harmony is a hero-based multiplayer shooter You can run around sci-fi maps on distant planets, using pistols, cannons, fireballs and knives to eliminate opponents in familiar modes such as “Capture Point” and “Kill”. There’s nothing about it that surprises or shocks me, but it’s beautiful and, more importantly, fun. This is the worst part.
harmony There are so many faults – poor atmosphere, jarring presentation, and a broad sense of apathy that I haven’t seen in a first-party PlayStation game in a decade – but it’s clear that a lot of love has been put into each game , care and attention. The game is not bad! So why am I so hesitant to call it good?
I’ve been playing for about 5-7 hours this week during early access harmonyLaunched on August 23, and, as was the case during testingthe real-time gameplay is very solid, and I really enjoyed trying out the unique weapons, abilities, and action styles from its starting roster of 16 “Freegunners.” It feels like going to a new restaurant and enjoying a fresh menu filled with experimental dishes and new twists on old classics. But do I really want to eat here every day or even once a week?
News that developers at Firewalk Studios, which Sony acquired just last year, have been working on the development harmony in some form up to eight yearsalready stunning To some, but from the detailed character models and carefully designed custom cosmetic kits to the elegant interface and custom text fonts, nothing in the game looks cheap or thoughtless. I love that you navigate menus directly rather than via a floating on-screen cursor, and the in-game vignettes, animated shorts, and massive lore map point to a lot of deep and imaginative world-building.
Vacuum judgment, not difficult to recommend harmonyespecially a decade ago, when we weren’t playing online multiplayer shooters, especially those that didn’t scream color call of Duty or battlefield. Unfortunately, it’s 2024, live gaming doesn’t offer a discrete experience but requires ongoing relationships and dedicated investment, and there’s a lot of time competing for people’s precious and dwindling time on earth. There aren’t many things that make me look back harmony Now, there are still a lot of people actively dragging it down.
Games are short, most lasting around five minutes. This is good for quickly jumping into a game, experiencing the action, getting some cool kills and achieving some objectives, and then not getting bogged down in random matchmaking chaos as one team blows the other team out. Sometimes, when the match starts to get interesting, it can feel like the match is being cut off at the leg. It takes a few rounds to get a feel for the strangers on your team and the rivals on the other side, with mini-drama and revenge stories looming in and out as the game unfolds.
There’s a lot of strategy when it comes to planning games, changing team compositions and getting bonuses by putting more and more players on the field in a given game, it’s all part of the game. harmonyThe crew-building mechanic, via a card system, adds an extra fun wrinkle to each of the freelancer’s alternative variants with different bonuses. Often, matches feel too short to develop into interesting dynamics, and Competitive Mode (one of three playlists available at launch) simply doesn’t have enough players to test it out before a match harmonyFull boot (pairing kept timing out after 10 minutes of waiting as I tried hard).
The characters themselves should be engaging, and some are. Haymar, a glass cannon space mage with a crossbow and fire magic, is hands down my favorite. I loved floating above the battlefield, unloading her arsenal, and ducking behind cover in mid-air. I won’t lie, though, there are times when Freegunner’s design strikes me as a colorful but vague musing on a sci-fi character creator random generator, so”we already have Guardians of the Galaxy at home” Digging up what some people have been throwing away harmony since it was first revealed.
Progression is another area that really didn’t work for me. Since there are no mini-goals like supers or killstreaks to chase in a match, you won’t feel like you’re working towards anything other than maintaining a healthy KDA and keeping an eye on the tug-of-war of goals. While some of the maps grew on me over time, too many of them felt too spaced out and austere, with bright colors belying a lack of interesting scenery. This simplicity doesn’t help play into the fantasy of being a space mercenary in intense gunfights in exotic locations, and, at least for me, it doesn’t add extra readability to the environments. My favorite multiplayer shooter maps have their own character spaces thanks to the variety of encounters they facilitate, whereas most of my matches just felt too chaotic.
In most cases this may change later harmonyOnce fully launched, the game just feels a little lonely. Some of this is the scale of the environment relative to the five-hero team fighting within it. Some of this is due to the lack of any social interaction beyond the flashing kill log on the right side of the screen. Some of these facts are that for only $40, harmony It still feels like a relatively shallow experience at the moment. There’s a treasure trove of neat but mostly inconsequential cosmetics to unlock instead of battle pass Seasons will be free to play, bringing new characters, maps and modes, as well as weekly story beats.
This might be a smart strategy for a successful live service game, but I’m not sure what currently exists is enough of a bridge to make that happen. If so I would let my friends play a few rounds with me harmony It’s free to play. I wish we could have a PVP game with a vibrant aesthetic that isn’t as sweaty as some online shooters. But it’s just as much fun to spend time with me harmony So far, in terms of instant gameplay, it hasn’t reached the threshold where I can advise others to take time out from their busy lives and abandon their current obsessions to place a bet.
Two of the biggest sentiments surrounding the game this week are that it can surprisingly interesting and no one seems to be talking about it. The game launches on Steam today Less than 1,000 simultaneous players. I’m sure harmony Can With enough time, resources and community support, it can become something special. The same is true for a lot of games, though. It’s good enough that I want to keep playing now, but “now” isn’t as long as it used to be, and the plethora of incredible games being released now makes it harder than ever to devote the time To those games that are only suitable.
