Concord: Sony's online shooter is flying but not yet soaring in a very crowded airspace

It is fair to say that the video game industry is undergoing a period of alarming disarray. Studios are closing, development budgets are exploding and profitable genres are becoming saturated by mega-budget pick-me candidates that feel utterly interchangeable. Into this troubling market comes Concord, Sony's new five-v-five "hero" shooter, the subgenre of the multiplayer online blaster where players control characters with elaborate special powers rather than identikit spec-ops soldiers or space marines. Set in a warring galaxy controlled by an autocratic regime known as The Guild, the game gives us control of various Freegunners – mercenaries who plough the space lanes looking for jobs while also slinging one-liners at each other in the game's highly polished cutscenes. In the game, however, what they do is fight. All the standard characters of the hero shooter are present – vanilla soldier, floaty witch, teleporting weirdo, sassy tank – yet none have the immediate appeal of Overwatch denizens such as D.Va or Mei.