XDefiant Review

ign.com:

XDefiant is an FPS with an identity crisis. This arcade-style arena shooter pulls characters and locations from various Ubisoft games, and it feels a little bit like a lot of different things as a result: It's fast and twitchy in a way that’s similar to games like Call of Duty, but has class abilities that might put it closer to something like Overwatch. It’s got fast respawns and faster deaths, but offers objective-based modes that prioritize teamwork over straight killcount. That combination of disparate elements helps XDefiant play a little differently overall from most competitive shooters, but it also makes it feel a bit jumbled, like its parts aren’t always working together toward the same goals.

Call of Duty figured out the fun of grounded but fast-paced competitive play in this vein way back in the late 2000s, and XDefiant is clearly chasing that same success with its solid FPS design. Though the weapons are all pretty standard for military shooters like this, they still feel distinct and satisfying to use – the AK-47 hits harder and kicks a little differently than the M41A, for instance, and it feels meaningful to pick one over the other for your play style. Guns are also, for the most part, appropriately deadly, but you'll get the most out of them when you spend time mastering the way recoil pulls your aim and what benefits you get from equipping a specific scope or stock. XDefiant pairs that with class abilities like healing teammates, dropping shields, and launching explosive drones, which can change the flow of a fight when they're used well, but they're not so powerful that they ever override the emphasis on its central shooting mechanics.

If nothing else, this is a fun shooter where the gunplay feels good, and you can do a whole lot worse than that as a solid foundation. It's the other stuff layered on top of that gunplay, however, that XDefiant struggles to mix into a coherent whole.

The hook is that XDefiant is a sort of multiverse of different Ubisoft