Remember Highguard, that new FPS game that closed out The Game Awards 2025 last month? Following the scathingly negative reception from players annoyed that former Titanfall and Apex Legends developers had come together to make another hero shooter, it and its studio Wildlight Entertainment gave the gaming community the silent treatment as its late January release date approached.
Now, though, that launch is here — and the free-to-play "PvP raid shooter" has officially dropped on Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC (on Steam), and PS5 with something of a re-reveal showcase that explores what Highguard is and shows how its gameplay loop stands out compared to other titles in the genre.
The showcase is just over 25 minutes long, and goes over everything from Highguard's core gameplay structure to in-depth details about the game's world, setting, art direction, narrative elements, and more. You can watch it with this link, or via the embed below.
At its core, Highguard is a 3v3 shooter with two distinct phases — an open-world looting phase reminiscent of the first few minutes of a battle royale or extraction shooter, and then a raiding phase that aims to capture the intense attack/defend combat of multiplayer survival games like Rust and and ARK. Throughout it all, players control special Warden characters with unique abilities, though Wildlight notes that ultimately, Highguard is a "gun game" at heart.
As part of the game's live-service nature, the developers plan to add new Wardens regularly, along with several other pieces of content like new weapons, weapon mods, areas to play in, and more. Specifically, all of these will come in Highguard's "Episode" updates every two months, with Episode 1 being launch, and Episode 2 launching very quickly in February in just two weeks.
In the looting phase of a match, teams ride out on mounts and can encounter one another in the field as they gear up with better weapons, armor, and other equipment. Then, after a few minutes, a special sword called the Shieldbreaker will spawn, its location indicated by a storm in the sky.
Players will then have to fight over this blade, and if you manage to stab it into the opposing team's base shield, you'll spawn a giant battering ram that — you guessed it — breaks the shield, kicking off a raid phase in which the assaulting team has to try and push through the defenders to their base's generators, or its heavily fortified anchor stone.
Destroying both of the former or the latter will also destroy the base, ending the match in victory for the attackers. If the assaulting team fails to blow up the base in one raid, though, they're eventually pushed out, and the gearing phase begins again, with the damage dealt to the defenders' keep lasting. Note that a flawless defense will do damage to the attackers' base, meaning you can win with excellent defensive play.
As for how Highguard's launch is going so far, the game has soared up to 97,130 concurrent players on Steam a little over an hour after release as I write this, with its performance on consoles difficult to gauge due to the lack of publicly available metrics. Early impressions from players are nigh-nonexistent, thus far; many seem to be stuck in a server login queue. Welcome to game launches in 2026!
All in all, though, I do think this showcase of Highguard's gameplay does a far better job of showing off what makes it distinct compared to the trailer shown at The Game Awards, and evidently, many will give it a fair chance since it's free. We'll have to see how things are looking in a week's time, but for now, hold those "Concord 2.0" jokes.
What do you think of Highguard? Now that we've gotten to see more of what makes it unique compared to other hero shooter-type games, are you interested in giving it a shot? Let me know in the comments.
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