848: REVENGEANCE (Concord Beta Impressions)

Hey everybody, it's Friday. Gotta get down on Friday. Welcome to the
triumphant return of bomb Cast Revengeance powered by n DXT. I'm your host,
Jan Shoa joining me co captain the Arbiter of the Weekend, Jeff Crubb.
Howdy. They are a giant trash can, but they're filled with nothing but
vibes and love. Nicky Grayson, you a concord and Plague support. Plague
back up. They've all the ability just look the same because this game is
slightly buggy. Seon Turbusha mcdeal audio listeners, Nikki was just vibrating off the
shair and I think we I'm putting the word out there. I think we
should get different music for BombCast Revengeance as far as like the the genre.
I don't know what do you what should we aim for? Gamer? Okay,
and more beeps and boops, more beefs and boops. I was I've
really been on a big yacht rock Boston Nova train. Hey, yeah,
okay, welcome aboard. I love that so absolutely you were a Boston boy
out there. Yeah, let's sail away with the Bobcast Revengeance theme. It
also different, nothing singing someone playing John playing spider Man's playing Spider Man two
now because I would like to video game. I love that. We all
pause and like, wait, wait, was something happened I did game?
I didn't for I didn't think it was going to be called out by the
fucking speaker in the controller. We're playing a different, better game. But
here we are, folks today. We if you missed ups, shut up?
Okay, all right, that's it for the show anyway, if you
trying to hear the controller, if you missed upf We being the four of
us checked out along with our dear friend Christian from Argentina, played the beta
for Concord, and we're gonna give our quick impressions of them, of of
Concord, not Christian from Argentina. He doesn't want that, I would say,
very pleasant. Yes, folks, we we played a couple of rounds
and then we played uh we dominated that last mode. Yeah yeah, and
we all finished the last round. Yeah. I was so confident, I
just stopped controlling my character. Yes, Nikki, you were playing on the
PS five and the and I believe the rest of us were playing via esteem
Grub and Sean. Y'all were having a little bit of technical trouble. Correct
little is understatements. Yet there was a variety of issues. My performance felt
a little off, so I turned down the internal resolution actually to make sure
it would run at a higher frame rate kind of consistently. That worked the
frame bringer. Hang on one second, kiddo, shand you take over rot
talk to this kid. Okay, Yeah, so the PC version maybe not
a great PC port. Maybe this was a PS five first game that later
on got a PC version once they decided to expand it. Smart thing to
do, but this was a weird thing where Jeff was having all the like
performance issues and stuff. I was having the opposite thing where it was running
all right for me. But for a first time in a while, it's
a PC port where I wasn't having performance issues, but I was just having
bugs, Like I was just having a lot of random I had those two.
Yeah, well you have big one, which let's talk about a sec.
But I was getting a lot of UI issues and stuff. As we've
discussed on some show recently. I do just have like a one decently sized
monitor, and so I just play put everything in your window on the monitor.
That was fine for me. If you put this game in a window
on PC, the UI just gets cut off. The UI does not scale
the U, so I just couldn't see some things. Now do you want
do you want to see all of the U? I? Yeah, I
doll like two or four characters on the end there on the characters life and
everything that that kind of helped. That is indicative to me of what is
going on with the PC port. At least it's the PC port feels like
it's coming in hot under bag, which did just stop working for me in
that last match. I think mouse and keyboard on PC did not feel right
at all. I could not dial that in. Yeah. I tried a
bunch of different sensitivities switching to controller. When I would hit the B button,
that would also activate the start button. And I'm pretty sure certain because
that's not happening in any other game plan. Nah. Yeah, that's the
game. And to be clear, you're you're using a bit of controller,
but there's an ex input controller. It should be working to an Xbox controller,
which I always have it set to x input. Yeah, I was
using Xbox controller and that was just working fine. But then sometimes some buns
would not work as well, like the we you know. I eventually found
the Like I was complaining about this while we were playing, but not being
able to see what your character does in the middle of a match. It's
a new game. I need reminders of what my character does here and there
in the Hero shooter, especially if you're bouncing around. And so I found
the butt Oh you press left in the D pad or you hold left out
a deep pad that I believe is supposed to show you what your character does.
This wasn't working. I think that was the biden because a sound effect
was going off. Well nothing was showing on screen. Me let me tell
you all this. All of this stuff not an issue on the play station
five. So I did a couple of counterpoint. The game didn't feel good,
so it was kind of like the technical issues didn't exist, But the
part where you played the video game, I didn't have a very good time.
It did feel better than the PC version to be though as well.
It was better. It was a lot better. I can clearly tell that
the intended version of the game. But yeah, there was still some small
bugs there too. I wonder why I lucked out because I didn't I had
that Ui bug Sean that you had where the abilities were repeating for each character
I pull them up. But like that whole two hour stream, we did
for the most part completely fine, other than the game itself feeling slow.
R Yeah, just inputs felt sluggish for sure. So I mean, for
like, I don't think you're just saying that when when I put so,
I have the mouse with the various sensitivity settings. If I hit this button
over and over again, I have one that's very low. If I were
to say, play a game like counter Strike or Valerant or a very twitchy
shooter. So whenever I go to that lowest setting on there, it's like
pretty low, but it's it's still moves enough. So if I move my
whole arm, which is kind of what I want, so I have those
really fine precise movements, I can kind of dial in the aiming here.
With moving my whole arm on that lowest setting, it was moving and a
fraction of an inch the radical across the screen. So it's like something.
It's just that they are expecting the control or I think, and not really
understanding how miles input might work. So I'm sure I can get in there
and really finagle with the settings and get that stuff dialed in, but I
think baseline, the way that it's working, like right out of the box
just doesn't feel great. Now again felt better on PS five. I just
as a five on five hero shooter with various modes. I don't think I
hate this game, but I'm not inspired by what I played. I thought
there were some characters that I was beginning to understand, and there was a
couple of moments where I'm like, Okay, I'm playing this. This character
that charges in and stomps, and I'm gonna go do that, and I'm
gonna tell you I'm gonna go do that. Can you guys just clean up
my mess when I make a mess? And we did that and that was
fun, and of course it's great to synergize with your friends in an online
video game. I just I'm not like sitting around thinking, Okay, now,
what if we did this in this in this? And I think part
of that is when I look at the characters on the menu, I don't
really get their whole thing. I know I can triangle to like see their
abilities, just like in any one of these games, but I kind of
want to like look at a character and immediately understand what's going on with them,
and I really don't hear. So maybe I have to spend more time
with it, but I'm I don't want to. Yeah, And I think
something that was particularly tough is that you are the game doesn't because it doesn't
tell you what the classes are, there's no impetus to work towards any sort
of team composition. Yeah. Right, And then because there's no impetus to
work towards team composition, it isn't like you understand where your team is going
wrong other than like if you're solo feeding, Like sure, okay, that
is fine, but like there were some fights where I was like, the
only reason we lost is because the one character in this game that feels good,
the fire person, just kind of killed three of us. And that's
the because she just seems like like her ability set seems so uniquely tuned to
you fire her blind that does which does a lot of damage. Because the
health numbers in this game don't make any sense. Yeah, it just seems
like there's no like in Overwatch you have like a shield pool, you have
a health pool, and in this game it's just one pool, and the
scaling doesn't make any sense. The time to kill on the tanks is really
low, and then the time to kill on everybody else feels really low also.
But yeah, I don't know, it just there's there was not deep
and there was no like none of it felt like it was in concert with
each other. Yeah. Yeah, if you balance a bunch of characters that
exist, Definitely, the balancing you're talking about, or the balancing with a
character you're talking about NICKI specifically like felt very off, Like I only played
as her for that one round and I shot someone in the face and it
did more than half of their lifebar, which was insane. Meanwhile, the
character is playing at as a lot near the second half of the stream,
Roca, who is a rocket launcher character, shooting a rocket directly at someone's
face would do like twenty forty damage. This sniper character headshots would do like
on average, like forty to fifty damage. Uh, yeah, that's weird.
I'm and like, I'm selecting Tayo a lot and Tao is Soldier seventy
six Call of Duty character. It's what he's supposed to be, Paul,
right, and in yeah, Paul rud An Overwatch Soldier seventy six, I'm
basically playing call duty. Yeah, this feels as good or nearly as good
as Call of Duty. And I think call of Duty feels very very good.
That's not happening here. This is a character that approximates that feeling but
does not really approach it in any real solid way, which is I think
a little bit of a shame. The pedigree of this studio firewalk is a
lot of bungeie people, and I don't know if I was coming away from
any of the guns being like, well, that gunplay felt really great.
I think it was. It's solid and functional and serviceable, especially when I
started playing on PS five. You know, it's interesting you bring up the
bungee comparison, because there's parts of this that do feel a kind of floaty,
like early Destiny, like in parts of Halo where even though there is
an aim down sight's button, I never I never used it, you know,
Like I was always just like blind firing or firing straight off of the
hip. How did the other abilities other than the shooting land I don't know
what they did most of the time, Well, unless it was super obvious.
One of the characters built a wall, Yeah, right, that was
obvious. What did the left bumper on the fairer character. That's the blind
that does like a third of the health bar's worth of damage, and then
they can't see the right Okay, the right bumper throws down a line like
a wall of fire on that seat does damage on impact, and then there's
an aoi on the ground. And then also she has a crossbow that fires
these little golden snitches of fire, and then you hold The game doesn't tell
you this, I don't think, maybe because I didn't read this what the
sweat sweats what was it called the sweatt on the sweat But I didn't read
the full sweatstroom. But if you held aim down sites it charged it to
do more Dama did, which is why sometimes it would just pop three guys
at the same time. Got it. Yeah, Uh, It's interesting to
bring up the studio itself, because man if I didn't know the pedigree of
the people working on this, like to be harsh for a second, I
would have thought this is like a team's first attempt at shooter. Like a
lot of it feels very obligatory, like when Jeff said that you have what's
the name Tao or whatever, he feels like, oh, we need to
have our Call of Duty esque Soldiers six style character, and that just feels
off to me because so much the I think the word of the day for
me is that's not intuitive, Like how intuitive is everything here? And I
just wasn't gained that feeling from so much of what we're doing. When when
it comes to characters, this is a hero shooter. You need to be
able to look at the character and tell what they do. And so you'll
have like, obviously we're gonna keep comparing this Overwatch. It's a hero shooter.
It's what we're gonna do. Uh, and of course we've played you
know, for two hours right right, review or anything like that. Impressions
from playing a little bit. When you have like a character like Mercy and
Overwatch, you look at her as like, oh, angelic healer, got
it like stick stick with the angel with the Angel, Yes can, but
you very clearly can fly. Even characters who are a little more unique,
like say Lucio, and it's like, well, what does a DJ do?
Doesn't matter? You know, music theme character, okay, sound AoE
stick like near him and around him, and you may not necessarily tether to
him like a Mercy Ryan Hart, big dude, with a giant shield.
What do you do stand behind the shield and shoot out from behind something you
cannot do in this game shield with the power with the with the four shield
in this game like the trash Robot vacuum cleaner guy. Uh so the idea
was someone's shooting at you and you use the vacuum cleaner to suck up those
bullets. But they were still shooting me, like basically they were just shooting
my ankles. Right, Yes, it's like that. It's like the titan
Fall Vortex shield. Yeah, it's Avortex shield. Yeah, so I don't
think it has the same like visual easy to understand what's going on this that
the Vortex shield in Titanfall two has, which is I immediately got that here.
I'm okay, I I think I get it. But I'm gonna go
out here and I'm gonna try to suck up the bullets from this guy that's
trying to shoot me, and now he knows what's happening, so he's just
gonna shoot my legs and I died and that sucks, for lack of a
better words. I also know with that guy, his one of his abilities
is to put a trap on the ground that covers you on the ground.
So that's what the idea there. You have your weapon covering you in front
and the gadget covering you on the ground. But that doesn't feel intuitive.
Is again the problem. It didn't immediately click with me that that's why I
need to be doing, need to be setting up traps to defend us and
then also consciously block the bolts in front of us. It just felt odd.
The other thing that felt very odd across the board, no matter what
character I tried, was the dodge roll or dodge mechanic circle. It just
I know that there was an ability for some of them, but it just
didn't feel good or particularly useful, and it isn't deeply unclear to what ex
Then it's not consistent What that button double press does is not consistent character to
characters. Some characters it's like, oh, I will slightly move over a
foot and a half. Some characters it's like, oh, I will do
a cartwheel to the side. Some characters, it turns you invisible when you
do side the pink person. Ye, the pink person goes invisible when you
do the double top dodge on the tanks it does it feels like it does
nothing, don't even have it some of yeah, some of the things don't
have it, like and it's not particularly clear when and why. Yeah,
the daw character one of the healers. Yeah, one of the backup were
and we're assuming backups still just being support vaguely, well, but that a
mental advanced character. That's what I think, that's what I would be called
if that's the case, Jeff, I have no idea because there was no
consistency to what the backups were at on Twitter. Letst if anyone respond to
you guys keep going. Well, but yeah, I at first I thought
like maybe backups is like support characters, but some of the other characters with
like team healing abilities were not in that little pool. But like with digital
audio windows, I suppose he was the like main like healer centric character.
But then you also have, uh, what's her face? The old lady
who like puts up the wall and everything. Well, that's just that's just
an offensive character, is it? Like, yeah, I don't know,
like maybe just right about that, but it's just it's very unclear. But
with with Dawes Dodge, he like emitted like a little bit of a healing
pulse was it a pulse. I thought it was just a self heal.
It looked like he was a pulse because like there was an aura about him
and not like a cool kind of aura. Now this sucks. There's a
company called Concord that does data backups and that's not helping great CEO. Yeah,
I feel I feel bad because when you know, I fire the game
up, looked at the cut scene. I enjoy some of the character designs.
I kind of got over that like cheesy Guardians of the Galaxy ness that
was presented in that trailer, and then game feel bad. Yeah that's something
that Look, we're all kind of down on the game in general, but
say, looks good. It's really good. Yeah. Well, and I
mean how over like taken out by the story? Are you all? Are
you guys just thinking what's you know? Yeah? What's it for? Yeah?
It's like it would I would, I would feel it just seems like
a multiplayer game. It's remember when Titan Fall one came out and there was
no story, and this story was like built into the you have to listen
to the story through like the cut. Like the chirps in the multiplayer games,
it feels like they course corrected to the opposite of that, where it's
like, oh, there's a bunch of cut scenes, but there's no story
in the bombs themselves. To me, it felt like another thing that is
obligatory. We're all all these service games had these characters that you really love,
and so they're putting out all these CJI cut scenes and like, look
at they're charging forty dollars for this. I was going to bring that out.
Yeah, well we can talk about that a second too. But like
you look at our recent release with a Zemless Zone zero A you know,
story driven. It's a kind of an action RPG more on an action game.
But with all those cut scenes, you know, some people will absolutely
skip through them. I think they're here on the call with me does But
also you have people like me who do want to like see these like well
designed characters doing their thing. The problem is with the multiplayer shooter, you
need to have people fall in love with the characters organically and want to know
more. You can't push the story on them to begin with. It feels
like such a weird misunderstanding of what people want from a multiplayer shooter right.
The tone that the trailer dropped and how the beta kind of begins. It
assumes a lot of the player that you already. It assumes like that the
player already has a level of familiarity with all of these characters and is fond
of them, rather than like any type of like flashy introduction and I mean
like or or organically building up that type that real relationship with the specific characters.
Like TF two, I didn't quite care about any of the characters,
but over time, you lores starting to drop, I start to build like
an affinity towards specific characters, and then excitement bills are like, oh,
I do want to know what the pirates like, I do want to know
what the spy is like, and like the way that it kind of for
right now, it feels like we're being force fed of like you love these
guys. These characters are great, they're your best friends. It's like,
I'm kind of cool. Feels like they're coming on too strong. Yeah,
you need the characters to also back that up, which I don't think the
character designs are all that great, you know, like I think some of
them are cool. From it doesn't the thing that when we because we went
through them at the beginning of upf which you can watch if you want to
see the game get But like I, it just doesn't seem like they are
they are cohesive, right, It just seems like they came from different places.
Like the task was make twenty guys, and then they made twenty guys
and they didn't check to see if the guys looked like each other. Right,
we have twenty different Guardians of the Galaxy where it has a ragtag group
of like do you know, just mishmashed together. But the problem is in
a hero shooter, it feels like you won't have consistency. Whereas you know
again Overwatch, like you look at Tracer, Tracer is a cool character.
You want to learn more about Tracer. You see like widow Maker pop up
in the initial reveal with her. You want to know what's the story going
on here? Why do they hate each other? Because there's these tool two
really cool looking characters going at it, just fighting it out. You start
seeing like Soldier and Reaper popping up. It's like, yeah, you know
what great character designs who have a it's very clear what they are supposed to
do. This just feels yeah, not night. Yeah. I think from
like day one of this this game being revealed, or at least the trailer
where we met and kind of saw the tone of how they're presenting it.
You know, Guardians of the Galaxy has been the constant comparison, right.
Something looming in the horizons is Marvel Rivals, which is going to be a
free to play game that's going to have the character recognition for sure of like
people knowing like, oh, I know this Marvel character, I know Magneto,
I know Spider Man. And also with it being free to play,
I do it's do you think that games like Marvel Rivals will kind of eat
its lunch? Also grub You played Star wars Hunters, Yeah, you know
what roster pretty similar to Star wars Hunters for real? No, well,
okay, I think that like this is still in the top tier of like
character designs for one of these kinds of games. It's not as good as
Overwatch, but it's in that tier with Overwatch when you compare it to like
think of a you guys remember that game Rogue Company, like something like like
oh yeah, okay, had memorable characters, but go like look it up
and look at his cast of characters, and it's like that's the kind of
generic roster you can expect from a lot of these kinds of games. What
about Paladin's Palette, same company, Actually yeah, wait, really yeah company,
they really had one idea and said it's not even our idea. No
I And like, I don't I'm not like trying to like stunt on high
res or something like that, but like, I think that these characters are
good enough to to the point where I really like some of these uh.
And I think the comparison to the Guardians of the Galaxy will wear off pretty
fast. By the time I was like three matches in, I stopped thinking
about that. Those initial like pepsi challenge like reactions that people have fade really
quick, and then the things that will like stand up to it is like,
are the character synergy's interesting to people even care about doing that in the
first place. And I'm that's where I'm like, I'm not sure if people
are gonna care about that. We certainly had a moment, but it's like
I was not feeling really compelled beyond I just don't want to die, So
it's maybe we could do a little bit better try some of this stuff.
And then I just think that the like the story campaign stuff. Bank people
probably will stop paying attention to that pretty quickly. I do think that is
an excuse to charge forty dollars for the game, and then once they get
past that sort of initial phase, that'll take a back seat because no one's
really going to be thinking about that for ninety eight percent of the time that
they're inside of this game. Maybe the cut scene place the next time they
started up, but that's not really going to be what this thing thrives or
dies on. Yeah. Firing up this game though, and knowing that it
has a forty dollars price tag, my mind just shifts of I could be
playing something else, and that something else is like it's not just bouncing back
to a game like Overwatch. It's like, oh there's any hold Diver's two
still there, Hell Divers too? But or like, hey, I still
have Titan Fault Too installed on my computer? Oh sure, and like that
is a game that just as everyone should gen Yeah, yes, yes,
every computer should have Titan and so come with it. I did look up
in the how to play section on the thing that we were like, what
is all this text? I found a reference to backups? Do you guys
look at the customized crew and crew builder. You see that option in the
menus, there's an option for a crew builder, and this seems to be
like you get variations on the characters, so you could build your own crew
that might include like doubles of the same characters. So you know that mode
we played where it's like you could only pick that character once. Yeah,
yeah, you can then like if that that first one gets wiped out,
you can pick them again. And as you increase your reputation of your crew,
I think either as a player, I think as a player, you
get more backup slots so you can have even more characters potential. Basically,
I think so yes, And I think it's kind of probably not functioning in
the beta the way it's going to in the final game when all of the
modes are unlocked. But I don't know, it's weird. I think what's
happening is there's gonna be a lot of other stuff like that that that ways
that people engage with this game that we not engage with it. I personally
am coming out of this beta the little bit that we've played of it,
not necessarily curious to go through that experience with a game to like find out
all the things that wants to offer me. Some people probably will find something
here. Because I don't think it's a bad game, it's just kind of
turning me off in some fundamental ways. Yeah, it feels I see the
polish behind it, at least graphically, but it just feels a little soulless.
Yes, I agree with that. Yeah. To me, it feels
like I'm very willing to trial oft free to play games that come out just
in passing, because I'm like, yeah, why not, like, because
this is easy for me to get my friends into. Maybe we'll hit something
that will end up playing for years to come, just like here and there.
So when I played this, it unfortunately does feel like one of those
yet another free to play game where yeah, but forty dollars exactly. And
that's the problem. Why forty dollars is it just feels like such a mistake
to me, I don't know why you felt the need to charge. Is
it just because we'd PlayStation, We're gonna charge a premium that does a game
like Hell Divers just feels so much more justified to me, even if you
look at what you're actually doing in that game, And sure, there is
a lot of the same stuff. You kind of look at you and say,
like, okay, this this comes from a place of Triple A design,
even if it's not of that scale necessarily. Maybe it is more double
A adjacent than what we what we think of from PlayStation. You know,
you got of Wars and whatnot there, like insane big budget games. Last
of Us isn't everything like that, So yeah, I don't know that.
There's just a huge disconnect there for me. Yep, it over how slow
the tank was. Yeah, the tanks, you know, but I shouldn't
get to fights last Yeah, that feels really bad unless you playing the dude
who physically has a charge you can get out in front. But like you
know, this is a hero shooter, this is a team shooter, and
grub I think you, like you said it perfectly there. It doesn't feel
like there's a lot of synergy happening right, Like they're just notage. I
don't feel encouraged to syenergize. Well, but I think there's probably stuff there.
I think the developers and designers almost certainly came up with plenty of synergies
that they thought of, but they aren't occurring naturally in the middle of game,
like in the way that like you kind of stumble into them on overlap
and they're like, wait, wait, we have to let's try to do
that next time, Like pharmacy not anymore because whatever, we don't need to
talk about it. But like, right, but like when you looked at
Farah and Mercy, even if you weren't reading up on anything, you looked
at Farah who was in the sky, and then you looked at Mercy,
who has an ability where she can press a button to go to anybody at
any time, and you say, oh, I think I can fly in
the air forever as long as Farah is in the air if I'm Mercy,
and then you try it and it works, and then that like that's how
you build that kind of yeah, that interplay because none of the and I
think Sean you mentioned this at the beginning. You can't look at any of
these characters other than the trash can and be like, I know what this
person does. Yeah, but looking at the trash can and like seeing that
like he's using a vacuum device like as another player, like I don't know
how to help you or how you help me specifically. That's true too,
right, and and like that's like that's the tank. Should we be behind
them? I mean, I don't know. I don't think so, because
then then they just stop shooting the tank and they start shooting all the other
people, and then it just goes past the vacuum clean. And the reason
why I brought up synergy again real quick is just like, you know,
Lucio helps tanks reach the front line super fast, right, you know,
like that with like his little speed boost or ability switching like the music cue,
And it didn't seem like there was any point where another character could help
another character move faster, and like there was one point where we found out
Nicky could give us shields, but then like that quickly just went away.
Yeah, and I just think it's legibility really is the thing. The legibility
at the character select screen. Sure, but even like in the matches,
and again going back to some of these other free to play games, you
will these other shooters, you'll see a character do something against you, and
then you'll be like, oh, I fully understand how trading works now,
I get it. Yeah, I did see the tracer character here. It
took me multiple times to be like, oh, okay, they're throwing a
device down, so it's kind of like Cemetra and Tracer and then and then
they're gonna go back to that and it just looked janky and weird, and
I did My first thought wasn't oh, here's how I used that. I'm
like, wait, I still don't wait, what's happened? We had we
had a fight where we were like, okay, let's all actually move in
and try to use our abilities. At the same time, we had a
fight where we started the fight and then everyone's abilities went off, and then
we thought that we did well in the fight, but then like all of
two kills, but then the particle effects went away, and then we were
like, did we do anything anything right away? Like I don't know if
anything, Like I don't know if anything came out of all the particle effects
going off. When is this supposed to come out, like August? August,
yeah, assume. I think what it does feel like is it's going
to be maybe a rough first couple of months, and it's going to need
that public feedback period. It's I kind of wish it was getting like an
early access or something. And then I mean, maybe they have big feedback
from this beta and they fix a lot of stuff. But that is a
short turnaround. You helped me remember something that was trying to get out there.
I know I rambled there for saying, but the point I was trying
to get at is player expectation. Like when a person plays a hero shooter
like this, they have certain expectations of how things are done. They have
certain expectations of what you do in the game, what abilities do, what
inputs do, so on, so forth and so much. This game does
feel like they are afraid of being the same as something else, and so
they try something different just for the sake of being different. And that comes
down to character design, the structure of some of the modes, just the
way that abilities and characters work in general. Feels like, Oh, we
need to distance ourselves from this archetype, so let's do it in this way.
It's often a way that doesn't feel as good. And that comes back
to something that I've been saying a lot for a lot of different games recently.
If a developer has solved the system, just use that system. If
a developer has figured out something that players like, just do what players like.
Don't try to go out of your way to be different, because it's
a high risk and often low reward chance when they could have just made a
fun take on Overwatch, especially in a time when people don't feel good about
Overwatch. If they had just come in and this game could have just been
Hey, remember what Overwatch used to be. Yeah, we're just doing that
because we know there's a hole for that in gaming right now. We're just
putting that out there. And the fact that they're not is I think a
real mist up, especially if they are charging a premium for it and you
don't have ultimates, right, Yeah, it's it's weird. No ultimates.
No, just class delineation as well of like, you know these people here,
right even just on the character select screen, just tell me this person.
These people are all offense. These people are support, These people are
healers. That's all you need. Yeah, yeah, yeah, folks.
So we loved it. There were there were moments where I was having fun.
But yes, there are moments, right, I run into that issue
of am I having fun with this game because it is legitimately fun? Or
am I having fun because I'm playing with people that I know? You know,
yeah, if I weren't playing with you all, or if I weren't
playing with you know, the Monday night Call of Duty home. He's like,
I think I just would not be having a good time with this game
like I did when I try a couple of matches off stream. I was
like, this just feels bad. The other part that also feels bad is
I feel like we've gone to a place in shooters in general where pinging is
very important. Being able to message our teammates is essential, and it was
just very difficult to try and find how to do that with any of y'all,
and I know, speaking like over chat, but even then we're still
bumbling as to like where an enemy is approaching, or where the targets middle
middle mouse button to to to ping on keyboard and mouse, it's the same
pad on play on dual Sense, and it's the select button on that selection.
But sure, sony, all right. I was like, I started
like moving my left thumb off of the stick to start hitting it, because
I like, what else was going to do to remap that? Right?
I wish, Hey, at least you can to remap, Yeah, at
least, But it's the prince, it's the principle. It's the principle of
it, of it all you know, you should have that figured out the
kid. Yes, I think there's a chance that this game does still get
an audience. It's I just don't think this is probably not going to be
like a hell Diver situation or anything close to. And I think I really
do believe that PlayStation needs to figure out a way get this in more people's
hands. If make this free with PlayStation Plus, and I do you not
mean as a PS plus game, I mean make it free with PlayStation Plus.
The thing that console players need to buy to play this game. They
didn't they do this with Destruction All Stars. Also, yeah, they did
that with the Last Minute too. Yeah, it was it was sixty bucks
and then it was free. Yeah yeah, and then it became a Plus
game during the first month. Yeah, maybe they'll do that, But like
that does raise the question of if they're charging forty dollars, do you think
they have a monetization plan outside of that? Is it just probably it's cosmetics.
Well that's the thing though I didn't really see a path for that,
probably because it's the beta. Well, so I think that's that goes back
to the Crew Builder, where it's like so part of the choosing different characters.
Apparently these are variants of each character and they have different passive abilities,
so they'll feel different, and so you might be able to dress them up
different and have your you know, here's my crew that I select from,
and here's this one and they have this ability and they're just like this.
I think they want to emphasize the cosmetics in that way. Whether or not
that works, I mean, god, I have no idea, like,
well that sounds good for the individual player if you were just teaming up with
a bunch of randoms where you're expecting like this character to behave like exactly and
suddenly it's like, oh, you're not in the sky. You've become a
shark. But that's why I think, like, it's just passive ability.
So I think, right, so you can't even be that different. So
I think they're like, well, it's not going to be the way different.
Apparently the variants change passive abilities. Let me look at this purple character
rule. Well what I meant. What I meant was not like, do
you think they'll have a battle pass? Obviously? Well, why meant was
these characters don't seem appealing enough to me that I would want to buy their
Halloween skin or that would want to. I feel that way about like all
kinds of stuff, and all kinds of stuff still sell. So I mean,
I feel like there's no accounting pertain. Well you can't. You can,
you know, slap you can slap a holiday skin on like a beloved
character like Tracer, and people will eat it up. I don't see myself
buying alternate trash can or like alternate Well, if it was the trash can
from Disneyland, then maybe make it like a washing machine or something. But
at that point, I feel like that Also, I don't know. The
going with a Guardian's of the Galaxy adjacent art style, I feel like also
makes that hard because you can only get so silly with it is the problem.
I don't know. I just as an aside, I tried to open
the game against so I could look at some of these skins, and I
think the game uninstalled itself because I didn't. I did not uninstall it ending
thinks this weekend. Yeah, but I opened the game in and now it's
not here anymore. So okay, all right, Well Concord just knew better.
Now I'm looking at these two different characters, or to two different versions,
and they have the same passive ability, which, by the way,
passibility on this Linux guy. If you empty your weapon quickly and then switch
the other weapon while the other weapons in your pocket, it'll reload. That's
cool. I wish I would have known that. Sure, Yeah, I
will probably play this a few more times over the week. Yeah, well,
maybe we'll talk about it again on the BombCast next week, so we'll
see. I think there's any different feelings then, I'm still interested to see
what the completed product will look like. You know, maybe different game modes
will wind up clicking better. I don't know. This still isn't what I
was searching for in that like quick, fast paced, yeah shooter that I
occasionally crave that as like a little bit shorter than a game of Fortnite or
whatever. Yeah, I think the pacing upon that. I think it's that
worked, Like the matches aren't too long, the matches or what they never
never more than ten minutes, right, Yeah, it just wasn't Star Wars
Hunters where it's never more than like five minutes. But yeah, yeah,
I think that they have a base here that they can build on. I
hope they do. I hope like this probably won't happen, but I frankly
wish it would get pushed out if they take a lot of feedback from SPATA
and can quickly identify, oh, this is what we need to change.
We can do this, Okay, we'll make move and feel better in this
way. If then you figure all that stuff out, I think they have
something here, and I know, as negative as I've been, I don't
want the game to fail or anything, But it's just a question of why,
why why, Yeah, who is this for? Why are you putting
this out? It almost kind of feels like, oh, PlayStation players need
a multiplayer shooter, and it's like, well, guess what they do have
overwatched, they do have Call of Duty, they have all these games that
are on all the platforms as well, but like they're just gonna go to
those, So yeah, you need to you need to incentivize me to play
a game. It feels very weird to like have this character shooter and then
you know, assume the player has all this familiarity with like brand new characters
that we've never heard of, Like why not try and adapt an existing available
sony ip you know, like throwing a ratcheting, like throwing a ratchet and
clank, right, yeah, and then like there it's it's easily even if
everyone is longbackses or whatever, the weapons in the weapon design could be different
enough where it's like, oh, he's got the vacuum. I mean,
PlayStation honestly has enough characters who shoot guns that they could have just made this
a PlayStation All Stars type of thing. That Nathan Drake doesn't have a shirt
tucked in. He's a keeler. That's how you know. I did just
see someone tweet though, Do you guys see that Joe Biden called Concord guardians
of the Galaxy. He'll never be president. Spider Man two still good though,
Yeah, I forgot that you can fly in this one. Yea,
they just let you They made a Superman game. Yeah that's cool. Yeah,
well that Those were our early impressions on the Concord beta. If you
have and you know what, if you like it, I'm happy for you.
Yeah, I'm happy for you. I wish I liked it more,
but it's not one of those things where I don't get it. I get
it. Just for me. It felt sluggish and bad, but we'll see,
Like never if this is your first hero shooter because you've been too intimidated
to check out Overwatch, Valorant whatever else have you? By all means,
I hope this is your jam. I'm interested to see how the developers are
going to adapt based off of feedback from this beta, and then when uh,
because it's a weird playing field right now for this type of game,
right yeah, right, it feels like there's an opportunity for a game like
this right now, yeah, space, So I'm curious as to how they
will play with that, and then when Marvel Rivals eventually drops, because I
think that beta is coming in the near near sure, yeah, because the
game that game also is coming out this year, right yeah, yeah,
So I'm curious to see if that one sticks to landing to or if it
will be in our situation like this, Well we've seen this, well what
are you really doing for me? Right right? And I who knows if
like the Marvel Juice has still has enough to it And I know people are
experiencing fatigue, but like we'll see, we'll see you in a couple of
bits. Yeah, and folks, that about does it for BombCast Revenge.
It's a little shorty today. Uh, we're just talking about Concord Regular program.
I mean as per huge. Next week I might be here, Jeff
back Lar won't be here, but the team is gonna hold the fort down.
Bring me back something that has Piman Pickman. Okay, what else does
everyone else want? I don't know how I'm gonna get these gifts that I
want. A real Pickman has them in the lab, real grub Pickman,
Nikki real Pickman. While I'm asking real fake Pickman. I hate that.
If you had a real Pickman, well, do you would you hate it?
Because I don't well, I don't know if I would hate it.
Well, I here's the thing. If you have a real Pickman and it
dies, you don't feel anything when a when a video game Pickman dies.
But if you only have one, if you only have one Pickman and it
dies and you get to see the little soul come out, then it's like,
oh, well that was the last. But yes, but yes,
absolutely, but it's the only one you get. How long do they live
naturally my game? Not very long? Well? Well, then, okay,
do they have a share do Pickman have a shared consciousness? Well,
they all know what I'm doing when I press the analog stick and say go
in that direction. So you know, I think I think maybe the per
color they have a shared statement. Okay, so they like protect the hive
and stuff. Yeah, so the red ones all the yellow ones all think
that. What dude, where did you get that in your crutch? Anyway?
Concord about it? God, I got I forgot that. Okay,
I'm going to keep playing Zendly Zone zero. This is my problem zero.
I'm not going to pull anything. I'm going to keep stabbing that up.
And when I come back, Jim like, look, I didn't want.
I don't want to cut you off for the sake of content. But that's
the first mistaken gotcha. You save up until you your premiere life appears in
the roles. Come on, that's all I want. That's all I want,
Sean. I like, I keep seeing pictures of this like made Shark,
and I'm like, damn, what am I into? Now? I
know that has grown evolved, but like wow, yeah, wow, folks,
that about does it for BombCast revengeance. If someone is in a Boston
Nova band, hit me up please, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm
gonna miss y'all because that's what travel SA get on the YouTube music or appen
music whatever you use, and download a Boston Nova video game playlist right now
on a plane. Lots of good video game Boston Nova music. I I'm
only going to take my analog pocket. Give me recommendations to play on a
ten thirteen hour flight. Hell yeah, okay, not right now, but
in the you know, in the nearcoming future. I don't want to read
a book. No, not right now. Have books. So they gave
boy, Yeah the Bible. Okay, cool, I'll go, folks,
I'm gonna go download the Bible after this. I've been jad they've been doing
already. Have the Bible. You're such a bad Catholic part time baby.
He's been grabbing, he's been terbo shun and you have been beautiful. Thank
you for another beautiful week here at GiantBomb dot com. If you missed anything
from earlier this week, go check it out. It's all great stuff.
Blake Club probably returning Wednesday, probably, I want to say, and a
bunch of fun stuff planned. Uh. Sean is gonna go out on assignment
soon. That's gonna be fun. It's gonna be great fight Sean. Uh
yes, And for work, I don't know, literally shooting for work.
There we go there we go. We'll see you then, I love you.
Take care, Boston Nova Music, Pocket Burrito, everyone go get that
squid word. Brown Bound, Brown Barn Better, Bigger the BLA