Prepare to hear opinions: Concord's first beta is live now

The first of two planned beta tests for Sony's competitive hero shooter, Concord, is underway now. This one's for pre-orderers (as well as PlayStation Plus subscribers) and both the PS5 and PC versions are included. The next beta, which runs July 18-21, will be open to everyone.

You will have to make a PSN account from the get-go for this one—Sony's not making that mistake twice—but that nuisance aside, Concord is running smoothly on my slightly aged RTX 2070 Super.

I liked what I played of Concord at a recent preview event, but I wasn't able to try the PC version then. Returning to the comforting embrace of mouse and keyboard hasn't turned me into an FPS god against the PlayStation players, but at least I'm not running into walls anymore.

The developers at studio Firewalk, many of whom are ex-Bungie, say they're after an "aim vs brains" balance that allows players to succeed with either superior shooting or superior tactics and teamplay. It's a bit premature to decide whether they've accomplished that, but the 16 characters certainly have diverse kits. Playing a brand new hero shooter can be a peculiar experience: One second you're doing fine with a Regular Soldier Guy and the next you're running around as Fungus Man decorating the map with spores you have no idea the function of. 

I continue to find Concord's story cutscenes a bit eye-rolley, but putting aside its attempts to be heartwarming, the presentation is strong. The only thing I really don't like about the UI is the match scoreboard, because it's hard to see at a glance how well you're performing compared to your teammates (let's be honest, that's the only reason we press Tab mid-match). Otherwise, I dig the flat reds and oranges and the wailing synths. It's obviously inspired by the '70s, but doesn't lean so hard into it that it becomes hokey.

At risk of validating my own opinion by cherry picking social media posts that agree with it, the reception so far seems relatively positive. The folks in the subreddit—who, granted, already had one foot on-board—seem happy. The top post: "Welp, this game is tight as f***." I'm sure the haters are brewing their rebuttals as I write, though. I expect some big discourse over the weekend.

I wouldn't go so far as to recommend pre-ordering Concord just to play this beta, especially since you can just play the open beta next week, but I'm enjoying it. If you have a friend who's in this beta, give them a nudge—they should have four codes they can distribute. You can find the full beta details here.

Concord is set to release on August 23, and like Helldivers 2, it'll be $40.