The Event
It’s finally here and we got to play it extensively. Being totally honest, with such a long length of silence after the TGA trailer, I was shocked that our hands-on invite in LA still stood for mid January. Either way, arriving onsite, there was a palpable nervous excitement and that was confirmed when everyone I spoke with just didn’t really know what to expect from Highguard, the newly launched raid shooter by Wildlight Entertainment, a newly formed studio by Ex-Respawn and other industry vets.
Pretty soon, it was apparent the team was not only confident in what they’ve created, they were extremely comfortable and chill even after some online grumbling about how the game was already DOA. After a short tutorial and new trailer, we still weren’t sure what to except when we sat down at the extremely impressive PC demo area with other members of the press, lined with incredible art, some wall length in size. Still not knowing what to expect, I strapped in with my other teammates and fired up the game..
If anything at all, the art team behind Highguard is top notch. The environments and especially the Wardens are incredibly polished.
What I Liked
Immediately, I was impressed how polished everything was. The UI, the graphics, the animations, the graphics, the voice acting, and the varied and solid cast of Heroes called Wardens in Highguard. We dove into the tutorial which was super impressive and extremely easy to understand. Reluctantly, we joined our first match and as shown in the raw, unedited footage above, you can see we got absolutely slaughtered. As the matches went on, we got more comfortable, more familiar with the weapons, strategies, and systems that seem easy to pick up but very deep to master.
The content schedule for Highguard is impressive to say the least.
As the day went on, we jumped between matches and interviews with the dev team. Both got better and better as the day went on and after the team confirming the long silence before launch, “We just want the game to speak for itself!” and man, does it ever. The matches got more intense, the yelling, screaming sighs of triumph and defeat rang through the demo haul, then, I was sold. Jumping around the environments on my mount, mining jasper and blasting baddies was more and more thrilling as the event progressed.
Highguard feels familiar like APEX but it feels fresh and new as it’s own beast. Wardens skills are important but it’s truly a gun game. That being said, the Wardens are incredibly well designed with killer skills and each with a unique identity. With an incredibly impressive content release schedule every month, this could be 2026’s early sleeper hit.
Some Wardens were better than others but the best part? The all felt unique and fresh with a ton of strategy possibilities between the launch Wardens and plenty more coming.
What Needs Work
While I was overall extremely pleasantly surprised with my hands on time with Highguard, the interviews with the team, and especially the event itself, there were a few nitpicks. First off, some of the Wardens, especially Condor who I chose first, her sensory abilities to track enemy movements seemed extremely limited and not as useful as my fave Warden I played, Scarlet who has stealth, throwing knives etc that felt more fleshed out.
I am sure as time goes on, Wardens will be tweaked and adjusted so I am not super worried but I feel that some Wardens are going to be way more popular than others at launch. Lastly, reinforcing your bases felt a bit underwhelming as no matter if we were defending our base or attacking the enemy, we just blasted through the walls without much thought.
Luckily, besides reinforcing walls and a few underwhelming skills, there wasn’t much to complain about at all.
The Future
What will the future of Highguard bring? Who knows but I think I just can’t stress enough how important it is to never again trust a book by it’s cover or in this case, judge a game by it’s TGA trailer. With a cosmetic only, free to play, no pay to win or pay for power model, I am super excited for what Highguard and the team at Wildlight have in store. I left with the incredible event with a smile on my face, satisfied with the gameplay and the amazing dev team behind it.
Either way, the game is live now and free to play on console and PC. Give it a whirl.
