Let's set aside the noxious cloud of internet surrounding Highguard for a second, ignore those overwhelmingly negative Steam reviews full of folks who've played it for less than an hour, and pretend Highguard is just a new free-to-play FPS that came out today.

Hey, Highguard is out. I played around six hours between launch day and a preview event in Los Angeles last week. It's got slick gunplay, a neat 3v3 mode that I've never seen anywhere else, and a business model that sounds less scummy than most free shooters. It's pretty fun. I don't think I love it.

I will commend Wildlight Entertainment, the 100-person studio of mostly ex-Respawn devs, for coming up with a format so weird (yet functional) that you can't easily compare it. They call it a "raid shooter," which is appropriate, as winning comes down to blowing the other team's base to smithereens.

Highgard matches take place on a large map shared by just six total players—two teams of three. Teams begin in their fortress, fortify its breakable walls, then mount up and set off to loot the map. This phase plays out like an accelerated battle royale match—rushing to find better guns and armor, but usually not immediately fighting the other team. Violence tends to break out once the Swordbreaker, a literal sword, spawns in the middle of the map. First team to grab it and carry it to the enemy base triggers a siege.

Unlike a battle royale circle that forces enemy squads to clash by pushing them toward a center, the Shieldbreaker naturally draws the lobby to it. Once it appears, getting it is the only thing that matters. "Reverse capture the flag" was how Wildlight described this first phase of the match, and so far it's my favorite.

There's real tension to fighting over the big glowy sword, especially because the distance between the Shieldbreaker spawn and each base is just large enough that you can die, respawn at your base, and set up one last ambush before they reach your walls. Or, you let the other team grab the sword and then chase them down on your mounts.

Once a siege starts, Highguard slows down. Mounts are stowed, defenders take up overwatch positions, and the action rules change to a bomb format similar to Rainbow Six Siege (but with respawns). That's right down to the blend of destructible and non-destructible walls that make up each base. Blow up two generators, or one harder-to-reach core, and you win. Fail to do enough damage before attackers run out of lives, and both teams reset to do another Shieldbreaker round.

It sounds complicated. It is complicated, especially when you layer in the upgrade store, gadgets, and character abilities I haven't even covered. But I can't deny it works. After a few matches where I barely understood what was happening, the unique tug-of-war dynamic clicked, I found a Warden (hero) I liked, and great matches were had.

Still, I'm bouncing off Highguard for reasons other than its clever mode. I don't like the "arcane punk" art style at all, it sucks to dump entire magazines into enemies just to break their shields (just like it does in Apex Legends), and the siege phase is too chaotic to read what's going on.

More than anything though, Highguard is ill-timed for me to enjoy it. For the better part of a year, I've been glued to more casual, multi-mode shooters both old and new. Case in point: after a full day of Highguard in Los Angeles last week, I came home and played hours of new indie arena shooter Out of Action (now that's a cool-ass game) before queuing for Big Team Battle in Halo: MCC with friends.

The success of Battlefield 6 and Arc Raiders suggest I'm not alone: We're in the middle of a vibe shift toward less sweaty, more social shooters. Call it hero shooter burnout or tastes naturally moving on before they someday swing back in the other direction, but Highguard is swiping at my matchbook and lighting no fire. I'll keep playing because I'm reviewing it (stay tuned for that), but I don't see Highguard becoming a habit.

Highguard made a bewildering debut at The Game Awards in December, with a brief trailer that didn't really make a compelling argument for how the FPS would be distinct from its competitors. Amid endless live service deaths over the past few years, the gaming world mostly seemed to discuss Highguard as if its failure was already assured – and the early Steam reviews suggest that something of a self-fulfilling prophecy is underway.

As I write this just a few hours after launch, there are well over 9,000 Highguard reviews on Steam, and just 20% of them are positive, marking the response as "Mostly Negative." That number will likely shift in the days to come, but that score is currently among the worst ratings applied to any game on Steam. It also launched to a peak of 97,249 concurrent Steam players, as SteamDB shows, which puts it among the daily peaks of titles like Valve's own Deadlock.

Many of those negative reviews complain of typical launch day woes, like server instability, poor performance on certain systems, or its use of the controversial kernel-level anti-cheat that underlies many modern multiplayer titles. Other poor reviews are memes. There seems to be some sentiment going around that it's "woke" for reasons I find even more difficult to parse than usual.

But there are plenty of reviews talking about the game itself. Much of the more direct criticism suggests that the map is far too big for the 3v3 format, with the pace of play getting severely bogged down. Others seem to be finding the TTK out of balance, or the gunplay wonky. But, it's important to note, many of those reviews are coming with barely an hour played.

I've got no idea if Highguard is good or not – and as somebody who absolutely Does Not Get competitive shooters, I likely never will. And I've definitely played plenty of games that I quickly clocked as being terrible within minutes of putting my hands on them. But there's a certain glee around the takedown of Highguard that I find deeply off-putting, and I hope the game itself can somehow display its merits outside the cloud of discourse that's lingered over it since The Game Awards.

"I wish Highguard had been received better," CEO admits, after cancelling a planned Apex Legends-style shadow drop when Geoff Keighley said "let me do something."