What’s up Gamers! A few days ago Ubisoft launched its supposed “Call of Duty Killer” XDefiant and its been a pretty mediocre experience at best. For starters its definitely not a COD killer by any stretch of the imagination, lets just clear that up straight away. I think by this point we need to take anything Ubisoft says about their games with a super grain of salt, especially when they claimed Skull and Bones was a quadruple A title just a few months ago. While it does have some things going for it, XDefiant does not hold up to similar shooters out in the Free to Play space right now. Here is my review.
What Is XDefiant?
XDefiant is a pretty standard class based multiplayer shooter in general terms. It feels more like other F2P shooters like Overwatch 2 or Shatterline rather than more premium shooters like Call of Duty or Battlefield. It feels weird to compare such a young shooter with something like COD, but it was Ubisoft’s claim that it could dethrone a multi billion dollar established franchise.
Breaking Down The Gameplay
The general experience with XDefiant feels weird and off. Perhaps because of so many strange decisions Ubisoft made. An example would be the size of the maps which feel larger than they should be, especially considering gameplay only features 6 v 6 player matches. Not to mention the lack of details or immersion from shooting or interaction with the maps themselves. While the game utilizes the Snowdrop engine well, (the same graphics engine used for The Division series) it visually holds up but only in aesthetics. Any physics or destruction based mechanics are all absent in this version and it doesn’t create any kind of immersion. Its like you’re running around in a hollow toy box the entire time, even though some of the maps look really detailed.
You are given the options to select a character from 5 different factions which are all recycled from Ubisoft’s previous games. You can choose 1 of 3 options from: The Cleaners (The Division villains), The Phantoms (Ghost Recon) , Echelon (Splinter Cell), Libertad (Far Cry 6), and Dedsec (Watchdogs which are locked behind a paywall). If this sounds confusing, well, that’s because it is. XDefiant is trying to be two things at once but it doesn’t really succeed at either. Its trying to be an easy to approach shooter for casual players to pick up and get into right away, but it also tries to sell itself as a hardcore action shooter with its marketing. The resulting experience is neither, so it leaves you feeling confused about its style and identity. The glued together factions from completely unrelated franchises is one of the laziest parts of the game. They constantly feel random and out of place. Why are The Cleaners posing like its a party? The Cleaners are one of the most deadly villain factions in The Division and in XDefiant they’re waving their hands around, and they don’t look like a threatening force. They don’t match their original themes in poses, design, or tone from their original games, so being all mixed together in a lighthearted way feels disconnected from the established franchises we know them from. This whole setup feels like false advertisement, as the cover art for XDefiant suggests it’s a serious shooter, when in reality its not.
Free To Play & Free To Pay
While the game is not meant to be a premium experience like Rainbow Six, it does share some of its roots, mainly the weapons, similar class based styled abilities, and reused sound designs. At first the gameplay felt very much like old school Rainbow, however, the lack of tactical movement definitely separates it from that standard. Going forward, most of the matches I played were fairly fun and competitive. Once I started to get a hang of the game, trying to complete objectives in matches was entertaining. The controls felt pretty solid, although a bit clunky at times, but overall they get the job done. There was a decent amount of competitive game modes, but nothing that stood out in particular from other shooters like this. One thing I actually appreciated was the use of the weapons real names, which was always done in previous Rainbow Six games. Unfortunately that’s about all the positive I can say about the game. The rest was all downhill from here.
Let’s start with the lazy HUD. There are no colors or unique fonts used to display your health or ammo indicators, whatsoever. A big part of games like this is the HUD design which makes things pop and differentiate itself from other games, but there is nothing worth looking at here. Next, I found that having both teams run the exact same character models at the same time, are both lazy and confusing. At times I would think my teammates were next to me only to get surprisingly shot down because they’re the exact same characters as the enemy team. There was no way to tell them apart unless they had the colored outline on them, which doesn’t always show up, as you either need to get close enough to them or you need a specific class ability to be used that can spot enemies.
Another non-feature that was problematic is the lack of skill based matchmaking. While I personally didn’t have issues playing against more competitive players, I did find it odd that there was no balance to lobby ranks and you had a bunch of players who were under level 10 facing off against groups of rank 40 plus players. The results were clearly one sided matches leaving most of the newbies struggling to sort out what was going on.
Gunplay was decent overall, however, I felt the TTK on enemies was just way too long. This made it pretty frustrating when trying to get multikills at any point, as you would die more times than not before being able to reload and take down the next opponent. Not to mention the insane amount of lag and stuttering the game had. Every match I played had some kind of moment when multiple characters on screen would freeze the game for a few seconds, and you would just appear dead. And we all know when it comes to shooters, this is unacceptable performance.
Finally, the game is riddled with a super flimsy battle pass and microtransactions. While you don’t need to purchase any of these packs or passes to enjoy the game, you can only level the base pass very slowly and only get a rewarded unlocks after every 5 levels. This makes the general experience feel hostile towards the player as you have to either pay up or suffer the grind just to get a cheap reward for playing. The base unlocks are just too few and far between. As well I found the battle pass content just dreadful in my opinion and it makes the game feel even more like a joke. The alternate weapon skins and cosmetics for the factions were so poorly designed it doesn’t even feel worth it – even to play the base game.
Final Score: 4 out of 10 (DON’T WASTE YOUR TIME)
Sadly this a big miss for Ubisoft. While I give the game credit for having solid core shooting mechanics, and decent graphics, there is just too much unpolished nothingness in the game to make it worth investing any time into it. Leveling up in the game feels like a chore and the rewards you get are not worth the effort. They don’t feel interesting or engaging. I only saw one pack that looked interesting and it was the Phantoms Prototype bundle. Even though the Phantoms are the best looking faction in the game, $30 is still a ripoff for just two weapon skins and one character skin. If Ubisoft wants to make XDefiant have a chance at competing with other shooters, it needs to make some serious balancing changes fast. It needs to pick a lane and decide if its going to be a more casual game with rainbow colors and mixed parody content much like Fortnite, or is it going to be a streamlined shooter like COD. After that, they need to hone in on the performance of the game and correct things like the TTK and overall performance stability. Finally they should implement skill based match making, balance their map designs, lower the XP needed to rank up without a pass, and replace the weak DLC with some quality cosmetics and weapon skins, and perhaps it may have a chance to grow into a real competitive shooter.
If Ubisoft is going to continue claiming XDefiant is going to be a killer of any other shooter, they need to step up and bring their A game. Free to play games like Overwatch 2 or Apex Legends – while far from perfect – still bring much more quality to the table for their player base, so if you’re in the mood for a F2P shooter, I’d suggest spending your time there instead. XDefiant was tough to get into as something about it just felt off from the start. From the poor server connections, to lazy reused factions / characters, woke character designs, and unpolished gameplay, XDefiant was doomed to fail from the start. It needs to decide what it wants to be and lock it in, but for now as a mixed bag of random elements, I cannot recommend this to anyone, even as a free to play title, its just not worth your time.
As always Gamers, thank you so very much for reading this post. I hope you enjoyed this brutally honest review. Have an awesome day!
