Concord: Sony’s online shooter is flying but not yet soaring in a very crowded airspace

It is beautifully made but achingly familiar so could struggle to lure players away from what is already out there

It is fair to say that the video game industry is undergoing a period of alarming disarray. Studios are closing, development budgets are exploding and profitable genres are becoming saturated by mega-budget pick-me candidates that feel utterly interchangeable.

Into this troubling market comes Concord, Sony's new five-v-five hero" shooter, the subgenre of the multiplayer online blaster where players control characters with elaborate special powers rather than identikit spec-ops soldiers or space marines. Set in a warring galaxy controlled by an autocratic regime known as The Guild, the game gives us control of various Freegunners - mercenaries who plough the space lanes looking for jobs while also slinging one-liners at each other in the game's highly polished cutscenes. In the game, however, what they do is fight.