XDefiant Preview – Can Ubisoft strike free-to-play shooter gold?
Ubisoft aren’t satisfied with hoovering up all of your open-world hours. Nor can they live simply taking up your multiplayer time with knights, rollerbladers and spec ops tactical warfare. Now, with XDefiant, they’re coming for your free-to-play shooter minutes too, using their own gun-based franchises as the starting point. They’ll be hoping, as Ubisoft always do, to climb to the pinnacle of this particular genre. We’ve gone hands on ahead of this week’s closed beta.
XDefiant is a 6v6 team-based shooter, with each player able to select and customise their loadout starting with one of five Factions. These Factions are all taken from Ubisoft’s franchises, whether they’re shooters themselves or more open world jaunts. There’s the Cleaners from The Division, Phantoms from Ghost Recon, Libertad from Far Cry, Echelon from Splinter Cell and Dedsec from Watch Dogs, all lending their own individual predilections for armed warfare.
They’re equivalent to classes, with Faction Abilities the elements that set each of them apart, beginning with a series of fire-related attacks for the Cleaners through to Dedsec’s ability to hack enemy abilities or deploy Spiderbots that stun your opponent. Each Faction also has a couple of different abilities to choose from, meaning that there’s likely a way to build the perfect setup for your playstyle, and that it’s going to be interesting to see how well Ubisoft balances all of them as the game works through its beta phases to a full release.
Maps are similarly taken from each of the five franchises, and it’s cool to have elements like The Division’s New York sidling up to Far Cry’s zoo. Chances are you won’t have too long to take in the sights though, as the combat here is fast and frenzied, with
Read more on thesixthaxis.com
