Ubisoft San Francisco·Released May 21, 2024·Multiplayer
Ubisoft's worlds collide in a free-to-play, first-person arena shooter where you compete to be the best in fast-paced online matches!
XDefiant is unoriginal, and its disparate styles don't quite fit together, but solid gunplay and excellent map design elevate Ubisoft's free-to-play shooter.
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.
The fundamentals are good, but conflicting ideas stop it from standing above a crowded shooter field.
XDefiant also doesn't include a battle royale mode and is focused instead on fast-paced action
XDefiant has been built to scratch a very particular online FPS itch, and the more bloated and complex AAA shooters have become, the more we've come to appreciate an experience like this. The game could do with a little more content, and some tweaks to gunplay and progression wouldn't go amiss, but we can't see why XDefiant shouldn't have a bright future ahead of it. Ubisoft has shown us all that it has the patience to stick around with online shooters if they have a solid community - just look at the near decade-old Rainbow Six Siege - so this should definitely be one title worth investing some time into. XDefiant isn't perfect, but this is a very promising start and we're already becoming invested in where Ubisoft's latest Xbox FPS can go.
XDefiant is a solid shooter that will likely scratch that arcade-y itch with its snappy gunplay, iconic map design, and fan-favourite game modes. It's the perfect multiplayer shooter to chuck on at the weekend, and we suspect it'll be home to several late-night sessions for old-school Call of Duty fans. It's not quite the breath of fresh air for the genre that The Finals is, but more like a blast from the past. Is it a CoD killer? No, but if Ubisoft can work its magic and go hell-for-leather with its multi-franchise post-launch content, then XDefiant could flourish into a regular staple of the shooter genre.
