The PlayStation Community does not have public participant numbers, so it is onerous to say what the whole image is, however issues do not look nice for Harmony on PC. The $40 hero shooter is setting at principally optimistic evaluations on Steam, however in keeping with SteamDB, has to this point hit a excessive water mark of simply 697 PC gamers on its opening weekend.
Reviewers on Steam are praising its graphics and gunplay, which is in step with PC Gamer employees author Morgan Park’s preview of Harmony. The sport appears to have the alternative stability of Valve’s finally-public Impasse: It is extra of a pure shooter than ability-focused, hewing nearer to Name of Responsibility or Future’s Crucible than Overwatch.
It is also a fairly fairly recreation, with a Guardians of the Galaxy-inspired aesthetic and a few aspirations to continued seasonal storytelling. A few of the evaluations argue it is barely anemic on the content material entrance—hardly an surprising or mortal sin for a dwell service launch—however the actual concern, as a number of customers level out, is the $40 value of admission.
Now, Helldivers 2 blew everybody’s expectations out of the water earlier this 12 months as a $40 Sony-published multiplayer recreation, but it surely’s a completely totally different beast from Harmony—and each different recreation, there’s nothing fairly prefer it on the market. Much less MMORPG faff and complication than Future or Warframe, however far more concerned development and storytelling than co-op shooters like Killing Flooring, there have been loads of causes to wager on Arrowhead even earlier than Helldivers 2’s runaway success.
However there are a ton of hero and area shooters on the market, with the cream of the crop being well-established, cheaper, and even free. Regardless of how good Harmony’s taking pictures and aesthetic is likely to be, Future, Overwatch, XDefiant, Apex Legends, The Finals, and (at the least for now, if you may get an invitation) Impasse all fill the same area of interest whereas being utterly free, with both established participant bases and aggressive scenes or (in Impasse’s case) an upswell of curiosity and phrase of mouth. And this style’s inbuilt dwell service time dedication demand makes it onerous to justify dabbling in a number of video games—I feel most gamers simply have their one or two favorites.
I do not imply to grave dance on Harmony—it took eight years to develop, and appears to have rather a lot to advocate it as a shooter—however 2024 could be a tricky 12 months to launch a aggressive multiplayer shooter beneath the very best of circumstances, whereas Harmony’s price ticket appears to be an albatross tied round its neck.
