This Isn't a Highguard Review

I just realized I do not care for Highguard.

I never thought I'd have to come to this conclusion, mainly because I really did not care for Highguard to begin with. Like, at all. It did not occupy an inch on my mind and the whole carnaval that surrounded it and the efegies of Geoff built to mock it escaped me a little bit. But then something terrible happened.

I noticed the game was gonna be free to play and release on Steam.

I’m a weak Dee, the weakest of them all even, and so I looked into it. I fell for it.

Even tho I still did not care for Highguard.

I guess I just forgot.

I was gonna review Highguard, a decision I concocted even before I had installed the fucking thing. That’s not to say I wasn’t committed, because holy fuck I tried I TRIED to be. A segment of my bsky account is now forever a small time lapse of my short lived adventure through a tutorial that immediately hard locked because of a glitch and a couple of matches that felt devoid of everything I thought videogames of this ilk could be, and not in a good way.

That’s as far as I’ll go into the actual game, because despite everything, I still do not consider myself qualified to talk about it in any capacity that doesn’t extent past very passive aggressive short posts. Steam said I put 80 minutes into it; still more time than people that reviewed it actually put into it, but way too little for me to feel comfortable. This is not me declaring I’m better than anyone that made a joke review, because I’m probably worse and also a weirdo.

And besides, this isn’t a Highguard review.

I became fascinated with Highguard. A whole week of my life was wholy spent in me thinking about it, which I clearly did far more than actually playing it. The act of incterating with this thing opened a whole in my stomach, a void where no fun was allowed and no possible reflections could take place only than the ones I’d get looking at my own piss in the toiled, which in retrospect would have been a more self-fulfilling activity.

But no, instead I thought about Highguard. Every day. And I had yet to remember I didn’t care about it.

Whether I wanted to or not, I fell into exactly the same ditch I thought I avoid by being a ‘’self-respected’’ and ‘’considered’’ gamer, which will be my epitaph if by the time I’m gone everyone hates me, and the butt of the collective sick joke.

I pretended I was going into Highguard with an open mind. I pretended I actually wanted to give it an honest deep dive. I pretended I cared for Highguard so much that for a moment I really thought I did, and it brought even less joy that I would have gotten if I embraced wretched irony.

It may not be as deep as I want it to be, ‘cause take away the bells and whistles and I still have plenty of reasons to not like Hihguard, but it was never about that, it was just about the damn whistles. For a second, I was another passenger on the shameful festival of the week, performing on a theater while thinking I was going to be better than it, which would make me the biggest clown of all if you think about it.

In reality, I don’t deserve the long sentences or the shitty attempts at poetry, I just deserve [insert self-loathing but still pretentious sounding thing here].

That, and to not review Highguard.

I wrote these words on February 27^th, 2026, and now and till the code burns or the text is forgotten, that is my perpetual present, and so is Highguard’s. There is no guarantee it will even exist by the time the year ends, and I haven’t tried the 5 v 5 mode which probably alters the bulk of the experience, tho I wouldn’t know.

There is also no guarantee that it won’t. Maybe it will keep going, moving past its own jokes and into the pile of hero shooters that tried something different but also not really, and survive for like 3 years until they realize nobody is buying skins and pull the plug. Or maybe they will buy them. At this point, we aren’t even talking about the same Highguard anymore.

The actual Highguard we talked about is the one living comfortably on the permanence of discourse, where slop is a valid descriptor but also a slop term, where we throw darts to a target at our own leisure while the machine keeps burning and thousands get fired. The Highguard we yearn is the Highguard I was obsessed with, a joke, a punchline, but also not worth being one, so it became ironic, but also not too much, so I could pretend I wasn’t wasting my time and so I couldn’t feel the seconds slip through my fingers.

The actual Highguard we talked about is not a game, or maybe it was for a bit, but it’s mostly theatre. And I wanted that theatre. Instead, I got a game I did not care about.

The game that always existed.

Highguard is already in the past. We sometimes resurrect it in a Frankestein like manner, but soon we will have another monster.

In the meantime, the actual game doesn't matter, the real-life consequences don't matter, the reasons why we keep getting Highguards on the ways Highguard is different from the others don't matter.

Soon, it won't be Highguard, just like it stopped being Concord.


In the end, I kinda ended up caring for everything around Highguard... except Highguard itself. Accidentally, it ends up being a fantastic window into the machinations of this industry on a bigger scale, simple as they are confusing and motivated by a little misguided artistic intent and a lot of corporate bullshit.

Those things exist, those things are real, even if they are not the game itself, and more importantly worth calling out.

This isn't a Highguard review, because if it was, I could only be spouting a thing that didn’t even exist exist, and that just wastes everyone's time even more.

I'm still some sucker withering in front of the computer,


but I think I now respect my time a little more than that. I respect myself more than that. I respect everyone more than that.

I even respect Highguard a little bit more than that.


Whatever that game may have actually been.

Originally uploaded to Backloggd on February 27th, 2026. Some very minor alterations were made due to recent events.

Thank you so much for reaching this point.