Highguard preview: 4 hours with one of the best new shooters in years

Highguard could be the start of an exhilarating new FPS subgenre

Ever since its reveal to close out the 2025 The Game Awards, Highguard has been the subject of much chatter. Some people wondered if it’ll be the next Concord, or commented on the lack of visible marketing since its reveal, and pretty much everyone has had questions about what the game actually is. Though a certain group of vocal gamers are no doubt counting on Highguard to fail, they’re going to be disappointed to hear this: Highguard freakin’ slaps.

That’s my takeaway after attending a hands-on preview of the game in Los Angeles hosted by developer Wildlight Entertainment. The consensus among press in the room appeared unanimous: the minds behind Apex Legends and Titanfall have another hit on their hands. I played for nearly four hours, and over the course of those hours it’s clear Highguard delivers on the type of kinetic gameplay you’d expect from a team full of veteran developers who’ve worked on some of the best shooters of the past two decades.

Highguard puts a lot of elements from other FPS games and genres. You have the loot gathering of a battle royale, the team-focused objectives in a capture-the-flag-like phase, a “blow up the objectives” raid phase, and Rainbow Six Siege-lite mechanics. Together, they combine to create a gameplay mode that feels familiar but distinct.

Officially described by Wildlight as a “PvP raid shooter,” a match in Highguard sees two teams of three players fighting over a Shieldbreaker, a sword that, when planted in the dome shield that surrounds the enemy team’s base, summons a siege-tower-tank-hybrid to take down that shield. The singular game mode has a few distinct phases. You’ll start by fortifying your base, then head out to gear up, then clash with the opposing team over the Shieldbreaker, before finally either defending your base or raiding your opponents’ in an attempt to blow up a combination of three different objectives. If a raid is successfully defended (i.e., the defenders’ base still has health once respawns run out), the cycle starts anew.

During the press event in Los Angeles, I played almost a dozen matches and left with an 8-3 record (not too shabby if I say so myself). Some matches were over in 10 minutes if my squad quickly took control of the Shieldbreaker and dominated our raid. My final match lasted well over 30 minutes as the final struggle over the Shieldbreaker went into overtime once the timer ran out, setting up a 3v3 shootout with no respawns. (We lost, but, man, were we close to victory.)

There are 10 weapons available at launch, a mix of assault rifles, SMGs, snipers, shotties — what you would expect from a modern first-person shooter. Despite mixing a fantasy setting with modern military firearms, the on-the-ground gameplay often feels like a bog-standard FPS; the developers explicitly did not want any shooting to come from characters’ hands, so you won’t find any Immortals of Aveum-like magic projectiles.

Mounts offer a nice variety to firefights. Chasing down an enemy wielding the Shieldbreaker and shooting them while atop a bear offered an experience I haven’t felt in any other FPS. In fact, rushing to the Shieldbreaker, clashing for control of it, and either chasing down a foe or defending an ally trying to plant it was easily my favorite phase of each match.

Where the magic does show up is with the playable characters, called Wardens. There are eight playable Wardens at launch (with more to come via free updates) each with their own unique special abilities, ultimates, and passives. Scarlet can temporarily make walls disappear, Atticus throws electrified lances, and Kai summons an ice wall for defense, for example. I stuck with Kai, the ice-wielding Warden, for a fair amount of matches. His ice wall came in handy in a wide range of scenarios, like blocking an entrance while defending an objective or giving me cover while planting the Shieldbreaker. If Call of Duty has a “panic knife,” Highguard might just have a “panic ice shield” — a last ditch defense best-deployed when health is on the fritz.

Armor, which can be found in scattered chests or purchased from a vendor during a match, is so heavily emphasized in gameplay, some gunfights left me feeling like I should have killed an enemy twice over before they finally went down. I’d pump what felt like an entire clip from my assault rifle into them before finishing them off with a couple rounds from my shotgun. Their armor was a bit too protective, and left a disconnect between all of the hits I was landing and the damage I was seemingly not inflicting.

Highguard’s gameplay is already top tier. Its lore and story? Well….

Despite the developers stating how excited they were for the storytelling potential of Highguard, no storytelling came through while playing the game, at least during our preview session. There’s no single-player campaign, nor are there Titanfall-like cutscenes in between multiplayer matches to offer a semblance of a story. The little bit of lore I now know about Highguard only comes from hearing the developers tell me about it.

I haven’t been invested much in online multiplayer games since I spent my evenings in various Call of Duties throughout middle and high school many moons ago. I’ve dabbled in free-to-play ones like Overwatch 2 and Marvel Rivals, but they never really stuck. Highguard might prove to be the exception — though it only has one game mode, that game mode is thrilling. Its blend of familiar game modes and tactics creates something that feels new; it’s much more than the sum of its parts. I spent a good three-and-a-half hours playing it at the preview event, and can see myself spending plenty more time than that playing it during the weekends to come.