XDefiant’s core modes offer temporarily fun stabs at the competitive multiplayer arena shooter, but Ubisoft’s latest attempt at carving out a slice of the lucrative esports pie feels half-baked. Core modes like its practice mode and ranked queue are gated off by construction tape at the time of writing. This leaves a bland battle pass with head-scratching progression decisions and standard weapon-based leveling systems as the only tangible means of rewarding you for playing the game or doing well beyond an individual match. And with questionable netcode and missing mainstay features and modes, not even its interesting hero shooter-like abilities and small tweaks on the run-and-gun, low-time-to-kill formula coined by Call of Duty make me want to return to XDefiant.
Ubisoft’s crossover shooter couldn’t have picked less interesting properties to kit-bash together. Though each of the five factions currently available in the game adds a cool approach to gameplay, they’re not exactly the superstars you think of when you hear Ubisoft. Instead, players step into the arenas as unfamiliar characters from Ded Sec (Watch Dogs), The Cleaners (The Division), Libertad (Far Cry), Echelon (Splinter Cell), or The Phantoms (Ghost Recon); there’s no Sam Fisher or Dani Rojas for you to recognize or get excited about picking because you liked their game. Each faction has three playable characters (two or more of which you need to unlock in each faction) but they have no differentiating traits between them aside from some cosmetic stuff.