Xdefiant is weird
XDefiant is weird. The game is deeply confusing. On one hand, we have a Call of Duty arcade shooter mixed with a hero shooter, with core mechanics clashing. You can see hints of that conflict. The end result is a messy mismatch. Combine that with an art style that’s a mishmash of ideas, and the result is that XDefiant lacks any identity and feels ill-defined. Feels dated like an early 2010s game. I’m not sure who this game is for. Call of Duty veterans? That’s a tiny market.
The gunplay is okay. Nothing to shout about, with a fast time-to-kill (TTK) that clashes with hero abilities designed for a much slower TTK. Map design feels like an arcade shooter—funnelling players down narrow paths with dozens of lines of sight you can’t cover. Common design for shooters nothing wrong with that. It’s colourful at times, but often dull, and boring, with generic characters—and that’s the problem. It’s a generic shooter. Nothing really stands out. It’s conservative in every respect and dull. Takes no risks.
As a shooter, it’s sort of fun but feels empty and lifeless. Does not use characters well at all. Nothing brings it all together and the result is bland. Only thing keeping you playing is progression, XP lock keeps players engaged. Attachments are behind that and weapons. Similar to other shooters. With shutdown everything is now unlocked. There’s no other gameplay hook that stands out. I’m left asking the question: who is this game for? Why was this made? Why?
Three hundred employees worked on this to deliver the bare minimum, and even then, it was delayed. Tons of basic features are missing or mismatched with the rest of the game. Some good news: the sound design seems to be okay. It’s an okay game, and that’s the problem. It’s just okay—a game with no clear direction. No single-player mode to fall back on, no co-op mode. Two most successful shooters of last decade have done something new. This game offers nothing new.
I’m no game reviewer, but I can see certain problems surely everybody else can. Unless this is a case of people investing time and not wanting to quit. Call of Duty is fast-paced. Its fast abilities rarely take you out of the action—that’s on purpose. Designers know you don’t want to die before using that super special attack. Yet that lesson is lost here. Worse still, some of the former designers worked on CoD. It seems to clone ideas without introducing anything new, being ultra-conservative without taking risks.
Unlike operators, which are skin deep, customisation in XDefiant is similar to hero shooters. But the problem is that everybody feels the same. Abilities don’t really have an impact. So why were they included? Dig further, and you’re left asking why certain choices were made. Why did the team go with such a fast TTK?
Feedback from Two Years Ago
My first impressions were pretty bad, and I didn’t enjoy the game. The core is deeply flawed in some respects.
Movement feels heavy and sluggish, while sliding feels smooth with aiming. It’s an odd contrast that feels disjointed. It just feels bad playing this game with a controller right now. Each complaint I had flowed into one thing: I was not having fun. The game felt like a worse Call of Duty clone. If you want to clone a game, you need to make a better version of it or introduce a new gameplay hook. Instead, the designers seemed to blindly follow the trend without considering other options.
A super short TTK with poor hit detection feels awful together. I have no idea if that’s due to the tick rate or by design. I found it hard to trace players, as the art style bends people into the background. Maps don’t suit having so many game modes.
A big problem was the game’s lack of direction. Beyond being a shooter, crafting useful feedback became difficult. I simply didn’t like the game in its current state, and that’s okay.
Some good news movement feels better. The bad news is shotguns feel like they wanted a slower game still. Core of the game is still flawed with hit detection still iffy, kill trading a thing which is rather funny. Some more good news it feels better on a controller. It a bit more fun. Lacking something magic and seems to follow trends without something new to offer. Worse still seems to misunderstand each choice that CoD has made and follows it blindly. From former CoD devs that raises questions. Art style is better but people blend in. Lack of direction remains. I sort of like the game now but it still not good enough. It sucks to see it die.
You can see they wanted a slower game. Shotguns still feel heavy and less arcade-like. But the rest of the game doesn’t have the same level of weight. It’s subtle, but noticeable. There are hints they wanted a hero shooter. However, the game was pushed in the opposite direction, creating this weird mash-up monster. Okay, maybe that’s harsh. I remember making the same movement point during the beta—and I was downvoted for it. Good news: they backtracked. Bad news: my broader point about not having a clue what direction they wanted rings true. It just all over the place.
Netcode and hit registration issues stand out. If you’re going to make a game this generic, it better be technically brilliant. Yet this game isn’t. It’s built on a bunch of flaws that were already pointed out during the beta. Even after all the delays, these issues weren’t fixed. Credit where it’s due: they delayed the game. But given the barebones content at launch, what were they working on? Did all the artists become beta testers? For a competitive shooter, you need outstanding netcode. Was Ubisoft trying to make an esport title? If so, why combine hero shooter mechanics with CoD-style gameplay?
It’s a dead game now. It’s dated and generic, with its funeral set. Perhaps Ubisoft will learn its lesson. Small-scale projects, taking some risk, and focusing on a gap. I respect them for trying to bring all their characters together, but two games in one did not work. Rumours are a buyout is coming soon.
Making games is hard. Making a successful game is even harder. It sucks that this game is shutting down. It could have been rebooted, but that would have required serious retooling of the core experience. Ubisoft, in the end, did not want to do that—business, after all.