I got some hands-on time with XDefiant, Ubisoft's franchise-blending free-to-play shooter, ahead of its upcoming beta, and I'm of two minds about it. I was honestly quite impressed with its gunplay. It's shaping up to be a sharp FPS with a nice variety of guns that feel good to use and customize, though my preview only gave me time to dabble in the lowest-level weapon attachments. But I find myself with neutral or negative feelings about almost everything else, which makes me wonder if anything about it is good enough to pull players away from the likes of Counter-Strike or Overwatch 2, especially when XDefiant seems to be standing on the shoulders of those giants.
The pitch for XDefiant has been kind of muddy. It's a 6v6 arcade shooter, Ubisoft told me at a recent event. It's got arena modes like zone control as well as linear objective modes like pushing a payload. It's got the streamlined engagements, simple movement, and low time-to-kill of CS:GO – or is at least in the same neighborhood – but splashes in the cooldown-based abilities and ultimates seen in the likes of Valorant and Overwatch 2. It does genuinely feel like a fresh combination of FPS elements and modes, but I'm not yet sure that it's a good combination.
