dorn, which exists on the surface just above where the other 80 percent takes place. It feels very familiar to a long-time WoW player in a lot of the same ways the Dragon Isles did, and basically all of the best features from Dragonflight are back. You get Dynamic Flying (what used to be called Dragonriding) almost immediately, which I’m still conflicted about just because I think exploring new zones for the first time on the ground gives you more of a sense of place and grandeur. But I’m not conflicted at all about the return of thrilling aerial race courses and the expanded profession system.

Dornogal, the capital of the Earthen who protect Azeroth’s depths, is one of the coolest hub cities we’ve ever gotten thanks to its majestic Titan architecture and an interesting political storyline to unravel. It’s also quite a bit more organized and easier to navigate than the sometimes disorienting vertical layout of Valdrakken.

And the music! I can easily say the Isle of Dorn has some of my favorite music in WoW since, dang, Wrath of the Lich King maybe? Since Blizzard’s composers always kill it with their orchestral excellence, it’s really something when they release this many tracks that stand out even by their high standards.

The Long Road Ahead

Just like Dragonflight, the smaller zone quests are often memorable and touching. I think the one everybody’s going to be talking about this time involves one of the semi-immortal Earthen realizing that his mind is starting to deteriorate, and asking you to help him set his affairs in order as he plans to end his own life in the traditional fashion of his people. I never get tired of being reminded that, for all the world-shaking, high-fantasy shenanigans driving World of Warcraft at the plot level, these kinds of heartfelt and relatable tales are what actually make it special.

I’m also quite optimistic about Delves, the new solo content that’s meant to be something of an alternative to raids and Mythic+ in the endgame, for people like me who don’t like to interact with randos and don’t have any friends left who still play this game from the group I started out with in 2004. They feature the same kinds of silly and ridiculous temporary power-ups I adored from Torghast, including one that gives you a double jump and another that greatly increases your damage as long as you never fall below half health. If Torghast has only one fan, it is me. If Torghast has no fans, then I am gone from this Earth. So it’s great to see some of the things that worked about it coming back.

One delve I played has what are effectively the jump mushrooms from Sonic the Hedgehog, allowing you to explore vertically in a new way, and another features wall-mounted ledges you can zip up to with a grappling hook. The only thing hurting my excitement about these is that they seem really, really short so far – less than 15 minutes in some cases. Part of it is that I haven’t unlocked the higher difficulties yet, so I can basically Arcane Shot-spam my way through the entire thing without looking at my health bar. And I’ve only seen the first three. But I was hoping for something closer to the length of a five-person dungeon experience.

There’s way, way more of The War Within I haven’t seen at this point than what I have, but I’m thoroughly enjoying myself so far, and that’s just about the highest praise one can give an expansion at launch. Check back next week for the first big update on my progress, and for a final verdict some time after Season 1 and the first raid unlock on September 10.

Release Update – August 23, 2024:

After spending 15 hours with Concord during its misleadingly named “Early Access” period, nearly all of my impressions from the beta (which you can read in full further down) remain relevant. That’s both good and bad, because while I still enjoy how Concord generally nails its team-based competitive combat, the little that’s been added doesn’t do much to alleviate the concerns I had. There are some new maps, a couple new game modes that, as is the case with all the modes, already exist in many other games, and so far that’s about it – there isn’t even a single new cutscene aside from the two that were in the beta. It feels rather light on content at present, though as a live-service game, developer Firewalk Studios has already laid out an ambitious roadmap to hopefully fill in those gaps. I still want to sink some more hours into Concord before I put a final score on this review, but right now I’m doing so quite happily – this may only feel like a solid foundation at the moment, but I’m starting to think it’s one that has a shot at growing into something special.

Though more lore-soaked cutscenes are set to arrive in the coming weeks, so far the main drops of worldbuilding you’ll get come in the form of the Galactic Guide, a map filled with nodes where you can read about Concord’s locations and characters. I’ve spent a fair bit of time scrolling through this sizable library of short descriptions, and though much of it is well-written, it’s a woefully poor substitute for in-game storytelling that I worry won’t come often enough to keep me invested. Great characters squandered by a complete lack of narrative is basically a hallmark of the hero shooter genre at this point, but it definitely doesn’t get any easier to swallow that especially bitter pill.

The gameplay stuff we didn’t already see in the beta includes two game modes” Signal Hunt and Area Control. These are serviceable king of the hill and zone control modes, respectively, that do exactly what you’d expect, but once again lack any sort of novelty. The new maps, however, fare a lot better – with very few exceptions, Concord’s arenas are extremely high quality, allowing for tons of strategy and pairing perfectly with the equally impressive combat. Really my only nitpick is that some levels are a bit too large, and it can be a real pain to spend 20 seconds running back to the king of the hill control point after each respawn, especially when the enemy is allowed to gain quite a few points in your absence. Thankfully, maps with that issue are pretty few and far between.

One thing that was absent before Concord’s wider “release” today is a cosmetic store where, as per usual, you’ll be asked to spend real human currency on skins and assorted digital baubles, which seems pretty much par for the course. As always, the question is how much love it will show players who would rather earn cosmetics by playing, since many live-service games lock the vast majority of their cosmetics behind a paywall and starve those unwilling to cough up the dough. I’ll be putting an eye toward that balance this weekend.

I look forward to seeing how Concord evolves now that it’s fully out So far I’m still having a lot of fun, while also being a bit disappointed that there’s not much for us to chew on overall. But with such a strong cornerstone to build off of thanks to its satisfying FPS action and best-in-class arenas (which you can read more about in my beta impressions below), the future looks pretty bright.

Original Beta Impressions – July 15, 2024:

Grab a copy of Overwatch off some dusty GameStop shelf and rub it under the musky armpit of the Guardians of the Galaxy’s Peter Quill and you might have something close to the feeling of Concord. As competitive hero shooters go, this sci-fi contender from Sony plays it quite safe, complete with immediately charming characters immaculately rendered in gobsmackingly beautiful cutscenes and ability-based PvP combat that never addresses why those characters are fighting one another when they’re clearly allies in said cutscenes. But just because it doesn’t offer much in the way of innovation doesn’t mean Concord isn’t extremely fun to play. I still have lots more to see when it launches properly next month, but with 16 characters and four familiar game modes available in its preorder beta this past weekend, the vast majority of the 10+ hours I’ve spent with it so far have been a sweaty, gun-toting good time.

You and your squad will form a five-person team of super-powered characters, each with their own unique strengths, weaknesses, and special abilities, and then bring them to bear against an opposing team in a variety of formulaic game modes. Those include a standard deathmatch mode, a “Kill Confirmed” mode called Trophy Hunt, an attack-and-defend mode called Cargo Run, and a zone control mode called Clash Point – none of which possess even the slightest hint of novelty. But being overly familiar isn’t necessarily a bad thing if you’ve got best-in-class gunplay and awesome characters with compelling powers to back it up, and boy, Concord has got both of those down pat.

Concord sagely keeps its weapon selection very slim, with just two options given to each character by default and no way to customize that – but the upshot there is that every single weapon feels incredibly responsive and finely tuned, and no two characters have weapons that feel at all similar. The arena-controlling old lady, Duchess, wields a submachine gun that’s devastating at close range, while the sneaky and tactical Vale mostly relies on a long-range sniper rifle to take out enemies from afar. Not everything seems perfectly balanced – I, for one, think most things should probably die when they take a sniper rifle shot to the head, and it’s a bit weird that the character that uses a slow-loading missile launcher as her main weapon doesn’t do more damage with it – but they all feel really good to use, and that means I’ve been having fun even when it feels like something needs tweaking here and there.

Similarly, the abilities that complement those weapons are fantastic, diverse, have very generous cooldowns, completely changing the way combat plays out depending on which character you’re playing as. The floating, fireball-chucking Haymar can blind opponents for a period of time and make them pay for standing in the same spot too long, while the rampaging ogre, Star Child, can close distances quickly with his charging attack and smash the ground to do heavy damage around him. Not all characters feel quite as original, like how Teo is the world’s most generic soldier and comes equipped with a smoke grenade and cluster grenade as his two powers, but those bland options are few and far between. Learning each character, using their abilities to counter the team comp of your opponents, and juggling the madness on the battlefield with top-notch gunplay was just as fun in my first match as it was in my 30th, and I certainly can’t say I’ve felt that way about most hero shooters I spend time with.

One of the few novel twists Concord brings to the genre is the way its competitive playlist works. Unlike the casual playlist where you can play whichever character you please (so long as someone else hasn’t already selected it), in competitive you cleverly aren’t allowed to select the same character again if you win a round while using them. Since matches go to best of seven rounds, that means winning one will push you to get outside of your comfort zone and use a minimum of four different characters. Not only is this a neat way to force people to master more than just one or two options, it also encourages communication with your team between rounds to ensure you’ve got proper coverage to play out whatever strategy you’re trying to pull off as your options get slimmer.

The other interesting wrinkle Concord adds to the formula is character variants: Slightly different versions of existing characters that come with a unique perk and an altered appearance, and which can be unlocked by completing specific objectives during matches. For example, the gunslinger Lennox can normally reload his weapon by dodging, while the variant you can unlock for him loses that ability, but gets more ammo for all his weapons instead. The five variants available for each character so far offer mostly minor changes like this, but they definitely add a meaningful thing to chase that provides more options in combat. Perhaps more importantly, they also give you the opportunity to fudge the numbers a bit in the competitive playlist, since variants count as separate characters on your crew, and therefore, let you play as the same characters in multiple rounds.

I also just love that Concord is chock full of goofy terms in its “How To Play” tutorial section, like how it tells you if certain game modes are likely to be sweaty by assigning them a “Sweatstrum” rating, or how it explains you can recharge your abilities with “Sloops,” AKA “Skill Loops.” There might not be much of a story yet, but this game’s got charm coming out of its Martian ears.

There’s still more I haven’t been able to play in this early beta version, like the two game modes that remain locked for now, but Concord is already shaping up to be a heavyweight hero shooter I could easily see competing with the genre’s giants. It doesn’t seem like it will bring much new to the table, and that’s a bit of a bummer considering we’ve already played great games very similar to this one before, but I’m heartened by what I’ve seen so far and am looking forward to playing a whole lot more when it launches next month.