The PlayStation Community would not have public participant numbers, so it is laborious 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 constructive critiques on Steam, however based on SteamDB, has thus far 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 consistent 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 Obligation or Future’s Crucible than Overwatch.
It is also a fairly fairly sport, with a Guardians of the Galaxy-inspired aesthetic and a few aspirations to continued seasonal storytelling. A number of the critiques argue it is barely anemic on the content material entrance—hardly an surprising or mortal sin for a dwell service launch—however the true challenge, as a number of customers level out, is the $40 worth of admission.
Now, Helldivers 2 blew everybody’s expectations out of the water earlier this yr as a $40 Sony-published multiplayer sport, however it’s a completely completely different beast from Harmony—and each different sport, 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 guess 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. Irrespective of how good Harmony’s capturing and aesthetic is likely to be, Future, Overwatch, XDefiant, Apex Legends, The Finals, and (at the very least for now, if you will get an invitation) Impasse all fill the same area of interest whereas being fully 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 laborious 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 quite a bit to advocate it as a shooter—however 2024 can be a troublesome yr to launch a aggressive multiplayer shooter beneath the perfect of circumstances, whereas Harmony’s price ticket appears to be an albatross tied round its neck.