00:04High Guard is off to a rocky start after launching to a barrage of negative reviews this week.
00:10A noxious cloud of internet cynicism has surrounded the free-to-play shooter ever since its announcement
00:16at the Game Awards. Weeks of silence from the developers only gave more oxygen to the
00:21grifters stoking the flames of pessimism. It's hard to imagine how any game could have
00:25survived such a baptism of fire. No surprise then that, now High Guard is here, hating on it is
00:31almost the compulsory thing to do. Complaints range from it having maps that are too big for its
00:36signature 3v3 mode, to its generic art style and presentation, to claims of poor performance and
00:42networking issues. Our early impressions were that it's fine. Staff writer and FPS connoisseur Morgan
00:49Park wrote that, after a few matches where I barely understood what was happening, the unique tug of
00:55war dynamic clicked. I found a warden I liked, and great matches were had, yet he still bounced off it.
01:01I don't like the arcane punk art style at all. It sucks to dump entire magazines into enemies just
01:07to break their shields, just like it does in Apex Legends, and the siege phase is too chaotic to read
01:12what's going on. But if High Guard never attracts a huge audience, it won't be because it's bad.
01:19More than anything, High Guard feels ill-timed. A casualty of a vibe shift within the FPS genre
01:25that is seeing a move away from life-consuming, life-service games towards the resurgence of less
01:31sweaty, more social multiplayer experiences. How did this change in PC gaming's favourite genre happen?
01:37What games led to it? And what can High Guard learn from these prevailing wins?
01:48No single event encompasses the changing attitudes of FPS fans more than the triumphant release of
01:54Battlefield 6, a game about large-scale chaos featuring zero-ranked modes. The series that
02:00hasn't been truly relevant for nearly a decade came out swinging with guns, maps, and modes that appealed
02:06to the skilful yet unserious fun that the FPS genre once produced like every other week.
02:13Flashback to 2018, the year Battlefield V released to indifference amidst the battle royale boom and
02:19the continued dominance of hero shooters, and it's wild to watch sentiment swing back the other direction.
02:26Battlefield Studios deserves plenty of credit for BF6's enhancements on the series,
02:31but perhaps the appetite for Battlefield comes down to people burning out on the competitive games
02:36they've been playing for years and glomming on to something more casual and immediately rewarding.
02:41That, and a bunch of Call of Duty fans jumped on board, culminating in the best-selling FPS of the
02:46year.
02:53Arc Raiders is not a first-person shooter of course, but its unexpected popularity was more
02:58evidence of a vibe shift that will be felt in shooters of all types.
03:05Arc Raiders' slick shooting, surprising enemy AI, and fantastic maps make it good,
03:10but its unexpectedly wholesome community makes it great. The ways Embark tweaked the incentives of
03:17the Tarkov-style extraction shooter to make PvP truly optional, and cooperation more preferable,
03:22is a milestone for the subgenre, capturing the magic of early DayZ, with slightly less potential for
03:28psychopathic fantasy. You can play it like an all-or-nothing death match if you want, but
03:33honestly, that makes you the most boring person in the room. Instead, folks showed up by the millions
03:38for strange social interactions, pleasant exchanges, heartbreaking betrayals, and sometimes just role
03:44playing a medic. Rescue Raiders man, don't forget the name. It is, in essence, the accessible extraction
03:50shooter, and also the best of its kind. People finally got sick of terrible overpriced cosmetics,
04:02making every game super ugly. The boiling point happened last summer, when a one-two punch of Beavis
04:08and Butthead and American Dad partnerships flooded Call of Duty with cel-shaded slop that underlined how
04:14detached the series had become from its military shooter identity. The backlash was loud,
04:20and EA jumped on the opportunity to announce that Battlefield 6 was committed to grounded skins,
04:25though the shaky boundaries of that promise has since caused its own smaller kerfuffle.
04:29Battlefield 6 gained goodwill, and Activision saw where the wind was blowing. Weeks later,
04:35it announced Black Ops 7 wouldn't carry forward skins from past games and only feature cosmetics that
04:40fit the world of Black Ops, only to immediately renege and add Fallout skins earlier this month.
04:46It was another sign that, at least in this corner of the hobby, people are recognising how the
04:51profit-hungry habits of the live service model can compromise a game's core qualities, like how it
04:57looks. A proper vibe shift. This pendulum has been swinging for years now, but it's sped up in 2025.
05:11FPSs that were once defined by their competitive scenes or notoriously high skill ceilings are
05:16broadening their horizons in an effort to attract a less sweaty audience. The finals, which launched
05:22only with its complex 3v3v3 cash-out mode, recently debuted a casual 8v8 mode that's basically
05:29Battlefield Rush. Rainbow Six Siege celebrated its 10th anniversary by adding a new primary mode with
05:35respawns and relaxed team rules. Splitgate 2 unlaunched out of beta, stripped all of its hero
05:41abilities and e-sportsy modes and re-emerged with classic arena shooter playlists. And Overwatch 2
05:47debuted Stadium, a new main mode that injects chaotic overpowered hero upgrades and entirely new
05:53abilities into its old format. I consider it a tremendous sign of health for the genre that
06:04purely co-op shooters are thriving. Folks are still playing Helldivers 2 every day. It's not as popular
06:10as it once was, but that's just fine, because folks show up for big updates and support the game if
06:15it's
06:15still great, which it is. The same goes for Warhammer 40k Darktide, which got new classes and significant
06:22quality of life updates in 2024 and 2025. And Deep Rock Galactic, which remains a perennial friend
06:32group game ahead of its roguelike spin-off coming this year. Also, did you know tens of thousands of
06:38people still play Left 4 Dead 2 every day? Goes to show that if you make a truly great replayable
06:44co-op
06:44shooter, you've got fans for life.
06:51What do Battlefield 6, Ark Raiders, Helldivers 2 and Black Ops 7 have in common? None of them are free
06:58to play. 2025 was further proof that people will pay for great multiplayer shooters if they believe
07:04they're getting a complete product. It sounds obvious, but it's a standard that eroded at the height of
07:09free-to-play. We got used to games that debut with minimal content, but maximum microtransactions.
07:162025 gave us a bit of the opposite, shooters that feel good and complete and valuable from day one.
07:32High Guard
07:32Despite tacking defiantly against the prevailing winds of the genre, High Guard's turbulent birth
07:37does offer some hope that the hero shooter isn't entirely out of ideas. Sift through the vitriol of
07:43the Steam reviews and you'll find a small core of players that resonated with High Guard's unusual take
07:47on the genre. Should it survive long enough and continue to be supported by developers Wildlight
07:53Entertainment, more likely as it's a self-published game and it may find its crowd. That's far from
07:59certain of course, and Concord, which was similarly pronounced dead on arrival in 2024, still looms
08:05large in the memory of hero shooter fans.
08:08For our full review on High Guard, head over to pcgamer.com
08:12and don't forget to subscribe to us here for more on the latest games.
08:16Thanks for watching.
