Review of the shooter XDefiant, Call of Duty killer. How the new hit from Ubisoft turned out

Finally, Ubisoft announced its unfinished construction. Online shooter XDefiant has been released for free on all major gaming platforms, including PlayStation, Xbox and PC. Will this project become a full-fledged replacement for Call of Duty, widely known among shooter fans?

Short description

• Development history
  Game process
  Problems with game mechanics
  About monetization
  Conclusion.

I want to achieve it right away: Despite the fact that the game is distributed free of charge, I will not turn a blind eye to its shortcomings. I will rate it as a long-standing military shooter and, first and foremost, as a Call of Duty fan series.

Let’s check if the game is correct in its status “CoD Killers“

1. Development history

In July 2021, Ubisoft officially announced a game called Tom Clancy’s XDefiant, with a smiley face hidden in the logo.

The announcement and trailer immediately caused a lot of negative reviews, which is not surprising: after all, they were taken as an attempt to earn money for an inheritance. Tom Clancywho has long since passed away.

After waves of criticism and not the highest reviews, after the tests were closed, they decided to rename the game XDefiant, removing Clancy’s name. In addition, Ubisoft Originals changed the overall tone of the project’s visual style to a more serious one.

The approach to this development, which had problems from the very beginning, remained the same.

The fact is that the game was developed by Ubisoft San Francisco, which never created a shooter in its entire history. To work more efficiently, Mark Rubin, an experienced Infinity Ward studio who participated in the creation of the reference Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, was attached to them.

This person controls the constant postponement of the game’s release dates from 2022 to 2024. According to insiders, in the “King of Chaos” studio, one of Rubin’s leading guides said: “You need to make it as cool as Call of Duty“

After three delays and three years of frankly emotional development, the game is finally released. Let’s take a look at it.

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2. Gameplay

The game meets the typical interface of game services. Everything is relative on the surface and understandable. There are two main modes:

● Quick game. is a hodgepodge of the most typical modes for the genre, such as capture zone, escort And King of the Hill.
● Ranked matches. At the moment, the setup is carried out in trial mode, the setup is based on the point rating.

There is also a training mode, but for some reason it is blocked.

Weapons are upgraded by analogy old parts of Call of Duty. You have a main weapon and a set of additional modules.

They are the same for each weapon type in its class and are unlocked to a lesser extent as it levels up.

The more successful you are with a certain weapon model, such as the M4, the more scopes, scripts, and other upgrades you can unlock for it.

However, already at this the first problem ariseswhich we will talk about later.

The second aspect that is reminiscent of Call of Duty from 2015-2018 is the specialist system. Five participants are available in the game (although there are four of them in the public domain)which belong to different Ubisoft franchises.

Each faction plays a specific role in the match: tank, healer, scout or damage dealer, and have high knowledge. For example, the ghost squad from Ghost Recon has increased health and a ballistic shield, freed from Far Cry heal-allies.

Each specialist has one passive, basic (you collect in the form of a gadget before the start of the battle) and one ultimate ability.

There is a global problem here too, but more on that later.

So, we have collected our weapons, it’s time to go into battle. And then… it becomes clear that XDefiant is a very closed game, which in all respects is inferior to Call of Duty, not only on PlayStation 4, but even on PlayStation 3.

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3. Problems with game mechanics

📍 There is a catastrophic shortage of weapons.

In any shooter, it is important that the player has a choice of weapons from the very beginning of the game. If this is not the case, then it is bad. So, in XDefiant at the start there are five assault rifles to choose from, approx. But initially only one is open, and to get the rest you need to spend a long time passing tests. What? Yes!

For example, to get the M16, you need to kill 25 enemies by hitting them in the head. And the same story with all guns infected with the check, including the stun grenade, which should be provided by default.

Anyway, there are only two sniper rifles in the game now, which are not very different from each other. There are five assault rifles, but I didn’t notice much difference between them. But there are only four submachine guns, and the big difference between them is the rate of fire.

Upgrading guns also let us down: if you want to get a scope with increased magnification, you will have to upgrade a certain rifle to at least level 24. And to get exactly the same sight for another weapon, you will have to upgrade again.

Knowledgeable players can say that a similar leveling system has already been seen in Call of Duty. However, I want to repeat that this was a long time ago, and such a system is already considered conditional. In modern games, basic elements such as a scope or tactical grip are unlocked once and are available for all types of weapons.

Don’t be careful when we talk about a game that is called a “Call of Duty killer.”

📍 XDefiant is very uncomfortable to shoot.

The recoil of the weapon is not at all imaginable, the sound is poor, and the animation of the guns is inferior even to Battlefield 3 from 2011. By the way, you can’t change the type of shooting in the game at all. Want to shoot single shots from an Ak-47? Collapse.

Perhaps all this is compensated by the exciting gameplay during the match, unusual situations and interesting maps? No.

📍 Bad maps, no interactivity.

The map design is very simple and consists of a set of “three places” – locations divided into three conditional lines. On these lines are located points of interest. The stylish cards are the same for all slot machine plots, even in cargo escort mode.

I, like some other people, like this design. But there are a lot of strange decisions in the cards. For example, there is not even a hint of interactivity in them. There is a flowerbed where you could sit. But you can’t.

And the glass in the window cannot be broken; in order to climb over it, you need to go through the door. And this is after at least three beta tests, when the developers directly pointed out these problems.

📍 System bugs and unnecessary communities.

I have participated in all XDefiant beta tests since 2023, including the recent server stress tests. And guess what? The game practically did not work in the first 3 hours of release.

The connection to the player selection server simply did not change, causing an error. But the donut shop worked properly. Then the problem seems to have been fixed, but the servers themselves work poorly – damage is not always read correctly, there is an input delay and large connections.

Perhaps the game needs to expand the faction system? No! The abilities in the game are boring and don’t compare to their CoD inspirations. There are not many options for using them in battle, especially for agents from Splinter Cell with their invisibility, because you can still see them!

And the ultimate ability is a separate joke altogether. It charges very slowly and is easy to interrupt. Otherwise, there is nothing more to the battle.

The game does not have a reward system for good players. It lacks elements such as killstreaksperks and individual upgrade of a specialist (for example, the ability to use a machine gun and a shotgun at the same time). It’s so unclear why you should try and get 10 kills in one life.

And here we would like to sum up the results, but wait, we haven’t discussed the monetization project yet. After all, we are dealing with a relatively decent game.

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4. Everything is fine with monetization

XDefiant can be played without any investment, since all that is sold for money is only cosmetics and a battle pass. Of the gameplay elements in combat mode, only one machine gun is available, but it opens for free. The pass swings VERY slowly.

The content of the battle pass itself, for my personal taste, is questionable: the cosmetics are boring, faded and cannot be compared even with Battlefield 2042.

Remember I said there were 5 factions, but actually 4? So here is the fifth faction hidden behind the donation. Yes, you can open it for free, but to do this you need to get 700,000 experience points.

And, despite the fact that you get 10 points per month for challenges, and you get 5-15 points for overall merit in a match… this is a very long time. Want faster? A thousand local donated currency, please. By the way, the battle pass costs 700 coins, the same currency. Fascinatingly? For me – not so much.

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5. Conclusion

I don’t know what else to say about this weird Call of Duty knockoff. I’ve been following it since the name change, spent a lot of time listening to every beta test and saying to myself: “Yes, there is little content, but this is a beta test, there will be more of it in the release version“

I was very surprised to find that the problems with the content in the game remained the same. While you don’t have to pay to play the game, that doesn’t excuse its shortcomings.

This game is modeled after shooters released between 2008 and 2018, but with graphics up to 2020 standards. This is a deeply confidential product that cannot compete with current shooters or with what came before.

XDefiant is inferior even to Call of Duty 4. It is better to share attention on this game, and it can be done for free, than to waste time on Ubisoft’s creativity.

The publisher did not have the courage to cancel the project and not involve a studio in its development, which since 2009 has created only two games: Rocksmith and a game based on South Park.

I hope I saved your time, which can be spent on more thoughtful and interesting online shooters. Have a good day!

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