Highguard is a good bit of fun ... until you stop winning

Did you know that half of our small team here at Rogue started our careers covering League of Legends? Before you cancel your subscription, neither Cass or I play much anymore. But when you put that amount of hours into a MOBA, you develop a strong radar sense for when developers are trying to sneak a bit of MOBA into their game. And last year, during the Game Awards, my MOBA-dar was going off hard for Highguard, the new free-to-play shooter from a bunch of ex-Titanfall and Apex Legends devs.

But unlike some cowards, I’m not afraid of a little MOBA leaking into my games, so I was genuinely interested to check it out — even as the internet began to pile on in that super fun way the internet is so fond of doing these days.

Well, after an excruciating several weeks of people being both very annoying and confident about a game we knew almost nothing about, I decided to spend an afternoon with Highguard. I had quite a bit of fun … in the matches where I won. This is a big problem that defies the golden rule of competitive games: they still have to be fun when you lose.

Don’t get me wrong here, I do not like losing in competitive games. I’m not a violent person at all, but I’ve hit my desk so hard playing League that I felt my bones rattle. I’ve never broken a mouse or a monitor, but I still got what I’ll call unacceptably angry at a multiplayer game many times in my 20s. 

Why? Because I enjoy the feeling of tension that comes before a great win or a terrible loss, and that feeling of “god dammit, next time” is the crucial part of the competitive experience that I’m talking about here. Where a loss makes me want to queue back up instantly out of rage, rather than just think “Jesus, that sucked,” and turn the game off. Highguard is, unfortunately, the latter of those two feelings.