Highguard is the newest arrival on the hero shooter side, and there are a few things it manages to do right over other titles in the genre.
After a month of waiting and a lot of speculation, Highguard is finally here, and players across the globe are all jumping in to see what the game is all about. Criticisms aside, the game actually has a lot of interesting mechanics and components that make it genuinely stand out from other games in the hero shooter space. For one, the developers have attempted to create an entirely new genre, dubbed a «raid shooter», and although the influences are clear, there is still a distinctive identity and feel that cannot be found anywhere else.
Whenever a new shooter comes out, it is easy to compare it to other popular games, and the multiplayer space specifically is arguably one of the hardest areas to break into, as not only do the devs have to convince players to actually play the game, but they also have to keep them invested for months down the line. As it stands right now, Highguard is showing a lot of promise, and it certainly wasn’t afraid to take some bold steps in a new direction and try something new that could potentially become the next big thing.
Shooter Focus
Details:
Abilities supplement combat
Raw aim will always win the fight
Most hero shooters use their character roster as the main marketing factor, showing off all the cool abilities and powers they have that become the driving force for the action within the game. In Highguard, however, the Warden skills actually become secondary to the gunplay, and at no point are players going to be able to rely on anything other than their mechanical prowess.
This doesn’t mean to say that the abilities aren’t important, as characters like Mara can provide an insane amount of utility to their team that can easily change the tide of a match. But for the most part, players are going to need to aim for the head and shoot on sight if they want any chance of being successful, both out on the battlefield and back at their home base.
Mounts
Details:
Seamless transition between running and mounting
Faster open area movement
One of the coolest aspects that many players instantly gravitated towards in the Highguard trailer was the mounts. Now that the game can actually be played, the riding mechanic has become much more obvious as a fundamental tool that governs how midfights play out and how players move around the open areas.
Also, because there is only a brief cooldown between dismounts and remounts, players are free to hop on and off over and over, giving them a lot of control over when to go fast and when to prepare for a fight.
