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Join Now!Invincible…the smash hit animated series hit our TV screens in 2021 like a violent, gory, swear-y bolt of lighting and has kept many captivated ever since. Robert Kirkman and Corey Walker’s coming of age story and decontruction of superhero tropes started as a comic book in 2003 before being tranlsated rather faithfully to animation. It was only a matter of time before the series took the next step into video games. But what sort of genre would fit the world of Invincible?
While the series is known for tackling surprisingly serious issues and exploring the emotional toll of being a superhero in a no holds barred universe, the centrepiece is undoubtedly the brutally violent showdowns between the series superheroes, anti-heroes and their supervillain counterparts.
So when you think about it, a fighting game actually makes total sense. But what got me really excited when this game was revealed? The fact that a chunk of the team at Quarter Up are developers who once worked on the Xbox One launch title Killer Instinct, which in my opinion is one of the best fighting games of all time. Big shoes to fill right? Probably not because it’s only my opinion, but I digress.
So how does Invincible fly in the video game world? Let’s find out.
Fatalit…no wait, Brutality
In a genre once dominated by essentially two franchises in Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat, Invincible VS steps up to the plate with the backing of a wildly popular IP throwing it’s weight behind it to get the eyes on that fighters generally need to gain the traction and audience required to survive.
Developer Quarter Up Games – made up of many former Killer Instinct developers, have taken full advantage of the Invincible IP both in the form of guiding the fighting mechanics as well as the style of the game.
This of course has been made much easier thanks to the direct involvement of series co-creators Robert Kirkman and Corey Walker who have gone to such lengths as to even create a wholly unique, standalone story for the game set in the Invincible universe. While it turns out, I was forced by my superiors to watch the cutscenes, the review guide (which I read way later than I should have) tells me I can’t spoil any of the story for you so it turns out skipping cutscenes actually might have been advantageous! But alas, as an avid watcher of the show, I was actually more than happy to get the popcorn out and watch what was essentially a short episode of the show, cut up into bite size chunks a cutscene skipper like me could consume in a more palatable fashion. While I’m not going to spoil anything, rest assured it should make series fans happy.
You can really tell great care was taken by all involved to make sure everything about the game looked, sounded and felt authentically Invincible. Right down to using some (but strangely not all?) of the voice cast from the show to reprise their roles. But the alternates do a pretty fantastic job and in some cases I couldn’t actually tell it wasn’t the original actor. All the characters you’ll find at launch – a very generous 18 in total, are faithfully recreated, well voiced and one of the finer details I truly appreciated here was the volume of contextual pre and post-match banter between characters. I was genuinely surprised at how much was here. One example was an Omni-Man mirror match where they gave each other shit about their moustaches. I guess it’s possible other games have also improved a lot in this area from games of the past, but if they did, I didn’t notice. I immediately noticed it here and as a game based on a comic book/TV Show, it really added to the immersion and atmorphere of the game.
The visual style perfectly captures the vibe and feel of the show by using a blend of full 3D models with an almost cel shaded look that to me is the exact way to strike that perfect balance between translating the traditional 2D animated style of the show into 3D without losing it’s artistic intention. During cutscenes, it uses an almost stop-motion animation style that’s very similar to the beautiful South of Midnight, which actually fits really well. Much like the show, the violence is absolutely brutal and the gore cranked right up to near Mortal Kombat levels. Characters show wear and tear as matches progress and finishers will lead to insanely bloody moments where someone will absolutely lose their head in an explosion of blood and brain pieces. Some may find the animations somewhat stiff, but my assumption is that that is 100% intentional in order to prioritise the combo heavy fighting mechanics above all else. It’s certainly nothing deal breaking and quite frankly it’s not overly noticeable once you’re really in the trenches of a fight.
The environments are suitably just fine. Distraction is kept to an almost non-existent level and none of them feel overly memorable outside of The Moon, seeing as they need to fit into the universe the game is based on the develepors aren’t exactly spoiled for choice on options. If you’ve seen Invincible, I’m relatively confident most wouldn’t be able to recall too many (if any) overly memorable locales to draw inspiration from. So from that perspective the team has done a fairly good job making something out of fairly little.
Ready? Fight!
Ok let’s get to the really important part, the fighting mechanics. Now, Invincible VS is an interesting fighting game. Given the combo focus of a game made by former Killer Instinct developers, I expected the game to play a lot more like Killer Instinct or Street Fighter. But in a surprising twist (to me at least), Invincible VS plays far more like a blend of Killer Instinct and Mortal Kombat. In fact, I’d almost go as far as to say they’ve taken little bits and pieces of a few other fighting games to create what I feel is one of the most successful executions of noob-friendly but hardcore rewarding fighting systems this side of Killer Instinct all the way back in 2013.
Quarter Up has struck a rather impressive balance of encouraging new players and button mashers to feel empowered and enjoy moments of spectacle normally reserved for more seasoned fighting game players, while also providing more than enough depth and tools for the more hardcore players to dispatch of noobs as they see fit. While it could just be me, my only slight reservation about the mechanics is the counter system. I was really hoping for something that either had the depth and thrill of Killer Instincts high risk/high reward counter system that brilliantly turned defence to offence in a way no fighter really has since. But then they also didn’t keep it as simple as say Dead or Alive’s simple one button counter system. So it’s just this kind of in between thing that isn’t really here nor there. It’s not overly easy to execute but then isn’t that rewarding either. But maybe I just need to get better at it. Because while Killer Instinct’s counter/counter combo system was most certainly not easy to pull off, it was easy to understand and extremely rewarding.
Like almost every fighting game these days, you have your choice of “Classic” and “Modern” control schemes. Although here, what would normally be referred to as “Classic” is termed “Motion”. Which completely makes sense given all specials and such are performed using a specific…motion. But also, because instead of your more traditional light, medium and heavy variants on punches and kicks, Invincible VS has gone with the more Neo Geo fighter style of a Light, Medium and Heavy attack button, with attacks being contextual based on character and position. This is your button scheme regardless of which control method you select. But again, even Street Fighter has long since adopted a similar Modern control alternative in their last two entries, so it’s not something that requires a lot of adjustment. It’s a nice option to have in the genre these days and makes the games more accessible to a wider fighting game audience. As a long time Street Fighter player, I’ve normally eschewed the modern control option in fighters, but it really works here due to the nature of the combo system. With less button options to worry about, your focus can be on keeping the flow going, in particular with the tag mechanics.
Which brings me to my favourite part of Invincible’s fighting mechanics…the aforementioned tag system. You can tell a lot of work and refinement went into this because when even someone who is normally as terrible as me at executing tag moves and combos in games like Marvel vs Capcom, is pulling off some incredible combinations? You’ve probably done something right. As it’s a 3 v 3 tag fighter, you have one of two assist buttons assigned to each of your tag team partners. These buttons are absolutely integral to your arsenal and are fused into both the combo and counter system. Using assists is vital to chaining combos together and if you can manage to pull of a near full combo that incorporates all three of your characters that ends in a special? It’s truly a sight to behold and I feel like being a fan of the show really adds to the satisfaction factor. Your tag partners are also your key defensive weapon in breaking combos and countering. So it’s worth exploring those mechanics via the Tutorial and Practice modes to ensure a good understanding of how they work.
Meat on the bones?
Speaking of the Tutorial, Invincible VS offers up a fairly modest list of modes. You have your standard Arcade mode that provides your traditional “ladder” like progression that allows you to unlock lore/endings for each character. It’s in this mode where the vast majority of your unlocks will come as you have quite a sizeable amount of customisation and “Extras” to unlock. Artwork, Music, Profile Customisations and more are all there for you to work your way through. You have the Training Mode which contains both the Tuorial and Practice modes, again fairly standard issue and you’ll legitimately want to spend some time here to get the mechanics down pat. If nothing else, beating a defenseless CPU in the name of practice is incredible fun. You also have the Versus mode which contains your standard suite of both competitive and casual local and multiplayer options. By the way, people who like to play online can rest easy. There was no scenario where a group of ex-Killer Instinct devs had anything less than a stellar online experience for players and Invincible VS is sublime online. Very very rarely did I notice anything that would even come close to resembling noticeable lag and I spent more of my time forgetting I was even playing online. Maybe the more hardcore players who get into the nitty gritty of frame counting, block stuns and punishes might be more critical than I.
As mentioned earlier, you also have the Story mode which again leans slightly more towards the Mortal Kombat style of Story mode and takes you on a narrative journey both completely unique within the Invincible universe while also being canon which absolutely enhances your ability to invest in the story and every playable character in the game has a role to play. As the official Invincible VS Twitter account has said “Like being IN an episode, but you’ve got to fight your way out”. It takes place approximately towards the end of Season 3 and there’s about 25 minutes or so of cinematics in total so nothing too obnoxious, even for me. The small load screens in between fights and cutscenes can be somehwat annoying and finding a way to eliminate the loading screens during story mode would have provided a much smoother experience and helped sell the whole “being in an episode” premise. But that’s a fairly minor gripe. The story mode took me approximately two hours to complete on the Easy difficulty so I’d imagine playing on the Viltrumite difficulty will provide a far lengthier experience and your mileage will vary depending on your ability.
The core content of the game is rather generous at launch. Eighteen playable characters and fourteen arenas to fight in is fairly reasonable, but given the asking price? You’d probably want to hope there’s a lot of core content given the relatively minimal choice of modes on offer. In a world filled with high quality free to play fighters, including Killer Instinct, it’s somewhat surprising to see a team made of former Killer instinct devs ask for near full price for this suite of options. I’m not sure how very little outside of a really good Story mode will land with most players at almost “full price”. Hardcore fighting game fans are tricky to predict, but I’m hopeful the strength of the IP will garner enough attention for them to give the game a chance to land on its own merits and give it a long life in the fighting game community.
Winner!
As someone who mostly cares about the core mechanics above all else, I’m pleased to report that Invincible VS lives up to my lofty and possibly unreasonable expectations. The combination of IP authenticity and gory combo focused combat is a mix that for me doesn’t really get old and is incredibly fun. Fans of the show will absolutely want to get their hands on this, if for no other reason than to further immerse themselves in the universe.
Review Code provided by the Publisher.
Invincible VS | Review
Played on
Xbox Series X
PROS
- Easy to pick up fighting system with depth to learn
- Incredibly authentic to the show
- Excellent story mode written by the franchise creators
CONS
- Light on modes
- Relatively steep asking price in a world of quality Free to Play fighters and cheaper options
