Hey. You got a geiger counter? It’s time for another round-up.
Tom Clancy’s XDefiant
Yes, that’s the title. “XDefiant” is the title.
Yesterday, we saw IGN tease some gameplay for this new 6v6 arena shooter. The response was largely negative from what I witnessed. “Generic” is the word that comes to mind for what this game looks like. I can’t help but agree. In a gaming landscape with tons of blockbuster AAA shooters, Tom Clancy’s XDefiant feels very indistinguishable from many other games on the market.
Players in XDefiant play as characters named “Defiants”, who can be personalized to match the playstyle of their choosing. Factions, traits, abilities, and weapons can be customized at a whim to the player’s liking. Loadouts can be tweaked on the fly as well. Sounds a lot like Call of Duty, doesn’t it?
XDefiant has a variety of game modes as well, contrasting between 6v6 arena or linear game modes. Ubisoft mentions “Domination” and “Escort” as specific modes. If these are anything like other games, we can assume “Domination” will be an arena mode, while “Escort” will be a more linear one. Ubisoft also claims XDefiant will feature a large map pool, with plenty of maps in rotation. Although, for competitive shooters, isn’t a smaller map pool more appropriate? Just a thought!
The game will feature playable factions from the Tom Clancy universe, presumably with characters from across the various games in the series.
The game is being developed by Ubisoft San Francisco, but no release date was revealed just yet. A closed beta will be performed on August 5 for PC players in the United States and Canada. However, future tests will apparently be coming soon as well — for Playstation 4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S and Playstation 5. So register if you’re interested!
What are you doing, Ubisoft? I mean, really? This game feels so… out of touch. There’s plenty of games out there that do what this game is doing, yet Ubisoft keeps feeling the need to capitalize with a F2P game. They’ve struck and missed already with some of their F2P ventures.
While I think XDefiant might be fun for a bit, it doesn’t make itself unique enough to be worth the time. I don’t see how a mash-up of Tom Clancy IPs interests the public when most Tom Clancy characters aren’t that memorable.
What I’m trying to say is this: What is the point of this game other than a way to cash-in on F2P players? Nothing. There’s no need for this game to exist when IPs like Splinter Cell are still stuck in the dirt.
Perhaps there’s a discussion to be had about whether or not Ubisoft is actually worth even acknowledging anymore. Their IPs and franchises feel so lackluster and uninspired lately. A discussion to be had for another time.
I don’t want to wish bad on any game studio though, so I hope it works out for Ubisoft San Francisco’s sake. The game doesn’t look promising whatsoever, though.
Rapid-Fire Round-Up
- Executive Producer of Atlus, Naoto Hiraoka, did an interview with Famitsu that released early this morning. He had some interesting bits in here that I’m relaying via translations. Events for the Persona series are planned — both in Japan and overseas. They’re currently working on a variety of titles, with 5–6 projects in development internally. If including Vanillaware, who they’re investing further into, that increases to 10 projects. Project Re: Fantasy is making progress “little by little”.
- Ubisoft announced a few delays for some of their games. Rainbow Six Extraction has been delayed to January 2022, while Riders Republic has been delayed to October 28th 2021 instead of September 2nd.
- The Xbox Series X/S outsold the Playstation 5 in the month of June, according to a report from Gamespot. At least in terms of dollar sales. The Nintendo Switch was still the top-selling home console in the month of June.
- British studio Sumo Digital has unfortunately been bought out by Tencent in a $1.3 billion deal. Some of Sumo Digital’s most recent games include Crackdown 3, Sackboy: A Big Adventure and 2021’s Hood: Outlaws & Legends.
- Psychonauts 2 received a new trailer today. The action-adventure game drops on August 25th, and will be available on Xbox Game Pass at launch.
- Nintendo says there are no plans for any further Switch models at the moment beyond the Switch OLED coming this Fall. Cool. Can’t wait to play Pokemon Legends: Arceus at 20fps.
- Skate 4 won’t be at EA Play this week, but we got a behind-the-scenes trailer from the developers, showing us that it is indeed still in development. They definitely want to take their time and get this right, which can be appreciated.
Recent Releases
- F1 2021 is out now on Steam, Playstation 4, Playstation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. As we all know, Codemasters was recently acquired by Electronic Arts, making this their last non-EA game.
- The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD is out now for Nintendo Switch at a pricetag of $59.99. Make sure you grab a Zelda and Loftwing Amiibo too, if you want those added QoL features.
