XDefiant review – Stepping into the arena ain’t easy

We’ve had a fair amount of time now to really dive into Ubisoft’s foray into competitive shooters. XDefiant will feel familiar to most, however it puts its own twist on the arcade arena shooter experience. We’re now a week into the first competitive season which brought us a new faction, new map, and a couple more modes.

Let’s talk about XDefiant as a whole shall we? If you’re used to Call of Duty stylings, everything here will feel familiar. The loadouts, the design of maps, the modes, everything here screams arcade shooter. That works well in play too, because the gunplay feels nice and snappy. The only thing that’s a bit different is the speed, which can be a little clunky with how XDefiant handles running, sliding, and such. There’s also no prone position, which I am fine with, but constantly forget I can’t do.

Where XDefiant differs in the space is its choice of characters, pulling from the wider Ubisoft universe. You’ll find everything from Far Cry to Splinter Cell here, and it’s all woven together quite well. This is impressive, especially considering each faction has their own abilities which make them unique. I’ve still yet to find one that is overpowered; each has their benefit, but it’s not the difference between a win or loss. The player behind the faction is what matters, a balance I’m really glad XDefiant has found. Doesn’t matter if you pop your night vision goggles with the Echelon faction if you can’t hit the shots, or don’t know the best moment to use it.

The connected universe continues on into the maps, which are an incredible highlight of XDefiant. Whether you’re running through a Nudle campus from Watch Dogs, or capturing points in a small Latin village from Far Cry, all of them have an identity larger than a simple location. The lane design for each mode works wonderfully as well, especially with the linear maps you’ll play Escort on. There are designed chokes, but nothing I’ve ever found too impossible to break with a good team effort.

I’ve already mentioned shooting your guns, and while it feels good, there is still work to be done. This mainly speaks in regards to hit registration, something that has plagued XDefiant since the switch up of netcode. I tend to regularly get “ghost bullets”, shots I know beyond a shadow of a doubt I’ve landed but don’t register. It has gotten better, but there are still matches where it is all too prevalent. Surely, the dev team is working hard behind the scenes, and these issues aren’t unique to XDefiant, but going from the preseason to season 1 was a bit of a shocker, to say the least.

While you might not hit every shot, the weapon selection is just about perfect. There are meta weapons, like the ACR, but yet again we’re seeing good balance. The only thing that can get frustrating (to me at least) is when teams set up at power positions on a linear map with light machine guns. Even at the base class, those can be incredibly overpowered. It’s more of a personal quibble, and it doesn’t remain game to game. Progression has also been completely overhauled, with a good clip now in gaining experience points. They’ve found a way to make it rewarding, and when a good arsenal is in play, that makes it all the better.

Season 1 is the true beginning for XDefiant, the ability to cast off the preseason designation, fire a salvo of new content, and officially launch a smoothed out update to clean up possible issues. The main feature of the first season, at least for me, is the addition of the GSK faction and Clubhouse map from Rainbow Six Siege. Clubhouse is a slightly modified version of the Siege map with extra walls blown out, some stairways that didn’t exist before and other little changes here and there. It’s an arena map (non-linear) for modes like Occupy, Team Deathmatch, and the newly added Capture the Flag (we’ll get to that later). It’s mostly close-quarters combat, especially inside the main structure, and it’s a bit on the smaller side.

Onto our new faction, the GSK faction is a subgroup of the German GSG9 counterterrorism unit. While IQ, Blitz, Bandit, and Jaeger partake in the hunt for terrorists around the globe, GSK operators Stark, Kaptan, and Krieger join our XDefiant crew to… do other things. GSK operators can be equipped with either shock wire or Jaeger’s Active Defense System (ADS) and pull out the Flash Shield as their Ultra.

They also have a special passive trait that has turned some heads — it’s a ballistic helmet that reduces the damage received for headshots. It’s not impenetrable, a well-placed sniper round will still do the job, but it’s even more imperative to get that first shot accuracy and keep it tight. I kind of wish they’d have gone with someone and somewhere else for the Rainbow Six addition, but I’m still satisfied all the same. The Shock Wire and ADS come in handy when you’re trying to defend a static objective, however they aren’t as useful in the linear modes.

We’ve also learned some new details about the Ranked play system, which becomes available to players once they hit level 40. Like most — if not all ranked systems — these days, you start at the very bottom rung of the ranked ladder and earn or lose rank points every match, depending on the outcome and how well you performed. The ranks are Bronze, Silver, Gold, Ruby, Emerald, Diamond, and Legend. Each rank tier is 1000RP and there are 10 levels to progress through before reaching the next rank until you eventually reach the rank of Legend. There’s a special reward for reaching each rank tier, including special weapon and character skins as well as player cards, and, of course, bragging rights.

Matchmaking also changes as you progress with the Skill-Based Matchmaking System. From Bronze to Ruby, matchmaking spans 15 levels higher or lower than the party average. Emerald and Diamond ranks matchmake with players up to 15 levels below or 2000RP above the party average. Lastly, Legend rank matches with players up to 2000RP above or below the party average.

I haven’t been able to see this ranked system in action quite yet, however I like this model, especially the level average criteria. It’s significant because it’s indicative of a player’s level of knowledge of the game, and I wish it was a matchmaking criteria used in ranked modes in other games as well (I’m looking at you, Rainbow Six Siege). What we can all say with certainty is that someone who is under level 10 knows a lot less about the game than someone who is level 100, and SBMM should never allow those two players to be in the same match if they’re not in a party together.

Two modes were added to the lineup for this season, Capture the Flag and Team Deathmatch. Well, in actuality, Team Deathmatch came out a week or so before the season started. This is your classic TDM experience where teams go head to head to see who can hit the target number of eliminations before the end of the match. Capture the Flag, likewise, is just as straightforward with teams trying to capture the enemy flag 4 times before the other can. Of course, the XDefiant twist of the faction abilities makes for interesting twists and turns within these familiar modes. These modes are a very welcome addition to what is sure to be a growing lineup, hopefully soon to include some single-life modes as well.

Of course, a new season means a new battle pass. There’s 90 tiers to grind through where you’ll unlock the usual suspects of xp boosts, battle pass boosts, premium currency, and cosmetics. You can buy the base battle pass for about $10 or a premium version that gives you a pile of tier skips so you can complete your battle pass faster. To our surprise, however, the 90th tier unlock isn’t even a Legendary Item. It’s an Epic skin. I guess the plus side is it’s a free reward, so you don’t have to buy the battle pass to get it, just get them tiers. I just feel like the grind to complete the pass should be met with something that is considered a premium reward for one’s efforts (can we get skins for the spider bot?).

We might also need to revisit the idea of SBMM in quick play matches as well. Shall we dive into the absolute curb stomping that poor we endured during one fateful match on Clubhouse? The enemy team stopped playing the objective entirely just to farm us for kills. I’m no god at FPS games, but I’m also not as terrible as you’d have thought I was during that match. While Ranked SBMM is meant to be pretty strict, as it should be, it can still also be applied to casual play as well but loosened up a bit.

Maybe extend the range of matching levels and RP to double that of Ranked? That’s a 4-tier range if you’re going by RP alone (4000RP). A hidden MMR (matchmake rating) system could always be put in place that would help in conjunction with the level range being increased. There’s a lot here to unpack still as it can always go askew either way, but I still think it’s worth a thought so as to be more inviting.

There’s some other quality-of-life improvements that I’d still like to see made as well, including the ability to scale or bold text in menus, which is seen in a lot of RPG games but not so much in competitive shooters. Y’all, I’m not blind, but I still can’t read what’s on screen half the time. It doesn’t help that it’s also highlighted in white, which is brighter than any other color and, for me, it can drown out anything that’s there.

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