In the fast-paced, almost psychotically unforgiving video game business, you really do have to stick the landing. Launching a new game is an artform in itself – do you go for months of slowly building hype or a sudden shock reveal, simultaneously announcing and releasing a new project in one fell swoop? The latter worked incredibly well for online shooter Apex Legends, which remains one of the genre’s stalwarts six years after its surprise launch on 4 February 2019. What you don’t do with a new release, is something that falls awkwardly between those two approaches. Enter Highguard.
This new online multiplayer title from newcomer Wildlight Entertainment has an excellent pedigree. The studio was formed by ex-Respawn Entertainment staff, most of whom previously worked on Titanfall, Call of Duty and the aforementioned Apex Legends. They know what they’re doing. But the launch has been … troubled.
The game was revealed via a rather oblique trailer that closed last December’s lavish Game Awards event. Most viewers were expecting the ceremony to end with something huge – a major new announcement from Hideo Kojima, perhaps, or maybe a GTA 6 song and dance number. What they got was a short look at a fantasy-themed online shooter that no one had heard of – and it didn’t go down well.
It turns out that Wildlight hadn’t planned to reveal the game before its 26 January launch – they were going to pull another Apex Legends shadow drop – but Game Awards organiser Geoff Keighley played the game, liked it and offered them a free slot at his show. The team couldn’t turn it down. Although perhaps, with hindsight, they should have.
Now it’s out in the open and it’s actually pretty interesting. Combining elements of an online shooter and a Moba (multiplayer online battle arena game), players get into two teams of three, select from a group of differently skilled hero characters and then try to destroy the other side’s base before their own is destroyed. The action comes in phases – first you fortify your castle, then you explore the landscape for loot and power-ups, then the fighting begins. Each part sort of feels like a different game and as I played the first few rounds, I was constantly thinking “ooh, that’s a bit like Rainbow Six Siege” and “ooh, this bit’s like Fortnite”. But the game does have an identity of its own, thanks to its fantasy/mythological styling – you get to ride a sort of spirit horse around the landscape, while different heroes throw lightning bolts or erect walls of ice.
However, they also carry shotguns and assault rifles, so that it feels like a weird cross between Call of Duty and a Ray Harryhausen movie. What Respawn has always done well is design incredibly smooth kinetic playspaces, where traversal is rarely impeded. This is a trait that Wildlight Entertainment has inherited – in Highguard you can run, slide, climb and leap in seamless movements, rarely getting stuck on the scenery.
But sadly, the game’s disproportionately opulent reveal at the Game Awards has caused some issues. Almost immediately after launch, negative reviews started streaming on to the game’s Steam page, with players complaining about visual performance issues and long queues to get a match – which doesn’t feel that fair for a game that had only been online for a couple of hours. You have to wonder how destructive that unexpected Game Awards teaser was – the gamer community can be incredibly judgmental and they have long, bitter memories.
Highguard did attract around 100k players on day one, not a bad start for a newcomer to the crowded online multiplayer space, but there’s a lot of work to do. The last couple of years has been a battlefield for online blasters, the scarred landscape strewn with the skeletons of failed competitors from Concord to Hyenas and Battleborn. On top of this, Valve, the company behind Steam, has its own Moba-inspired online team game, Deadlock, in development and reaction to the closed beta tests has been positive. Valve is not a rival anyone really wants to go up against.
And there’s a reason everyone wants to be in this space – Fortnite is making around $5bn a year, and Battlefield 6 was one of the bestselling games of 2025. But considering the risks (hundreds of millions of dollars in development and marketing costs) and the volatile, unpredictable market, I can’t help but feel worried for the Highguard team. They’re banking on players staying around for months, building a community of adoring fans, maintaining huge concurrent player numbers. But it’s going to take a lot to get over the hurdle of that botched reveal.
Besides, I have a feeling the next mega hit online shooter won’t be a Frankenstein’s monster of a game, sown together from the recognisable body parts of previous hits. It’ll be something wild and fresh and new – a Godzilla, emerging from the depths of the game-development ocean, unexpected and bizarre and covered in seaweed. And whatever it is, it won’t get the end slot at the Game Awards, we’ll never see it coming.
What to play
“Is this another one of your masochist games?” asked my partner, somewhat warily, watching me play mountain-climbing game Cairn this week. (He is well aware of my affection for extremely difficult video games; he’s witnessed me struggle through so many of them.) Cairn is a game about extreme mountaineering, in which you must move storied climber Aava’s individual limbs to find hand and footholds in the forbidding cliff faces of Kami, a mountain that has never been summited. Aava is obstinately determined to be the first person to get to the top, and as the game progresses, I began to question that obsession (and my own obsession with playing it). It is thoughtful, beautiful, and not always easy, and has provoked a lot of reflection. Look out for the full review on the Guardian tomorrow, in which I will be able to say much more. Keza MacDonald
Available on: PS5, PC, Xbox
Estimated playtime: 10-15 hours (for one epic climb)
What to read
-
We could use some positive games industry news, so how about this: according to GamesIndustry.biz, the unique newsletter-based indie games publisher Pantaloon has secured £150k to invest into new titles. Pantaloon offers its premium subscribers access to a range of new titles for £3.99 a month. Co-founder Jamin Smith stated, “We’re trying to invite risk back into the equation, find weirder, more wonderful, more creatively refreshing work that we can put our names to.”
-
As one of the few people who actually played on the Virtual Boy when it arrived in 1995, I was surprised to see that Nintendo is bringing the headache-inducing retro system to the Nintendo Switch and Switch 2, complete with replica accessory and downloadable games. Now it’s been revealed that the lineup of digital titles will include an unreleased sequel to classic racer F-Zero named Zero Racers. You’ll need a subscription to the Nintendo Switch Online service to play it, but this is a fascinating and rare chance to play a Nintendo game that never made it to the shelves. Also coming is platforming adventure, D-Hopper which was cancelled due to the demise of the Virtual Boy. Just make sure to have painkillers to hand.
-
The pleasure of watching seasons pass in Animal Crossing is the theme of this lovely piece by journalist and author Jay Castello. Although you could feasibly skip the game’s fallow winter periods, having patience and embracing the darkness is part of the game’s slow charm.
What to click
Question Block
Keza answers this week’s question from reader Caitlin:
“I am endlessly thinking about games that take gamer expectations and use them in some way to enhance or subvert the experience – like Tunic, which plays with nostalgia for game manuals and secrets from the SNES days, or Inscryption, or Alan Wake 2. In each case there’s a way you think the game should go, and then the designers use your own gaming literacy to challenge those expectations. Can you say more about this small wave of games?”
This is also a favourite mini-genre of mine, as someone who for both professional and personal reasons has played really a lot of video games. One of the first games like this I ever played was Shadow of the Colossus. Go kill the big monster, the game tells you, as hundreds of games had before. Then you find the first colossus, and it’s just peacefully wandering around. You climb it and slay it, and there’s no fanfare for you. The creature crumples and dies. I felt a little bit sick. Spec Ops: The Line was also famous for doing this: telling the player to kill, then inviting them to feel awful about it. But as you point out, there are plenty more ways to subvert player expectations now. Frog Fractions is a classic; if you know nothing about this game, that’s perfect, just play it. The Stanley Parable was a great comedy-ish entry in this tradition, as is Undertale. And then there’s the recent run of games – Indika, Baby Steps – that mock you and your “gamer brain”. Never forget that Zelda: Breath of the Wild awards you with a poop-shaped trophy if you go to the immense trouble of finding every single Korok seed in the game. KM
If you’ve got a question for Question Block – or anything else to say about the newsletter – email us on [email protected].
