XDefiant Closed Beta Impressions: Ubisoft’s Crossover Shooter Is a Lukewarm Experience
It's hard to compete in this oversaturated market of multiplayer shooters where everyone's vying to become the next Call of Duty or Apex Legends. ‘Free-to-play' is no longer a strong draw for a new IP to leave a mark unless you're an established publisher like Ubisoft. In fact, I had completely forgotten about their upcoming arena shooter, XDefiant, until I received an email for closed beta access. Set against a vibrant punk rock backdrop, XDefiant is a fast-paced 6v6 shooter where you jump into matches as gunmen from Ubisoft's flagship franchises like Splinter Cell and Far Cry, and duke it out with unique skills and traits to dominate. On paper, this sounds amazing, but having spent a few hours playing the ongoing closed beta, I'm not fully convinced.
XDefiant has certainly got its bases covered in delivering a high-octane experience, all thanks to near-instantaneous respawns that always keep you in the heat of the battle. This is bolstered by an endless approach to class switching — akin to Overwatch — where you rotate factions at any moment to turn the tides, in addition to customisable weapon loadouts. Once you choose something, you aren't forever locked to it. Of course, there were long matchmaking times, micro stutters, and loading issues which marred the experience a bit, but such hindrances are to be expected from a work-in-progress product.
Therefore, I'm not going to egg on the technical aspects. That said, the XDefiant closed beta on PC did have difficulties filling in lobbies — occasionally restarting the process midway through progression. Furthermore, there's no quick and easy way to exit right out of a match the moment it finishes, forcing you to sit through the leaderboard and other animations while a
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