Highguard, the new PvP raid shooter from debut studio Wildlight Entertainment, caused quite a stir at the 2025 Game Awards, perhaps for the wrong reasons. One might imagine that getting a final trailer slot at gaming’s annual event would only benefit the upcoming game. Millions of people around the world watch the live stream, which is the best advertising and recognition a game can get. But this scale of attention also brings intense scrutiny.
Within minutes of the trailer going live, a large and vocal community of gamers who seemed to be cheering ahead of every recent game release saw Highguard as the next Concord. The internet is expecting Half-Life 3 to be the closing show of The Game Awards. Instead, it’s launching yet another free-to-play PvP hero shooter. With Wildlight maintaining radio silence ahead of its Jan. 26 launch, High Guard was placed on a “dead on arrival” shelf.
While that wasn’t the case, the perceptions formed upon the reveal ultimately hurt the game, which still had promising, fresh ideas even if they were presented in an obviously familiar way. No, Highway is not Concord. It’s not Overwatch or Apex Legends either. It’s primarily a raiding game, with two teams fortifying their respective bases, arming themselves with equipment, and trying to destroy the enemy camp. To its credit, the gameplay loop in the PvP hero shooter is largely new. The way Highguard plays is segmented and often clunky, but it does feel unique. Within this loop, however, many of the individual sections evoke an aesthetic so common among hero shooters.
It makes Highguard feel like something you’ve experienced before. That’s not necessarily a bad thing – most games today look and feel like any other game. Some even look and feel like five different games. But the PvP hero shooter genre is already saturated with games like Overwatch, Apex, Marvel Rivals, and Valorant, and games live and die by the number of active players, which leaves little breathing room for new games like Highguard.
Typically, hero shooters are simple, even if they feature multiple game modes. A match is played between two teams trying to attack certain objectives in the match, which may include escorting a payload or controlling a capture point. Highguard instead opts for a dynamic attack and defense approach by adding a raid component to the match. Two teams of three players each choose their own base from six strongholds and proceed to fortify it. Each stronghold has its own layout, presenting unique strengths and weaknesses, and it’s important to choose the right layout that suits your team of heroes’ abilities.
Highguard gives you a short window to strategically fortify certain walls in your base that hide generators. Strike teams target multiple generators or anchor stones to weaken the base’s defenses or destroy it in a riskier operation. Once you’ve fortified the walls and completed your equipment, you can ride your mount out of the fortress and collect loot, which can include better weapons and armor as well as other resources that can aid you in your raids. This forms the second part of the core gameplay loop in Highguard matches.
Each base in Highguard has its own layout
Photo source: Yeguang Entertainment
Once you’ve picked up better gear from designated spots on the map, you can compete with other teams to take control of the Shieldbreaker, a mythical sword that appears somewhere in the middle of the two strongholds. This is the first point in the game where you will have a PvP battle with another team. The team that successfully controls the Shieldbreaker can continue to attack the opponent’s base. However, before using the sword to break the shield of the opponent’s stronghold, the opposing team can try to intercept the team with the shieldbreaker, pick up the sword, and change the tide of the game.
Once the team carrying the Shieldbreaker successfully reaches the enemy base and weakens the defenses, a siege tower is summoned to completely break the shield. Now, the raid – the final and most crucial part of the Highguard gameplay loop – begins with the attacking team infiltrating the fortress and targeting weak points in order to destroy the base and win the game. This cycle repeats in a tug-of-war for control until a base is completely destroyed.
Once you’ve fortified your base, you can ride your mount to loot better equipment
Photo source: Yeguang Entertainment
All in all, Highguard is a game that brings something new to the hero shooter genre. Its unique gameplay loop combines elements from different games to present something new. The game can be over quickly, or it can be a drawn-out affair in which both sides switch offensive and defensive roles for one round. This makes Highguard feel dynamic and tactile, especially with the many moving parts in its composite gameplay loop.
The various maps and bases available at launch also add necessary depth. Each of the six bases has a different layout, ranging from simple to complex, and requires slightly different offensive and defensive strategies. For example, Bellinger Base has multiple towers, elevated generator room locations, and an open courtyard, making it ideal for long-range defense from strategic locations. Frostkeep, on the other hand, is a Viking-style base with a large interior that provides a massive arena for direct combat.
The map in Highguard is very vast and probably too big for 3v3 matches
Photo source: Yeguang Entertainment
There are five maps available at launch, and they’re also visually unique. They offer a lot of verticality and variety, and are quite broad. However, in 3v3 raid matches, the map feels larger than it needs to be. This ultimately drains the intensity and urgency out of the encounter when you finally face another team. Wildlight is now introducing a 5v5 raid mode due to player demand, which feels better suited to larger maps but lacks the strategic team vs. team dynamics found in games like Overwatch and Marvel Rivals.
Perhaps Highguard’s biggest problem is that its individual ideas hardly fit together into compelling online PvP matches. Different parts of the game loop often feel like they’re in competition with each other. As a result, Highland Guard’s raids feel clunky and uncertain. For example, the heist portion feels like just a race against time. If Wild Light were able to introduce tighter looting zones, leading to team-versus-team encounters, the time spent searching for better gear would be even more tense and urgent.
Highguard’s PvP encounters lack tension and urgency
Photo source: Yeguang Entertainment
Controlling the push and pull of the Shieldbreaker is the most dynamic part of the game, and the outcome of a PvP encounter can tilt the direction of an entire match. Raiding enemy strongholds is also fun, but defending your base when you’re under attack feels unbalanced. Base defense requires a deeper level of gameplay strategy than just fortifying selected strategic walls and hoping to thwart an attack. The gunplay itself is serviceable, but the heroes’ abilities feel heavily inspired by other hero shooters. However, Highguard’s character designs feel original and detailed, even if they generally follow genre conventions.
Highguard’s inspiration is perhaps most obvious in the visual department. The game’s art style is very close to the aesthetic pioneered by Overwatch, a style that has been copied by nearly every hero shooter released since. When played side by side, Overwatch, Marvel Rivals, and High Guard look like they belong to the same family. The unique art style will help Highguard establish its own identity rather than being tied to the genre itself.
Performance on PC isn’t great either. We tested the game on a device provided by CyberpowerPC India, equipped with a 13th Gen Intel Core i5-13400F processor, 16GB DDR5 RAM, Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 graphics card, and a 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD (PCIe Gen4). When all settings are set to “High,” the game struggles to consistently hit 60 fps at 2K resolution. Setting the graphics preset to Medium allows Highguard to run at 65-70fps, but the framerate will drop in busy encounters and environments.
Highguard’s art style and gameplay hardly stand out from other hero shooters
Photo source: Yeguang Entertainment
In its current state, Highguard lacks the depth and variety to compete with the hero shooters that have been around for years. The game essentially launched in a single mode, and while the developers were quick to listen to player feedback and implement new features, the road ahead doesn’t look smooth. Highguard will benefit from an extended Early Access release, which will allow Wildlight Entertainment to iterate on the game and fine-tune it to player preferences.
Despite its meager offerings, High Guard doesn’t deserve the obviously harsh and malicious comparisons to Concord. It’s like a lot of players are rooting for the game to fail. While Highguard’s misfortune may seem like a fait accompli, there are some clever ideas here that could come together over time and updates to make a fun PvP hero shooter. But as a new developer, Wildlight needs its first game to work properly, so it may not get the time it needs to turn things around.