After 10 hours with Highguard it feels like a bad Apex Legends update

I was cautiously optimistic about Highguard and went into launch planning to give the game a fair chance. After an hour of queuing and being booted out of the game after completing the tutorial, I was finally able to play the game, maybe a little less charitable, but optimistic nonetheless. Unfortunately, I discovered soon after that Highguard is not a good game. It's an amalgamation of several other games (Apex Legends, Rainbow Six Siege, Valorant) that doesn't learn from the best parts of them.

During the defensive round at the beginning of the match, you fortify walls that are later easily destroyed by your enemy's machine guns, you open chests full of bland and uninteresting loot, and you mine rocks. You spend a long time just mining rocks. Why do you have to mine rocks in Highguard? It seems like someone in the Wildlight Entertainment office had an idea of what to put in Highguard, so the team just said “Yes.” It lacks direction, focus and worst of all, for a game with so many ideas, originality. This isn't a “new breed of shooter”, it's a blender.

I'm not disappointed with Highguard because I didn't have that many expectations to begin with, and I feel pretty bad for the developers because the Game Awards spotlight has thrown the game under a lot more scrutiny than it probably deserves. That said, there are some glaring issues with the game that cannot be ignored.

Apex Legends Heritage

The most obvious point is how much Highguard feels like all the worst parts of Apex Legends. I have over 4000 hours in Apex Legends. I love that game. But I didn't love the various timed modes (except Winter Express, which rules). Highguard is a 3v3 shooter that takes place on a map way too big for three players. You collect resources and equipment, mine rocks, and then lead a “raid” on your enemy's base. You can claim something called a Shieldbreaker to destroy the enemy's outer defenses, then lead an attack that turns into a Counter-Strike style bomb defense mode.

It's a little bit of everything and not enough of anything. Long periods of inactivity with some uninteresting gunfights in short bursts. It doesn't help that player movement is very lackluster and the maps fail to capture your imagination. They are all brown, bland and empty. I don't even particularly enjoy being in these environments while mining rocks.

I love mounts and mounted combat. That alone sets Highguard apart from other shooters, but it's not enough to convince me to pick up the game again today.

There's also something completely wrong with the gunplay, and I can't quite put my finger on it. It feels floating and unresponsive. It doesn't help that during intense gunfights, performance starts to tank hard, even on my 4090, 64GB system. I chose to only use the shotgun and sniper for basically every engagement, as the assault rifles and SMGs feel terrible to use. If a shooter's gameplay drops when shooting, you know we have a problem. I love shooters and I love new things, but Highguard is being uninstalled today.

Point and Shoot

During my ten hours of play, the player base dwindled significantly. Matches went from relatively balanced to often one-sided smackdowns; this is not an enjoyable experience for casual players. You're forced into a trio and forced to suffer through long matches if your teammates can't handle it. Nothing about the game makes this suffering worthwhile.

Unlike League of Legends, where you can feel slow and steady mechanical progression over the course of many hours of play, Highguard lacks the competitive depth to feel rewarding. There are no clutch aces like in Valorant, or epic final ring showdowns in Apex Legends. Highguard is the video game personification of “meh”.

The characters are generally uninspired as well. Scarlet plays like a sort of Jett (from Valorant) and Wraith (from Apex) ripoff. She can turn invisible for a short period and then fire some knives, which do very little damage. Condor was my favorite during the ten hours. She sends up a hawk that reveals enemies. Bloodhound, from Apex.

Does anyone remember the reveal of Octane, Apex Legends first post-launch character? The character blew his legs off trying to complete a Gauntlet Run, which was inspired by real-life player Cash_Mayo completing a Gauntlet speedrun in Titanfall 2. Not only did the character come with a great backstory, he was also – at the time – unique in terms of mechanics. I know the hero shooter genre is stacked these days and original ideas are hard, but I expected more from Highguard.

It feels like Highguard was designed to be something completely different, a game that works on a larger scale with more teams fighting for resources and base defense. While I don't necessarily think more chaos is what will save this game, it would at least alleviate some of the numbing downtime during rounds.

No, the real problem with Highguard is the fact that it received intense scrutiny while being a game that feels largely unfinished. If it had been released without any TGA reveal, just a random, free-to-play hero game that popped up on Steam one day, I don't think the hate would have been anywhere near as bad. I'm not saying it's a good game, just that it's been given the worst possible end of the stick.

In a few months with new maps and characters, Highguard could carve out a small, competitive niche, but I don't think it has the chops to compete with the big dogs, no matter what gets hacked, changed, or added.