Highguard's lasting impression may be lessons in marketing. The "raid shooter" that has been the butt of Internet jokes since closing The Game Awards has drawn good critical reviews, but Steam user reviews have been unkind. Many of the reviewers have less than an hour's playtime. That's about a standard time for a review bomb, I guess.
When I first started doing this, I was told the industry standard was at least eight hours. I've tried to adhere to that. And if I'm honest, there are a lot of games where even eight hours feels like I'm just scratching the surface. After eight hours in League of Legends, I knew I enjoyed it, but I wouldn't have felt qualified to talk about it yet.
But, in fairness to the review bombers, I once played a game based on box office bomb RIPD. I dutifully gave it eight excruciating hours, but I'll admit I knew after 10 minutes this thing was irredeemable. Let me be clear, Highguard is nowhere near that bad. In fact, I actually enjoy it quite a bit. But I've seen the player count on Steam drop by 90 percent in 24 hours, which feels like a bell we can't unring.
We have no way to know if Highguard would have gotten more of a fair shake had it not been forced into an unfortunate PR push it was in no way ready for. Almost everybody watching The Game Awards had their own idea of what the final trailer of the night was going to be.
Lots of people thought we'd get a trailer for Grand Theft Auto 6, because we didn't know that game might not arrive in 2026. Millions expected Half-Life 3, a game that has not been confirmed to exist by anyone. Some expected a reboot of Def Jam Vendetta. Ok, maybe that last one was just me. But none of us were going to be happy with anything we saw, least of all a trailer that the game's developer has since admitted they didn't want to do.
If there's a silver lining, it's that we are in the era of game-saving updates. The same Game Awards that gave us the infamous Highguard trailer also bestowed an award for Best Ongoing Game to No Man's Sky. The Internet once hated this game every bit as much as it does Highguard. Cyberpunk 2077 is another game that turned its rep around through a series of brilliant updates. There's a precedent here, so hopefully Highguard still has time.