Ubisoft has kicked off the weekend with a brand-new playtest for its highly anticipated first-person shooter, XDefiant, but the latest round of testing is already drawing a mixed reception from its player base.
XDefiant was first announced in 2021 and described by Ubisoft as a “fast-paced arena shooter that combines intense gunplay with personalized loadouts and specialized factions.” After being announced in July of 2021, the shooter’s first playtest was then launched in August, and has had countless betas and playtests since.
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The pressure was on for XDefiant from the get-go after various journalists, such as Forbes’ Paul Tassi, and fans called it a potential competitor to the Call of Duty franchise. While the game certainly has the potential to go toe-to-toe with gaming’s biggest first-person shooter, XDefiant’s Executive Producer Mark Rubin has already said that fans shouldn’t call it an outright Call of Duty “killer.”
If there’s one person who knows if XDefiant has the potential to be a Call of Duty killer, it’s Mark Rubin. Of course, because he’s the game’s executive producer, but also because Rubin was a developer and producer on the original Call of Duty: Modern Warfare series (which is arguably the best trilogy in the franchise’s history).
XDefiant Players Have Mixed Opinions On New Playtest
Unfortunately, despite the multiple playtests and years of development, XDefiant doesn’t appear to be living up to expectations for fans. I jumped in for a few games last night, and while I definitely think it still needs some work, it was nice to have a mix of old-school and new. The gunplay took me back to the days of Black Ops 2, while the abilities were certainly more of a modern-day addition that were fun to mess around with.
But it’s the overpowered weapons, poor hit registration (something that has long been an issue in XDefiant’s playtests), and sluggish movement that has fans down in the dumps. Over on Reddit, one user said that XDefiant “is just not a good shooter,” before going into a huge rant on the game’s skill-based matchmaking, audio, and poor net-code.
Another user posted an example to the XDefiant subreddit regarding the game’s bad net-code, where they were blatantly shot whilst out of the line of sight of their enemy. “Netcode needs fixing for sure I’ve been killed through walls wayyyy too many times,” the user said.
As for the game’s poor hit detection, X user Dmarcus posted a short clip showcasing just how temperamental it really can be. The player unloaded nearly an entire clip into the enemy at close range, only for it to do absolutely nothing. Check out the clip for yourself in the post below.
But not everyone is having a bad time with this weekend’s playtest. X user Corey replied to CharlieIntel saying, “After playing for the last hour my honest opinion is it’s solid. Gunplay feels better than cods imo. AA doesn’t do all the work for you, you actually have to be able to aim. Movement is solid. Maps are really fun to play on. No Sbmm is a huge bonus. I think it could succeed.”
If you want to make your own mind up, make sure to check out the XDefiant playtest this weekend. Fans have until tomorrow, April 21st, to jump in on Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, and PC.
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