Highguard (PC/PS5/XSX) - Hero Shooter with Raid Mechanics - Jan 26, 2026

[6souls]

Developed by Wildlight Entertainment, Inc. (Former Remedy Devs)

From the creators of Apex Legends and Titanfall, comes Highguard: a PvP raid shooter where players will ride, fight, and raid as Wardens, arcane gunslingers sent to fight for control of a mythical continent.

Battle rival Warden crews for possession of the Shieldbreaker, then break into and destroy the enemy base to secure territory in this all-new breed of shooter.

https://playhighguard.com/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4128260/Highguard/

[6souls]

https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comme...ghguards_game/

Raid mechanics are being interpreted as what Rust has become over time.

If you aren't familiar, Rust is a survival multiplayer game, a bunch of people living on a single server and eventually teams will build their own bases to protect their loot from other players. People will run raids to push into other players' built forts and try and break through lines of defense and crack the centre open and steal their resources.

[Takiwaki]

Being that this was released and its quiet in here says alot lol.

From what I saw the gameplay looks fun but the the artsyle and direction shares DNA (ex devs) with concord and its noticeable.

[Karbuncle]

Ive read about it, just not into the PVP shooter genre these days. From what I understand from a MoistCritical video its 3v3, and theres phases. A set up phase, involving gathering resources and building up your bases defenses (which apparently dont matter, at all), then fighting for some item and if you get the item, you then push your enemies base to claim their mcguffin.

I mean its certainly trying something interesting, its just not up my alley.

[Takiwaki]

Yup I wont play, but it is def getting alot of hate.

[Kaisha]

It's pretty slow going between the raid phases, and I absolutely hate the audio since I can never tell where the fuck people are running/firing from, since anything within 180 degrees ahead of me all sounds like it's directly in front of me, compared to CS2, Siege, or The Finals where I know exactly where someone is based on the audio. You die very quickly which makes it all the more annoying for me trying to track where someone is firing from. Base reinforcing seems kind of pointless since there's not enough time to collect enough resources to focus on getting repair materials vs. restocking on shield/upgrading current gear to the current tier of the round (each reinforce->gather->raid cycle increase the tier available).

The devs also performed the immortal sin of making a patch the size of the game install itself one day after release.


Lack of text chat bothers me since no one's using mic outside of the times I run with friends. Most of my matches end up with a lot of team deathmatch moments with the sword getting stalled too hard being brought to a base, which at times has led to a wet fart of a victory since it auto deals 10 damage if you win the overtime encounter and can end the match as has been the cast for me multiple times.

The other thing is no one sticks together for encounters. You absolutely should not run in solo with the sword or think you can 1v2.

[Karbuncle]

Yup I wont play, but it is def getting alot of hate.

Feel like most of the hate is just bandwagon at this point, but fair criticism is definitely in there.

[Bweigelt]

I'm just confused who is this game actually for. Like it has the most annoying parts of the Battle Royale but none of the things that draw people to those games. It has the prep stage and bomb plant scenario's from Rainbow six seige, but the prep stage is completely pointless because walls are dealth with the same way whether they are reinforced or not. The heroes are kinda interesting but like not of the level of a hero shooter. The economy could be compared to a moba economy but your just mining ore to fuel it. Just an all around confusing set of features. They wanted to make a unique game but all they did was combined a couple different games without the most important fun parts of any of them. The Gunplay seems solid and the mounts seem cool but that's really all it has going for it. It doesn't help that performance is apparently really bad.

That said, the hate it's getting is ridiculous, but Geoff absolutely fucked them by putting them last and they are getting a ton of backlash for that. The game is just weird, but it's not like the worst thing of all time and maybe it scratches an itch for some people even I don't know who those people would be.

EDIT: Oh I forgot one thing, The Voice acting and direction is absolutely a massive miss. Like these games are usually not good at this kind of thing, (Deadlock being a massive exception) but this is just on another level of awkward.

[Takiwaki]

Feel like most of the hate is just bandwagon at this point, but fair criticism is definitely in there.

It doesnt help when I look at it and see the exact same design language in the characters as concord which was just horrible. Heroes need to stand out. Another thing is the performance is bad so everyone is playing with lower settings making things just a muddy mush of textures lol. I do agree that the actual gameplay does indeed look fun but yea...not sure how long this one will last.

[Kaisha]

The character deisngs are 'fine', and don't give me that Concord vibe. Everyone trying to voice act like they're in a modern Marvel movie does turn me off though.

Another thing is the performance is bad so everyone is playing with lower settings making things just a muddy mush of textures lol.

Just keep post processing on high, since last I checked, it affects your internal resolution. Game is heavy for whatever reason though. 1080p/120fps locked here, all settings high, but my 5070ti is at 90% usage and the game doesn't look anything special.


I also keep thinking to myself "I could just be playing Wildgate instead", which is another dead multiplayer game of similar find loot -> mess with the other players, but the base is more interesting (your ship).

[Takiwaki]

The character deisngs are 'fine', and don't give me that Concord vibe. Everyone trying to voice act like they're in a modern Marvel movie does turn me off though.


Just keep post processing on high, since last I checked, it affects your internal resolution. Game is heavy for whatever reason though. 1080p/120fps locked here, all settings high, but my 5070ti is at 90% usage and the game doesn't look anything special.


I also keep thinking to myself "I could just be playing Wildgate instead", which is another dead multiplayer game of similar find loot -> mess with the other players, but the base is more interesting (your ship).

I totally disagree with you on the concord vibe. The character designs are horrible and are actually very similar to concords (concords is def worse though). In fact if you were to just take concord characters and stick them ito this game they would fit right in mostly lol. None of them give a Hero vibe, fine is never a good thing. Clothing makes no sense and most of them are bland. But again its just me since its in my feild of work and I do nitpick on the similarities and nuances lol.

[Lucavi]

Looks like too big of a map and too many individual tasks to do for just a 3v3. Either increase the players per team or add additional teams tasked with doing something (provided the game is optimized enough to handle more people.)

[Meresgi]

Watched a few vids of it, it looks mid but ok and decent. Had this come out just as a free game it would have probably gotten some good attention and then been forgotten, but because it was showcased as the "OMG ITS COMING" trailer for the Game Awards either because they blew their entire marketing budget on that or because someone knows Jeff it's getting a ton of negative press and hate and nitpicking of everything and anything.

[Lucavi]

The brighter the lights, the bigger the pressure to perform. It was a poor, poor decision to go last, whoever was responsible for it.

[Krandor]

They supposedly didn't pay for the spot at the end of the game awards and just wanted to shadow drop the game ala Apex Legends (though they clearly forgot the whole part about paying a bunch of streamers to play the game on release) before Geoff convinced them to run the spot.

[Kaisha]

5v5 dropped. It feels better as far as actually having more people to shoot goes, but now base defense is a royal pain in the ass because it wasn't balanced around this. In most of my matches, whoever gets to go on the offense with the raid tends to be the winner in the first round.

Server tic rate is still ass.

[Qalbert]

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/alex-...40892161-hmDh/

Unfortunately, along with most of the team at Wildlight, I was laid off today.

This one really stings as there was a lot of unreleased content I was really looking forward to that I and others designed for Highguard.

However, I'm excited for my next adventure. If your team or anyone you know needs an experienced Level Designer, hit me up!

[Takiwaki]

Yup saw that coming... unfortunate.

[Odesseiron]

Geoff Keighly has made a lot of bonehead decisions through the years, making this the final reveal of the game awards last year might be an all time high.

Though, conversely, the only reason it probably got any attention at all, was him.

[Qalbert]

Now its (more) official.
https://x.com/i/status/2021745168387596450