Highguard emerged from complete obscurity when Geoff Keighley unveiled it during the climactic moment of The Game Awards 2025. Typically reserved for industry-defining announcements, this prime slot positioned Wildlight Entertainment's free-to-play shooter as a revolutionary entry in the genre. Keighley himself championed it as a "new breed of shooter," setting expectations sky-high for a title that had previously existed entirely off the community's radar.
The reality, however, proves far less remarkable. After extensive hands-on time across PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC platforms, Highguard reveals itself as the epitome of mediocrity—not egregiously flawed enough to claim 2026's worst game (a title premature to award in February), yet failing to carve out a compelling identity in an oversaturated market. Its most redeeming quality? The zero-dollar price tag.
Core Gameplay Loop: Raid, Resources, and Repetition
At its foundation, Highguard pits two teams of three or five players against each other in objective-based combat. Players assume the role of "Wardens," specialized warriors tasked with infiltrating enemy strongholds to destroy either two generators or a central anchor stone. Matches unfold across sprawling maps that initially suggest tactical depth but quickly expose fundamental design tensions.
A distinguishing feature emerges in the preparation phase, where teams scavenge for weapons, equipment, and mineral resources before engaging. This concept theoretically encourages strategic planning and loadout customization. In practice, the execution feels half-baked. The resource gathering mechanics lack urgency, and the benefits rarely justify the time investment when matches devolve into standard firefights. The mining process involves holding a button near mineral deposits, a simplistic interaction that adds little gameplay value.
The Wardens themselves possess supernatural abilities—hurling lightning-infused spears, conjuring ice barriers, and cloaking themselves in invisibility. These powers should create dynamic combat scenarios, yet they often feel disconnected from the gunplay rather than integrated into a cohesive combat system. The abilities function more as occasional novelties than strategic cornerstones, with long cooldowns that make them feel like afterthoughts rather than core mechanics.
What Works: The Few Bright Spots
The free-to-play model immediately removes the barrier to entry, allowing curious players to sample Highguard without financial risk. This accessibility represents the game's strongest commercial strategy, though it raises questions about long-term monetization sustainability. The in-game store currently offers cosmetic items, but the game's uncertain future makes any investment questionable.
The shooting mechanics themselves demonstrate tight, responsive gunplay that feels satisfying in isolation. Weapons like the Vanguard assault rifle and Big Rig machine gun exhibit solid audio-visual feedback and predictable recoil patterns. When the game focuses purely on moment-to-moment combat, it achieves a serviceable, if unremarkable, level of quality. The hit detection feels precise, and weapon switching is fluid, suggesting a solid technical foundation buried beneath the design issues.
The conceptual framework—blending resource gathering with raid objectives—shows genuine ambition. The preparation phase and mining systems suggest a design team attempting to innovate beyond standard team deathmatch formulas. These ideas, while poorly implemented, indicate creative thinking that could flourish with refinement. The notion of planning an assault while managing resources has proven successful in other genres, and applying it to an FPS shows outside-the-box thinking.
Critical Flaws: Where Highguard Stumbles
The most jarring issue lies in the game's aesthetic dissonance. Highguard presents a visual identity crisis, merging medieval castle architecture with luminescent fantasy structures and modern military firearms. The weapon designs, though technically impressive, clash violently with their surroundings. An AK-47-inspired rifle feels fundamentally wrong when wielded beside stone ramparts and magical barriers. This inconsistency prevents the world from establishing believable internal logic, constantly reminding players that they're in a poorly conceived mishmash rather than a cohesive universe.
The environmental art direction compounds this problem. Castles feature glowing energy conduits alongside traditional battlements, creating a visual language that never commits to either fantasy or sci-fi. The result is a world that feels like asset store placeholders rather than a deliberate artistic vision. This lack of visual coherence extends to character designs, where armored knights carry plasma rifles without any in-world explanation.
Speaking of the world, Highguard offers absolutely no narrative foundation. No lore compendium explains the Wardens' origins, the nature of their powers, or the conflict's stakes. The absence of storytelling might be forgivable in a pure arena shooter, but Highguard's elaborate environments and character abilities beg for contextual justification. Wildlight Entertainment's apparent prioritization of mechanics over worldbuilding leaves the experience feeling hollow, like playing with action figures from different toy lines mashed together.
Map Design and Pacing Issues
The maps, while visually expansive, suffer from catastrophic scale problems. Designed for 3v3 encounters, these environments feel cavernously empty. Players spend excessive time traversing open spaces at a glacial movement speed, searching for action that arrives too infrequently. The on-foot mobility feels intentionally hobbled, creating downtime that kills momentum and engagement. Sprinting offers minimal speed increase, and there's no traversal system like sliding or wall-running to make movement engaging.
The visual design compounds this problem. Each map adopts an identical color palette—pale blue skies, rolling green hills, and beige fortifications. The lack of distinctiveness makes map recognition nearly impossible. Without unique landmarks or thematic variation, every environment blurs into the same forgettable backdrop. After hours of play, distinguishing between maps like "Citadel" and "Stronghold" becomes an exercise in futility.
The 3v3 format simply cannot sustain the map size. Even with 5v5 matches, the player density feels insufficient. The large-scale design suggests ambitions for battle royale-scale encounters, yet the team sizes and objective structure cater to intimate squad-based tactics. This fundamental mismatch creates a persistent sense of playing the wrong game mode for the environment provided. You might spend three minutes crossing open terrain only to be eliminated in a ten-second firefight, creating a frustrating risk-reward imbalance.
Execution Failures and Missed Potential
Highguard's problems ultimately trace back to execution. The unique ideas—preparation phases, resource mining, hybrid magic-gun combat—never coalesce into a compelling whole. Each system exists in isolation, failing to create synergistic gameplay loops that reward mastery or strategic thinking. The resource gathering doesn't meaningfully impact the raid phase. The magical abilities don't complement the gunplay. The large maps don't serve the objective design.
The 3v3 raid concept could work in tighter, more focused environments. The resource gathering might add tension in a survival context. The magical abilities could complement gunplay with proper balancing. But in their current state, these elements fight each other rather than harmonize. It's as if multiple design documents were merged without considering how the pieces fit together.
The user interface also suffers from confusing layouts and poor information hierarchy. Critical details like ability cooldowns and objective status are buried in cluttered menus. The spawn system frequently places players far from teammates, exacerbating the map size issues. These quality-of-life problems suggest a game rushed to meet its high-profile release window.
Technical Performance and Platform Considerations
On PlayStation 5, the game runs at a stable 60 frames per second with minimal technical hiccups. Load times are reasonable, and network connectivity proves stable during matches. However, the game lacks essential features like cross-platform party systems, limiting its social appeal. The absence of a ping system or robust communication tools makes coordinating with random teammates nearly impossible, particularly given the map scale.
The PC version offers additional graphical settings but suffers from poor optimization on mid-range hardware. The Xbox Series X/S version mirrors the PS5 experience, suggesting consistent performance across consoles. However, the lack of platform-specific features or enhancements makes each version feel like a baseline port rather than a tailored experience.
Monetization and Longevity Concerns
As a free-to-play title, Highguard's survival depends on retaining players and converting them into paying customers. Currently, the cosmetic offerings feel limited and uninspired, mostly consisting of weapon skins and character recolors. The battle pass system, if one is planned, has yet to materialize, leaving little progression beyond basic account leveling.
The player base, already fragmented across three platforms, shows signs of decline just weeks after launch. Matchmaking times have increased noticeably, and skill-based matchmaking appears either non-functional or overly permissive, creating lopsided matches. Without a significant content roadmap or community engagement strategy, Highguard risks becoming another free-to-play ghost town.
Final Verdict
Highguard occupies the uncomfortable middle ground of gaming—neither offensive enough to hate nor polished enough to recommend. It represents mediocre execution of lukewarm ideas in a package that costs nothing but your time. For a free-to-play title, that might suffice for a weekend curiosity, but it fails to justify the prestigious reveal platform it received.
The responsive gunplay and occasional flashes of innovation prevent it from being a complete write-off, yet the aesthetic confusion, pacing problems, and barren maps ensure it won't maintain a lasting player base. Wildlight Entertainment has a foundation that could, with substantial updates and redesigns, evolve into something worthwhile. As it stands, Highguard simply exists—another shooter in a sea of alternatives, distinguished only by its price point and its memorable Game Awards debut.
Score: 3.5/7
Platform: PlayStation 5 (reviewed), Xbox Series X/S, PC (Windows)
Price: Free-to-play