It’s been laborious to remain constructive about Harmony’s probabilities of success after a disastrous debut earlier this 12 months, a beta that – whereas enjoyable – struggled to seize sufficient gamers’ consideration, and early entry numbers that had been worrying to say the least.
In reality, this assessment wasn’t prepared final week as a result of just about everybody that was already enjoying the sport failed to search out matches of its round-based mode, which is unlocked previous a sure participant degree. That’s how tough it’s been on the market. However hey, participant numbers apart, is Harmony really enjoyable and compelling as a aggressive on-line shooter? Properly, sort of. And that’s its greatest situation. Generally, the whole lot clicks and leads to one thing which may simply have the juice wanted to develop and evolve, however the true moments of pleasure are simply far too uncommon.
Let’s deal with the elephant within the room first: Harmony reportedly took eight flippin’ years to totally develop, which sounds absurd to me. Even at its finest, and bearing in mind the lofty (and clearly pointless) manufacturing values on show, Harmony isn’t big. At launch, there are 16 characters, 12 maps, and 6 modes (in three completely separate playlists). On prime of these, the ‘solo’ expertise is restricted to a follow vary, a common tutorial, and 5 fairly primary time trials, all constructed with the identical property seen in the primary multiplayer expertise.
That assertion clashes with the sport we acquired, which isn’t meatier than a handful of F2P releases we’ve seen through the years in that very same style. There’s additionally the matter of all the hassle, time, and cash that had been put into fleshing out all of the characters, lore, and intricacies of the Harmony universe. There’s an exquisitely well-presented Galactic Information that updates usually as you play; it’s jam-packed with stuff and partitions of textual content that sci-fi sickos would recognize… if this had been a single-player odyssey (or on the very least, an bold co-op title). My private concept? In some unspecified time in the future, Harmony was one thing else solely, and it will definitely acquired downsized right into a by-the-numbers PvP shooter. The decided plan of getting weekly high-quality cutscenes solely reinforces that concept.
In any case, Harmony is competent sufficient as a hero shooter. Whereas I’m not as excessive on its method as I used to be again within the beta days, numerous iteration and inner testing clearly went into this sport (eight years!) Every character is well-defined on a playable degree, and the idea of stacking every one’s team-wide passives is an attention-grabbing twist that I want performed a bigger position in team-building (Marvel Rivals is doing one thing much more bold with the same concept).
Nevertheless, I additionally agree with the sentiment that some characters who are supposed to be extra agile can usually really feel clunkier or heavier than they need to, which is a disgrace, as gunplay is fairly rattling stable throughout the board. I additionally imagine the sport feels higher to play with the DualSense controller; PlayStation’s first-party PS5/PC releases do excel at profiting from the {hardware}, and Harmony isn’t any exception. Haptic suggestions is nice however not overdone, and I discovered myself sticking with it as an alternative of disabling it straight away like in latest Name of Responsibility entries.
The choice to take final talents solely out of the equation is a daring one, including extra of a tactical, ‘work as a staff’ feeling to the sport, but it surely additionally causes the issue of snowballing being too sturdy except the enemy staff begins to falter by itself. It’s particularly egregious within the TDM-like modes, the place some characters are outright unhealthy picks and it feels almost inconceivable – even with a stable staff construct – to bounce again if the early-match efficiency isn’t there.
Maps, whereas visually beautiful generally, are additionally a blended bag. Some really feel excellent for the 5v5 dimension of battles and have arena-like layouts that work properly, whereas others come throughout as remnants of previous co-op maps reworked into PvP situations which can be too huge and result in stray allies and enemies wandering aimlessly round. Given the event time, Harmony usually feels disjointed despite all of the polish.
Maybe the precise killing blow got here from the characters themselves, which play properly sufficient, however merely aren’t visually interesting generally, which is a big drawback in case you’re making an attempt to promote a hero shooter in 2024 (a frightening activity in and of itself). This has nothing to do with no matter rubbish the worst individuals we all know are spewing out. Like 90% of the (admittedly colourful) forged lack distinct visible designs and really feel like the results of focus-testing the sport far an excessive amount of. Finally, most Freegunners find yourself wanting like aliens and people that wandered into an affordable outer area thrift store and got here out sporting no matter. Certain, their Galactic Information background information is cool and all, however most individuals received’t care.
While you’re in the midst of a match, all that mo-cap cash and life like lighting don’t matter. You received’t even discover them. You’ll discover the tasteless character designs although. Plenty of work and care clearly went into them, but it surely looks like the entire thing was steamrolled by exterior enter and market analysis primarily based on info that final was related in like 2019.
Efficiency and graphics on PS5 are head-scratchers, too. 4K/60 seems to be the only goal, which is a wierd resolution given its aggressive shooter nature. 2K (and even 1080p with upscaling) focusing on 120 FPS appeared like a logical possibility to incorporate, but we’re caught for now with an internet sport making an attempt too laborious to look life like as an alternative of as easy as it may be (FPS drops do occur beneath sure circumstances). Together with a change to a free-to-play mannequin, I’m totally anticipating a Efficiency Mode to return quickly, too.
All these little flaws pile up the extra you play Harmony. There’s a superb sport beneath all of the rubble and perplexing enterprise choices (corresponding to not giving it out in PS Plus Additional), however why do you have to put up with all these frustrations when the sport doesn’t a have distinct id and there are higher alternate options accessible totally free proper now?
Certain, Harmony’s premium mannequin over a nightmare FPS stuffed with passes and paid skins sounded nice on paper, however the package deal needs to be attractive sufficient to warrant the acquisition, and easily put, the juice isn’t there. Part of me desires it to search out its viewers and enhance, however that is wanting like one other Suicide Squad scenario.
Harmony is out now on PS5 and PC. This assessment was written with a code offered by the writer for the PS5 model of the sport.
