Analyzing a free-to-play game is always a tricky situation. By not requiring any investment from the player, beyond their time of course, one can be more lenient when it comes to criticizing aspects that would otherwise be apparent in a money-paying alternative. This becomes even more important and crucial when analyzing Ubisoft’s “Call of Duty killer” XDefiant.
XDefiant is actually a byproduct of a mix of Call of Duty and Overwatch. It’s an arena shooter where different characters with unique abilities compete and fight against each other in a series of creative and vibrant arenas across a variety of game modes. It’s an original idea, but it oozes recognizability, as virtually every part of XDefiant can be attributed to another existing product. This isn’t a problem, so to speak, as the arena shooter subgenre hasn’t seen many new developments in a long time, and if the game is playable, there should be an audience for it. This is certainly the case with XDefiant.
It’s a shooter with a brilliant feel. It’s responsive, fast, action-packed, well balanced and has a fluidity that rivals its best competitors. The years of development that Ubisoft has devoted to this game have resulted in a core chassis that holds enormous potential. Every part of the game oozes sophistication, be it the pleasant pop of the targets, the precision of the weapons, the slightly stiffer movement that makes XDefiant far less overwhelming than Call of Duty’s multiplayer, or just the presentation, without going any further, it offers high quality graphics and illustrations, as well as a clear and distraction-free interface. XDefiant ticks all the boxes for a great shooter and Ubisoft should be very proud of it.
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Unfortunately, there are many very good alternatives to XDefiant and for an arena shooter to stand out today, it needs to be more than just a well-integrated experience. This is where the armor of Ubisoft’s game starts to crack, as everything surrounding the shiny core seems to be missing something. Sometimes it’s the content in general, and other times it’s a clear lack of sophistication in UI design, progression management, or the way monetization is integrated.
I’ll start with the lack of content. Five game modes, 15+ maps, five factions inspired by Ubisoft’s IP, with three character options, and 20+ weapons. When you break it all down, it sounds great, but when you break the 20+ weapons into about seven categories, you end up with about three options for each type, and that’s not enough to make the game work. The maps are great and have a unique design, which is certainly insane, but the factions and characters are less impressive. The three different characters per faction are purely for cosmetic purposes, meaning there’s a lot of variety in faction). Don’t get me wrong, the way Ubisoft’s IP is integrated into this game is fantastic and wonderfully designed, but the idea isn’t enough to keep me coming back for more for hours on end. Variety is what’s needed, and that’s something XDefiant’s current faction system doesn’t offer.
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The game modes are all unique and fun, but if you’ve played Hardpoint, Domination or Kill Confirmed from Call of Duty, Escort from Overwatch or Rush from Battlefield, you’ll be familiar with Occupy, HotShot, Domination, Area of Control and Escort. There’s nothing here that hasn’t been seen before.
And we come to progression. Ubisoft clearly doesn’t have much interest in this part of XDefiant, as none of the challenges are particularly interesting to complete, and there aren’t many to waste time on either. In this launch version, which is being developed under the banner of “Preseason,” the challenges serve the sole purpose of unlocking weapons, units, and characters to create a class system. The problem is that there’s no reason to use this system. The regular classes do their job perfectly, and to unlock attachments you have to spend hours manually leveling up each weapon (which takes the same amount of time as progression in Forza Motorsport at the beginning), and even then attachments only improve weapons slightly. Plus, most of the challenges are really boring. How do you unlock DedSec, for example? Completing a series of tasks related to how DedSec works while learning the basics of the other four existing factions? Nope. It only earns 700,000 XP. That’s hardly exciting.
Which brings me to UI and monetization. In the main menu, most of the maps are completely irrelevant unless you want to spend money to buy premium content. Some of the six or so maps are dedicated to the premium store and the Battle Pass. Another section is devoted to customization, which is meaningless unless you buy things, as there’s no way to get any kind of cosmetics (be it weapon skins, character skins, summon cards, emotes, etc.) without spending real money or winning the battle pass. Then there’s the usual game selection tab, which also has an extensive link to the Battle Pass. I know it’s a free-to-play game, and that needs to be defended, but Ubisoft has chosen to avoid any form of eloquence or refinement, preferring instead to push monetization on you without regret or offering a way to actually get the items customizable without opening your wallet. It’s a hard pill to swallow.
It wouldn’t be a problem if there was more content at the start, but after a few days you feel like you’ve seen everything XDefiant has to offer. There’s a clear lack of content in this game, and aside from buying things to upgrade your account, the only alternative is to wait for the season structure to start, which doesn’t take effect for about 40 days…
The finish and quality of the gameplay and weapon handling is on par with virtually any XDefiant. However, I only noticed one glaring issue: certain challenges don’t log my data. Otherwise, this game is an incredibly solid experience, which makes the lack of content, monetization, and boring progression even more disappointing.
Ubisoft has something really special going on with this game, but if this launch version is any indication of its future, it won’t survive. It’s free, so try it out for a few days, but after that you’ll probably go back to Call of Duty, Halo, Overwatch, or another shooter because it’s distinctly lacking in depth and the fluidity and design don’t really make this game stand out from its peers. XDefiant has a long way to go if it really wants to compete with the shooters that already exist, and frankly, Season 1 will have to be huge to prove it can do so.