After playing a closed beta two years ago and having a pretty good time, I didn’t have high expectations for XDefiant. While my experience was positive, all I heard about the upcoming beta and closed beta was that it was all about luring Call of Duty fans. Fortunately, the final version of the game didn’t… Exactly That.
After playing a few games, the first thing that became apparent was that Ubisoft San Francisco was smart to distance the game from the modern Call of Duty formula and instead focus on a more classic feel that many shooter series have slowly lost. While XDefiant has its own style to some extent, it generally feels like a revamped version of Call of Duty 4, and I mean that in the best possible way.
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First, let me say that trying to avoid comparisons to Call of Duty is foolish. Ubisoft wants this game badly, which is one of the reasons it’s been tested and tweaked over and over again. Thankfully, unlike canceled online shooters like Super Falcon and The Division: Heartland, the publisher may have a winner with this one.
While Call of Duty remains a behemoth that no one dares to topple or emulate, there’s an obvious opportunity to try to examine why the long-running series abandoned simpler systems and less bloated design, and how it can be improved to cater to the needs of modern players, who may be a little tired of increasingly complex multiplayer experiences and just want the simple gunplay of the PS3/360 era. So far, XDefiant has done a good job in this regard, with early player numbers reportedly good.
Comparisons to Call of Duty 4 and Black Ops 4 are not unfounded. Call of Duty, released in 2018, was arguably the series’ lowest point in popularity after Modern Warfare (2007); it lacked a storyline, didn’t implement all the borrowed ideas very well, and felt like a cheap version of its Treyarch-developed predecessor. A few months later, it was available as part of the Humble Bundle monthly offering, which was a big and clear sign that the game wasn’t going the way Activision had expected. fundamental.
But CoD’s hardcore fans don’t care That There’s plenty of single-player content, but the lack of it feels a little odd, given that the series has long been known for big-budget, Michael Bay-esque extravaganzas that clock in at just under 6-7 hours, and equally rich multiplayer content, now with regular seasonal content updates and more. But more egregiously, the series’ core personality has been muddied by MOBA-like map design and bland heroic classes, which feel like a step back from the convincing combination of unique abilities and sci-fi acrobatics of Call of Duty: Black Ops 3. The return to “ground combat” gameplay feels less like the old games and more like a more basic version of what Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 and Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare tried before.
Now, nearly six years later, the developers at XDefiant have picked up the pieces and made a competitive shooter that delivers on the promise of solid yet stylish Call of Duty-style gameplay. There’s just the right amount of Overwatch DNA (another troubled Activision IP) in the game, but it never distracts from the gunplay and map design, which are good in their own right, and the progression system built around it doesn’t look terrible.
I guess the point, at least for me at 32, is that I can’t keep up with most of the current “mainstream” development tracks and overly complex class builds, which is why, after the first month or two, I played the latest CoD more casually and sporadically. In the meantime, I found a simpler, more streamlined version of the loop in XDefiant. Sure, it plays great, and the maps don’t feel like the cubicles from CoD’s darkest days. They’re compact but unique and flexible, and I really enjoyed mastering them, just like mastering a gun.
With Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 on the horizon, coming to Game Pass later this year, XDefiant will have to face yet another acid test, one that will hinge on satisfying the ravenous demand for more content without tinkering too much with the core gunplay and classes. There are balance issues to address, of course, but the game’s long-term success depends on letting modern Call of Duty do its thing and taking the opposite direction in terms of overall design and engagement.
