Good thing Ubisoft put this out for free.
XDefiant has been out for about a day so I think it’s fair to give my one day impressions. You may be thinking “Connor, this seems like an early launch for an impressions about a new game” and you’d be right, but if Ubisoft is allowed to launch its games with functioning cash shops before they’re ready, I can give my impressions early too.
Ubisoft’s latest release is a first person shooter that combines themes and characters from its other titles and throws them into a pot, cooks it about 75%, and then serves it hoping as few people as possible will get food poisoning. In case it’s not obvious I have a handful of problems with this game.
I suppose first and foremost, I should talk about the hit registry and netcode which is absolutely godawful but also inconsistently awful. It’s obvious when you hit a match where the game is functioning correctly and one where it isn’t, as you’ll go from blasting enemies and whooping ass to shooting enemies and wondering how you seem to not be doing any damage. And also dying despite being five feet behind a corner.
And that’s kinda it, but it’s a big problem and one that Ubisoft hasn’t bothered to fix since the beta days. But they sure as hell did get that battle pass and cash shop working great. Ubisoft delayed the launch of the game because the netcode was in such a bad state (among other reasons) and then proceeded to not do a whole lot to actually fix that problem.
But again the battle pass works immaculately. I was going to comment on the slowness of the battle pass but frankly I’ll give that a week or so to see how I really feel about it. A lot of people are saying that the battle pass is really slow to level and I get that, but I think it’s a smaller issue being magnified because of all the technical problems.
Actually I’m just joking, the battle pass isn’t working fantastically. Either due to a bug or misleading advertising, the battle pass was announced as including 20 tier skips. However people buying the pass (including myself) have found it doesn’t offer any skips.
Otherwise if you’re going to play XDefiant prepare for a sweat fest. I’m talking ten obese dudes packed into a sauna like sardines sweatfest. I’m talking manning the grill at a Sub-Saharan African barbecue joint sweaty. I’m talking a college student watching his mom start typing P into the URL box on his personal laptop sweaty.
Other than that I don’t have much to say about this game right now. The hit registration is enough of a reason to hold off playing right now and probably forever, since I have my doubts Ubisoft will ever fix it.
MMO Fallout 